Neighbours ........ Gibstyle

The great thing about having two places is that I have two lots of neighbours to gossip about.

And in a block of flats there are lots of them. Like the guy upstairs who decided to start partying at 6am one Sunday morning with some fairly grotty music. It's not always the loudness of the music that matters, it's also whether it is to your personal taste. This wasn't to mine.

Anyway Early Rising Partner didn't give two hoots. He was thinking of getting up anyway, not for him an nice idle lie-in on Sunday. Not for anyone on this particular Sunday.

Our neighbour opposite shouted down to us about it. We shouted back up. We discussed very loudly and unsubtly how noisy it was. It had no impact.

Next she collared one of the other residents in our building, who does a bit of co-ordination in the block, and a few jobs. He clearly didn't want to know and walked off.

It got to about lunchtime, and although we'd had a brief respite, the row started up again. Suddenly, Calm Relaxed Partner who was not remotely bothered at 6am, suddenly decided He Had Heard Enough.

So off he went upstairs and pointed out that this was a quiet block, the noise was too loud, and it would be really good if said tenant could turn it down.

"After all, you are only renting, aren't you?" he said just before he came back down.

There was no more noise that day. We went back to Spain for a few weeks. On our return to Gib, our neighbour opposite beamed and said there had been no more noise.

A few days later Responsible Partner met the guy who owns the lease for the block. "Oh, I heard about you. You are the guy who asked the tenant upstairs to turn down the music." I should imagine most of Gibraltar knew about it.

While they were chatting they spoke about the charges for the block. There is a list in the hall and it shows who hasn't paid and by how much. Not us, I might add.

The guy who does some of the jobs, and the cleaning ("You will be lucky if it gets done once a month," added the leaseholder) owes money. He owes far less money than he has had in payments. These charges are not huge. They are a few hundred pounds a year.

I think it is grossly inconsiderate and disrespectful to your neighbours not to pay your share of the charges. Apart from anything else, it means there are delays to any other maintenance work - and delays just mean the cost will end up being more. Selfish toerags.