The Curmudgeon

There's has been trouble at mill, or rather aggro in Quarry Row, between two of the offcumdens who have been in the Dale for nobbut two minutes. And the problem is noise.

Not nice country noise, like sheep bleating way up on Tup Fell, the bumble of a tractor in the distance, or even the rooks cawing from the big beeches opposite the Big House.

No, this a nasty, thumping, never-ending, Chinese-water torture of a noise imported, we believe, from the black ghettos of New York, an alien creature which has suddenly grown in our midst and is causing havoc.

It sounds like a cat being beaten to death on the skin of a base drum. It is called, I believe, garage. Or rap. If you were to add one more letter to the latter, you might get a half-adequate description.

And it has been introduced into the heart of what was once a quite little village by Bedlam Bat, who has taken up permanent residence in his folk's weekend cottage in Quarry Row.

Older readers will be familiar with the bats, who are the yoofs and yoofesses, whose parents own many of the village's second homes. Beyond parental control (if such a thing still exists) they hang upside down in the dark all day and only come out at night.

Then, they drive into Mar'ton to its one and only night club, the Glass in the Face, to return to the village in the early hours in a chorus of hi-fi, shouted oaths, and the tinkle or clatter of bottles or beer cans thrown from car windows.

Now we are used to the Bats. But Bedlam Bat is a different matter, now that he has been given a job as chief bottle-washer at the recently tarted up Crooked Inn over the tops in Crookedale.

For a start, we all believe he is stone-deaf, his eardrums melted long since. Because he works odd hours, he likes to torture us at odd times, like all afternoon - particularly on a Sunday - and after midnight. When the "music" plays, ghosts have been spotted rising from the graves in the churchyard and hurrying away into the night, spectral fingers stuck in spectral ears.

Bedlam's cottage lies between that of Ben the Bucket and the most recent offcumdens, Dr Spot and his boiler-suited partner Des, and they are not best pleased.

Dr Spot has complained to the police, who say it is no longer their problem - that sort of thing is now in the hands of the environmental health people.

But the environmental health people say there is not enough evidence for them to act because they have never heard the row themselves - and never will because they don't have enough staff to send anyone all the way to Beggarsdale late at night or on a Sunday.

In other words, noisy neighbours can only face justice if they disturb the peace during office hours, Monday to Friday. It looks like, as usual, Beggarsdale will have to tackle its own problems in its own way.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column, based on fictitious characters in a mythical village.