2006-10-06 - 7:43 p.m.

I received a text message at 12.26am a few days ago. It read:

Please stop singing. Thx

It was from Helen, who lives downstairs. She had a case. It was after midnight. I was embarrassed. But less for being overheard singing per se, and more for being overheard singing nonsense songs about my cat. Songs that will almost certainly have involved the words poo and wee. The trouble is, I sing nonsense cat songs almost continously. To the extent that I generally can't remember what I was just singing. So when I get a text like that, I have to, hot-collared, effect a mental rewind so I know just how embarrassing it was. A bit like if you realise you've left your phone on after you thought you'd hung up.

The thing I'm almost certain of is the tune. Although I sing cat songs to almost any tune - generally whatever advert music or theme tune I've just heard on the telly - the default tunes are one that I can only descibe as 'Ally's Tartan Army' (it's not worth the energy expended googling it to be honest) and the other being Miles Davis's 'So What?'. So pervasive is this tune then when I went to double check the title just now, the cat, believing she was about to be fed, ran to the kitchen ahead of me as I walked from the cd player to the pc, and I started singing:

"She thinks she's going to get her yums (ba-da)
She thinks she's going to get her yum-yums (ba-da)"

So even though I'm writing about my subconscious singing habits and could thus not be any more conscious of the fact that I do it than I am right now, I still caught myself doing it again. I've got a headache.

Anyway. Moments after receiving the text, my perenially drunk neighbour Rowan announced his return from the pub by singing his way down the street. Rowan lives next door to me and thus diagonally up from Helen. I was about to text her back, saying "Me singing is the least of your worries." Rowan is a lot louder than me. Seriously. She can hear me because we have thin floors. She can hear him because he is a bellowing ogre.

But then I imagined it being one of those annoying texts that takes several hours to get through, for no apparent reason. If she received a text saying "Me singing is the least of your worries" now, she would appreciate the context and the slight tension would be defused by my reference to a common foe.

But if she received it, at, say 4 a.m., when Rowan had long since gone to bed, it could constitute a death threat. Or at the very least extreme intimidation.

Excuse me. I've got to give the cat her yums (ba-da), I've got to give the cat her yum-yums (ba-da).

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude