real life

'My next door neighbour has gone away and committed the ultimate sin.'

Six months ago I moved from the country into a tiny sh*tbox apartment in Sydney and I’m very slowly getting used to living just metres away from people I’ve never met.

And apart from the mould, the cockroaches, the ever-impending sense of doom, and someone else’s burps interrupting my Netflix binge, it’s been great.

That is, until the woman in the apartment next to me decided to go away and leave her alarm clock set for 4:00am in the morning.

Please make it stop. Image supplied.

Yep, every middle of the night morning Linda's* (I don't know her name but she looks like a Linda) alarm wakes me up before the birds even start chirping.

We're up to day five now and I'm slowly unravelling.

It starts at 4:00am and goes for a few minutes and then stops. At this point, I'm sleepy but pretty zen about the whole thing, I mean, poor Linda* would be horrified if she knew she'd left it on, wouldn't she? WOULDN'T YOU, LINDA?

Then at 4:30am, it's back - and it seems to go for longer and get increasingly louder. In this moment my feelings for Linda* are becoming more and more lukewarm. Because if Linda was a good person, she would have remembered to turn it off before she left. Right, Linda?

But once again, it stops, and I snuggle back under the covers and get back to dreaming about Bradley Cooper.

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BUT THEN IT STARTS AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

By 6:00am, I'm totally miffed and bloody hell Linda, what were you thinking? Anyone who's ever been brutally harassed by an neighbour's alarm clock knows that consistent little beeping sound can turn you into the most irrational person - and at this point I'm plotting some Home Alone style revenge on poor old Linda.

At 6:30am the alarm, once again, wakes me up and I just give up, as much as I'd like to hold onto my last 15 minutes of sleep, Linda has won. YOU'VE WON, LINDA. YOU'VE BLOODY WON.

I stumble into the shower, and while the water wakes me up, I have a truly horrifying thought... If I can hear Linda's alarm clock - what can Linda hear?

Have you ever been woken up by your neighbour's alarm clock?