The big dig

They started work on the road last week. A churning mess of digging and dumping down at the bottom of my street.
Anyway, they send everyone on the street a letter explaining that the work is going to be happening over the next fortnight and that, in order to reduce problems to the flow of traffic through the area, all work will be done between the hours of 12am and 5am.
“We apologise for any inconvenience that may be caused to residents.”
‘Inconvenience’ - that’s a good word. It is inconvenient that I won’t get much sleep for the next couple of weeks. ‘The first night will be bad,’ I thought to myself as I sat on my newly covered blue couch - it was comfy and I usually felt luxurious reclining on it. ‘I will be blasé about the noise and then when I close my eyes and try to sleep, no rest will come - or it will be only in small bursts.’ This came to pass and, while I slept better next night - perhaps through exhaustion - the following few days passed painfully in a fret of anxiety, thinking about the terrible night to come and how I would function without the sustenance of sleep.
I functioned poorly, and I became quite hysterical with rage at night after three hours of trying, trying, trying to get to sleep. You know how it is when you try to ignore the snores of another, sharing your room or bed… You think, I’m a civilised human being and they really don’t know they’re snoring, they can’t help it - they’re not doing it out of spite. But that’s exactly what it feels like - spite! There they are, enjoying the bountiful pleasures of energy restoring sleep and, as if to rub it in your face that you’re not drinking from the same pure well, their physical actions, the emanations from their body, are the things that stop you from reaching the very nirvana they currently inhabit.
Yesterday was a Sunday night and, drunk with fatigue, I threw the bed clothes from my bed and left my apartment by the front door. I was sweating from tossing and turning under two winter duvets, multiplied by frustration at a factor of six!
I calmly stepped down the communal stairs of the building and into the main hall. As I went to open the main door I caught sight of myself in the reflection of its glass panels and was embarrassed. The shame, to go out into the world in just a t-shirt and boxer shorts. The indignity of it all.
I stood there for thirty seconds before I forgot why I was standing there in the first place. I opened the door, leaving the lock on the slip for easy re-entry, I didn’t have my key with me, of course.
Looking left from the garden wall I could see the end of the street was closed off and very brightly lit. I thought I was getting it bad, but the people on the corner would have light pollution poking through their blinds and curtains, mixing with the clogging sounds and making a person, a family, choke.
I wandered along the street, sticking to the pavement, despite the lack of cars using the closed road. I realised I might cause consternation in any workmen who saw me like this but I barely cared. I just stumbled along towards a huge truck that blocked much of the extra light that was being shone onto the road.
Shimmying around some cones - I was shivering now and the wind was up - I went and stood in the main thoroughfare that my street runs into - the main site of the necessary maintenance work.
I looked from one end of the long shopping street to another. Death was the correct description for this usually thriving oasis of retail. All along, the place was dark. Darker than ever because all the streetlights were off. I looked up and waved to the CCTV cameras outside the entrance to the station.
Right slap bang in the middle of the road, surrounded by three bright lamps, powered by who-knows-what, there I stood. Alone.
Not a workman could be seen. The noises came from great machines of industry - a cement mixer whirling along on the kerbside, a digger rattling away in a gutter, a sputtering generator powering the huge lamps. The lorry that was parked here had been left running. Its lights were also on, and from inside its cab came the sounds of its stereo system, broadcasting the song of spanners and screwdrivers clinking, the odd mallet clanking, background chatter and an occasional whistle.
I climbed up and slid in through the truck’s open window. I reached for the keys, turned these with a click and then slid them from their housing so that the sounds died away. I turned off the lights, but allowed myself five minutes inside the warm cab.
Climbing down, I visited each piece of equipment in turn and learnt how to stop its noise and motion. Lastly I turned off the clanking generator and peace fell upon the world again.
A slow walk then, back to bed. I enjoyed listening to the howl of the wind.
An open letter to residents came the next day. The work on the road had apparently been finished in excellent time. There was a sincere apology for any disruption to normality.
I folded the letter away and thought about buying a new mattress.