what oozes through life's cracks

To the best of my knowledge, we are currently no-where near a full moon.

And yet there was some serious shit going down at my place last night. Just as Ms Snazzles was on her way to visit me, all Hell broke loose. Now, I don't want to be jeopardising the proper workings of the law, less still my own cosy safety, so I'm not going to go into too much detail. Let's just say it involved:

~ a certain resident of my building;
~ another resident of my building, who rides a motor-bike, much to the irrational annoyance of Resident A;
~ a large kitchen knife;
~ a whole lot of screaming and threats;
~ a slashed motor-bike seat;
~ a broken window;
~ a cut hand and lots of blood (caused by the broken window); and
~ four police cars.

Now, it would have been just plain irresponsible of me NOT to sit next the window and listen to the conversation Resident A was having with the cops, one floor below. I know I know... it's wrong and I should mind my own business... but seriously - tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing!

Anyway - as much as it pains my inner rebel, who wants me always to despise any kind of authority figure - I must admit I was extremely impressed by the way the police officers handled the situation. They were obviously familiar with this individual (who seemingly has some history of instability) and managed to calm him and convince him to come with them "to talk about what had happened". They always sounded non-judgemental, but weren't being condescending either. It's good to see that there are some cops out there who don't think the best way to deal with a mentally ill person is just to pump him full of lead.

So he was taken away, Snazzles was able to pick her way past the broken glass and have a cuppa with me, and all was well. But, by Toutatis, there MUST have been something in the air, because a few hours later some OTHER local loon decided to start screaming. This was much less violent, confrontational screaming ~ merely a kind of general angry yelling, but it continued off and on ALL NIGHT. I turned up the stereo and pumped out my night-time music, and managed to sleep through most of it, but occasionally I awoke for a second or two and encountered a distant "Fucking assholes, don't you worry about that!" And since there was only one voice involved, I can only assume that this man was having this night-long rant ALL BY HIMSELF.

It all looks so pleasant by day: park across the street, idyllic primary school down the road... but sometimes - only occasionally - I have to ask myself... what kind of place am I living in?! But then again, I'm sure it's not just Munkey Towers. It seems that everywhere, below the shiny calm of modern life, there lurks the dark spiky Beast of human unrest that - ignore it as we might - will never be quelled... and will always be a part of who we are as a culture, a civilisation and a species.

~~~~~~~