Return of the ASBO family

I've had my issues with the ASBO family from upstairs - the time when every time they flushed, their waste water was somehow overflowing into our bath; the time we took in an elderly neighbour who they'd threatened with a knife; the operatic nightly rows of the mother and the moody teenage son; the time they dropped a machete into our back garden - but recently they've been strangely quiet, and I've almost missed them.

But not last night. At 3.00 in the morning, their TV (living room just over my bedroom) went on full blast. It's 3.00 am, I've just been in REM sleep. I cannot, CANNOT, be arsed to get out of bed, put on dressing gown, go downstairs, out into the cold, climb the concrete staircase up to their flat, knock on the door and ask them to turn it down. It's more than mortals can bear.

So I get out of bed, and bang the supersonic mouse noise repeller against my ceiling, WHACK, WHACK WHACK, in the hopes that this will transmit itself via a crude morse code into 'It's 3.00 am, turn the telly down, some of us have to be up at 6.00, you selfish cunts.' There is no change in the volume. I detach the end of my curtain pole and ram it against the ceiling, really bouncing up and down on the bed now in order to optimize the force and volume of the whacks against the ceiling. Whack whack whack. Whack whack whack whack whack.

Still no change. Are they deaf? Somehow I remember that I might have their phone number from when we had to get the plumber in to check their pipes. I go downstairs to find it... and guess what? It's MY TV that has somehow, mysteriously (and somewhat spookily) turned itself on and is making all the racket.

Sorry, ASBO neighbours. You must think I'm a psycho.