Have a Little Consideration

I’m offering a story today, Remarkable Value, Unbeatable Location, for which I had to look backward in my own life to get some of the details.  I’m currently living the North American dream, revelling in my status as owner-occupier of a fully detached single dwelling.  Apart from not having anyone but myself to complain to when the drains get clogged, it’s pretty good stuff.  I have previously rented, as the last story indicated, and before that I lived in a variety of apartment situations (although the vertical four-plex in Korea was apparently called a ‘villa’, despite the Korean trouble with the letter V, to distinguish it from one of units in the vast thousand-person blocks).  It’s the apartment life that the current story is founded in.

Anyone who has lived in an apartment setting will have a story or two about inconsiderate neighbours– it may be over-egging to call it a common horror, but if you think of is as an induced inability to relax in your own home… well, that’s pretty horrible.  The Romans were onto something, calling apartment buildings insulae— like shipwreck survivors washed onto the shores of an island, the people living in a block find themselves sharing accommodation with a bunch of strangers.  Even if there aren’t cannibals and tigers, things can get a bit tense because none of them have quite the same idea of correct conduct.