Jan 1, 2003
On Shouting
There’s a shouty woman who lives in the residential home for the mentally ill which backs onto our terrace.
She shouts. A lot.
I’ve mentioned her here before, or rather, her shouting. It’s loud and harsh, and seems to happen randomly and without interaction or meditation. It’s not so much a prolonged bout, as a series of short, abrasive outbursts, as if she’s having an angry conversation (a loud one) with someone who isn’t there.
The words are rushed and unintelligible, her accent strained. The bursts come in groups – an hour of particularly strong activity, and then nothing for a while. Occasionally, she has a notably bad day – or night.
We can only hear her when she’s sitting in the conservatory of the centre, because the windows are open, the roof is only corrugated plastic, and the sound travels well in the narrow canyon formed by the tall terraces of this street and the one behind, backing on to each other. I can’t tell if she’s shouting at someone, or the television, or possibly at both, but hers is the only voice which carries. It’s half past six now, still dark, and I haven’t slept a wink: she’s been at it all night. Just when I feel myself to be dropping off, she launches into another abrasive, abusive round. Her voice is pitched precisely to penetrate double glazing.
And we’d had such a lovely evening, too. Rioja and tapas, then a walk over the Thames towards home, then plenty of relaxing. Not that I did much else yesterday, of course… but then isn’t that the essence of a well-earned day off?
When we moved in, we heard the occasional shout, but we put it down to the usual noisesome neighbours. London’s full of them, and we’ve both had our fair share. After a few months, when the sun came out, we noticed the shouting was getting more frequent, and, peering out of the bedroom or bathroom windows, we could see people sitting outside the house which backs onto ours, drinking tea and smoking rollups in an enclosed patio, while rocking, rapidly backwards and forwards. The shouting which we had assumed was the audible end of a conversation seemed instead to be the only end of a conversation.
Last month, I decided to find out what the centre was – A residential home? A drop-in centre? A hostel? Cyrenians? And for who? I counted how many houses the patio was from the end of the street, then went around to the street behind, counted the houses in reverse, and knocked on the door.
The woman who answered was immediately suspicious.
“What do you want?”
I explained that I was a neighbour from the next street, and that I’d been hearing noises for a while, and that I wondered what they were. From downstairs, I could smell institutional food, and hear the familiar shrill shouting.
“Are you making a complaint?” she asked.
No, I explained, I was just curious. She told me it was a residential home for the mentally ill, and then shut the door in my face. That was apparently the end of the conversation.
I wasn’t expecting an invitation for tea and biscuits, but I would have liked to have found out more about what causes the woman to shout. To be honest, it sounds scary. If I was a kid, or more anxious, I’d worry about the shouting woman, think that she might be dangerous. If I worked in a care home like that, I might try to inform people about how the shouting is a symptom of the illness, but that the resident isn’t dangerous, or angry at all. If they came around, asking and curious, I’d try to educate them about the illness, rather than being immediately suspicious – though I can understand how anyone might feel like that, especially if complaints have been levelled against the centre in the past.
But there’s a difference between curiosity and complaining, and once that door slammed shut in my face, I subconsciously aligned myself closer to one than the other.
