I have spent a physically but above all mentally exhausting week on the continent and only just has the pilot managed to crash-land our plane on Scottish soil. Up until 2001 I was always a wanted target at customs but in present day I am just too white for their liking. And so myself and my travelling companion, a teddy bear named Kirstin, have arrived safely home. I fling my bag into my bedroom and greet my flatmate, who is in the kitchen, chopping up disgusting green things he claims are edible.
   Just as I want to ask him what has been going on around here, besides our national team being slaughtered by our Irish cousins, the whole flat is filled with the infernal racket of a circular saw persistently attempting to work its way through a chunk of basalt or something of equal fortitude. Though the noise itself is frighteningly familiar because of the dick upstairs, the direction it seems to be spawning from is new.
   Walking into my bedroom and sliding the window open I stick my head out to find a builder looking type not upstairs, but right beneath us! By builder looking type I mean a bloke who looks as if he dropped out of school face first, presumably from a considerable height. The type that makes far more money than I do but can't be bothered buying a belt to keep his trousers above the crack of his arse.
   What the fuck do they think they doing here? Are they about to launch a DIY war of noise with us in the middle or something? Fuck that. We're not going to be Belgium in this conflict. As my vocal attempts to draw attention drown miserably in the noise I adopt the slightly more scientific method of releasing an out-of-date carton of milk and letting gravity take its ugly course.
   The sound of electrical equipment is soon substituted by an unmistakably Scottish cry of surprise and that side of his head that allegedly constitutes as the face turns towards the heavens, where I am hanging from my window. Politely though more than slightly pissed off I ask him what in the name of Saint Delirium he fucking thinks he's doing.
   The answer to this is based largely around a technical term I think will be hard to find in a dictionary, but his knowledge of which demonstrates he has received at least one form of education I haven't. Never thought I'd be outwitted by a construction worker. Some might see it as a humbling experience. Not me of course.
   I tell him that I am not interested in what it is, but he had better start doing it making one hell of a lot less noise, bearing in mind that when it would come to a fight I have Sir Isaac Newton in my corner. Then I slam the window shut and decide it's been far too long since I had a Scottish beer.
   I haven't turned my back or the Neanderthal below shows off its ability to operate machinery. At times like this I wish I lived in Saudi Arabia or a country of such sorts, where a bloke in a dress can simply prance around a bit and then proceed to chop off his hands. I'm not greedy though. His thumbs will do.
   To at least alleviate my aural suffering I decide to stick on some music. I make sure the volume is at an ample level and after starting the computer look through a folder entitled 'music and Nirvana songs'. Two seconds after sticking on The Smashing Pumpkins that idiot upstairs stamps on his floor, also my ceiling.
   How much brain damage has that man suffered in his life? Surely one would have to be repeatedly hit on the head with a double-decker bus before such obvious symptoms of cracks in the skull even begin to consider appearing. There is a man outside making enough noise to outdo a Chinese firing squad at New Year and he is complaining about 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness'. I turn it up an extra wee bit, so that it nearly becomes audible over the work downstairs, lie back on my bed and conclude at least this bit of Scotland is exactly as I left it.