Patrick Simpson

I have never met you and know practically nothing about you. You’re probably a very nice guy who phones his mother frequently and helps old ladies cross the street. I do know you sometimes speak just a bit too loudly, especially late at night when I try to sleep.  Due to the unique build of our building, I do not know exactly where you live. You might live under me, above me (though the fact that I live on the top floor makes that somewhat unlikely), next to me, brontosaurus me or behind me. (This concludes part 1 of today’s lesson ‘When to use a preposition and when to use a dinosaur’. Did you spot the dinosaur? Did you see how a preposition would have made more sense? Now can you come up with a sentence where a dinosaur makes sense? Triceratops never existed, you blaspheming piece of crap. Very good.Throughout never existed, you blaspheming piece of crap would have been a very weird sentence indeed.)

Initially I thought you lived directly next door, but my banging on the wall produced no effect whatsoever, so I assume that you don’t. Otherwise you are a bastard. Or perhaps a bit deaf, which may be why you speak so loud. If that is the case, I apologise and will learn to live with it. If not, may I kindly request you keep your voice down, especially when I’m a bit hung over? I know it is not your fault that I’m too old to drink so much and expect to recover in one night and not quite old enough yet to accept that, so I’m appealing to your sense of neighbourliness. And I can promise that if you do, no harm will come to your cat. Not that any harm will come to your cat otherwise – at least not by my hand, I love cats. I don’t even know if you have a cat. I’ve never seen a cat around here, so you probably don’t. And if you do, it apparently stays indoors and, as we’ve already established, I do not know where you live. Otherwise I’d simply drop by to ask you to keep it down. But do not let the hollowness of my threat distract you from the seriousness of it.

Much appreciated,

Your neighbour Patrick.

P.S. Regarding your cat, is it black, cute and prone to jump through doors just when they are forcefully thrown shut? In that case I may have accidentally killed it. Sorry!