The woes of living next to Mr and Mrs Hell and all the little Hells.

It seems that each night there is constant shouting by an irrate woman who happens to be a mother of a child called Charlie-She is a girl of about twelve. There is some bloke called Dean who comes around occasionally and I hear Dean and mother arguing alot. Infact as I type, they are at it again.

From what I could hear, the daughter had put some books on the floor and Dean told her to pick them up in a strong appropriate tone. The mother then literally went ballistic and started screaming.(No joke, screaming.) Going on and on and on. Still it is going on. She goes on about how she has to work and how it is tiring and death's door and all that stuff toward her daughter who was in tears. There is nothing worse than hearing a child cry and knowing there is nothing you can do about it. All along, there is a feeling that one day, things will get nasty and eventually the mother will do something that will hurt the child physically.

One night I heard the mother threaten her daughter by saying,"I have a belt in the cupboard. One more and I will use it on you." At this point the daughter mentions social services. "Mother replies with, by the time I am through with you, you will be too scared to say anything to social services".

On the surface, it looks like the daughter is coping. I fear that deep down she has a lot of saddness and really needs someone to confide in. I wish I could but fear that this may lead to the daughter mentioning me in some kind of defence mechanism and land me right in it. The last thing I need is that screaming banshee of a mother howling at me on my doorstep. Dean, I find is a reasonable person. I think he is a lot calmer and perhaps Dean is someone Charlie can turn to.

In the flat I am living in, it is almost the same as my neighbours. One bedroom masionette. Not much space but at the same time more space than the average council flat. I can sympathise with the kid because there is no real space where she can escape Dean and mother arguing but, she does have other members of the family, who I met when they first moved in. Infact they were helping their daughter, the mother, with some of the essentials as parents normally do. They are decent bunch. Perhaps Charlie would be best off with her family, rather than living in a tight condition apartment. for one person, the space is wonderful, but more than one and things get a bit crowded. Having said that, I feel privilaged to be here. Just wish it wasn't next door to the Hell family.

 

It's heartbreaking to hear peoples behaviour to their offspring sometimes, i know it would cause me a lot of stress to hear that sort of behaviour, and it can be impossible to know what to do in sucj circumstances. Understand your reticence to get involved and probably rightly so in these circumstances, young females is always dodgy territory for men.

 

You can hear all that through the wall?

 

I'm sure he can hear it.. My last flat, I could hear absolutely everything they said.. it was fun sometimes, but they also had horrific arguments, tht would actually reduce me to tears