A QUIET NIGHT IN (A LITTLE LOUDER PLEASE)

Mr Karaoke is yet again in full performance next door.He has cranked up the stereo (Hi-Fi?ipod docking station? streaming mp3 player? I don’t know) and is singing along at a volume that inevitably means that holding a tune would be a miracle as he is having to shout to make himself heard (a little LOUDER please mate as I can’t make out the LYRICS!!). It always sounds like the kind of singing that slightly drunk people attempt when at the “merry bravado” stage. Sadly it’s not a state I can directly empathise with as alcohol just makes me morose and is therefore best avoided by me, myself and I but nonetheless I have been around enough drunk people to know that this sounds similar.Mr Karaoke is a young man aged at a guess somewhere between his late 20′s and early 30′s but his choice of music always seems to be quite mainstream top 40, that which I can recognise anyway. I guess it could be worse. We used to live above a young guy who only ever played frenetic beat dance music (nothing wrong with that but i like a bit of variety sometimes). At least this one’s not a wailing Leonard Cohen fan (I think I’d be slashing my wrists if he was).Mercifully Mr Karaoke’s singing bouts do not last as long a Mrs Hoover’s vacuuming marathons (they are husband and wife by the way). It would be nice if the two activities could coincide but each seems to occur when the other is out of the house as one works days, the other nights. Now that gives me an idea for an ideal combination of electrical appliances; the hoover ghetto blaster (up there with the fax-toaster-stapler surely). A vacuum with a couple of huge great speakers on it (amp and sub woofer built in) to drown out the mechanical noise. Complete with a handy microphone for karaoke singalong.Brilliant idea!(get the patent office on the phone). I bet they’d bloody buy that one too.