Neighbourhood update

I haven't posted lately about my nearest, dearest neighbours here in the condo. How remiss of me. You must be wondering how much I've seen ;-) of Ugly Naked Guy, or what I've heard from Heffalump Child, or maybe how Happy Harry II's smile is getting on. Let me update you.

I think someone must have said something to Ugly Naked Guy. Or maybe it was just coincidence. But when I saw him a few days ago, he was loading his washing machine as usual, stretching past the dryer to pop each item in as he took it off. But this time, instead of socks hanging from the little circular dryer, there was a towel. It's not a very big dryer, and the towel wasn't very big either, but it was just big enough to make my view much less... er... compelling (in that train-wreck kind of way) than usual.

Happy Harry II has metamorphosised into his own father. DH went down to pay late one evening, and instead of the dark, dark face with the bright, white teeth glowing out of the gloom, he was greeted with a shock of white hair against the chocolate skin, and no teeth at all. He wasn't quite sure whether it was the same "company" (in the loosest term of the word because Harry II was a one-man-band), but the new/old guy seemed to know DH's car, although his English is even more limited than Harry's was. We haven't picked a name for Harry II's father yet. We're working on it.

Heffalump Child and Wooden Blocks are growing. In height, foot size and volume. HC's lungs have developed to an extraordinary capacity, where she can wake us up by screaming in the night from a different room in the apartment above. I'm presuming it's HC rather than WB, simply because I get her "wah wanna wah" wailing several times a day. She's doing it right now actually. WB squeals rather than wailing. Can't wait for the baby to arrive...

So now that she's bigger, I can hear the thump thump thump thump THUMP THUMP thump thump thump thump accompanied by the crashing of furniture that she's knocked down on her rampage. She's also decided that she's big enough to move chairs all by herself now, so we get SQUEEE... EEEEEEE... (insert fingers in ears, try not to grit teeth)... eeeeee... eeeeee... eeeeeeeak several times a day. Lovely.

At weekends when DH tries to get a lie-in (that's a "sleep-in" to all you folks across the pond!) he gets woken up by the extra-enthusiastic morning yomp at around 7:20am. That's a whole hour earlier than the daily 8:20am scaffold pole dropped from 5 storeys at the building site across the road.

And lastly to Dutch Twinkle and his wife downstairs. He's a dear. I get a text message at least once a week saying "Hi neighbourette, pool tomorrow 10am?" Then we spend an hour doing leisurely lengths, or widths in the deep end if the "wheels on the bus" are going "round and round" endlessly in the shallows. We chat and joke, and he blows raspberries at passing children, and tells me beer stories. He's taken a few fun lessons with DH's guitar tutor, found the guy to be just as unreliable as our warnings, and moved on to a better one. He humours me when I moan about HC by saying that yes, he heard that crash at 8:30 this morning too, and it wasn't me? Goodness that was loud then!

I'm going to miss all this when we leave, which may be in a couple of months. DH did ask me the other day whether I would stay here if we had the option, and I said yes. Better the devil you know, and all that. At least our little cloven-footed devil upstairs is only 4' high.