Continental Europe calling.....there seems to have been some kind of competition in the barrio lately. The who can make the most noise challenge. Being stuck indoors during a pandemic and a potential heatwave has gone to our heads and no one seems to give a toss. Next door as you know love to play the same shite over and over again with a cow bell chucked in for good measure. The guy in 1D plays Cuban music, tangos and great blues so I am happy with him except when Mr van de Ven decides it is too noisy and starts banging the wall with his ladle and chopping board screaming ''shut the fuck up'' in Spanish, ''Os podeis callar de una puta vez!'' which I must admit adds to the rhythm of life but anyway. Then there has been the mysterious obscure drums that seem to be coming from the Jai Alai, a kind of disused, thanks to the Covid, music venue where someone insists on playing the djembe drum. I quite like it. For the first two hours. Then I go into a trance. Upstairs lives a rapper and then there is the neighbour at the back who likes to run the engine on his Harley for about ten minutes just because he can I suppose. He once dropped his keys outside and I was tempted to nick the Harley and ride it off very far away, leave it there and get a cab home. The runners up are the boy racers who insist on driving round in circles all night in their 1980s clapped out jalopies blaring out techno. In a ''can't beat 'em, join 'em'' moment I decided to channel the spirit of Fela Kuti but then had a change of heart. From today I shall be playing Ken Dodd's ''Happiness'' on a loop. Tomorrow? Who knows. Maybe Pinky and Perky's How Much is that Doggie in the Window....