I thought they'd go at it again, but eventually it's quiet.

First of all, a little description is in order. I live in a small two-story house, in what used to be a textile industry neighborhood. In the 12th century, they dried out the swamps in the valley and started building a village in the shade of the cathedral; well they built the cathedral around the same time. In the 18th century the small village saw the implementation of textile plants. So it became people with the plants' workers. It was a working-class neighborhood, that developed its lore and legends.

Came the 70s, and the big textile crisis. All the plants got closed down one by one; my neighborhood had already gone into becoming a bit derelict for a few decades; it was the lair of crime, prostitution and drugs, and hence was rather ill-famed. In the 80s, the city council and some real-estate developers undertook to rehabilitate the place. It all started with a dock next to the river that saw bars and restaurants settling in. In ten years, the neighborhood got cleaned up. When the university got new buildings there, it became profitable to buy housing in order to rent it to students.

Eventually it ended up being populated mainly with students. There were a few long-time residents left, whose families had lived there for three or four generations. Working class, but no longer working for the most part. Actually, there are villages a few miles from my city in which all the economy was based on the textile plant in which the problem is the same. The thing is, this left with people who for a wide part are uneducated.

Here comes my neighbor from across the square. My house is at the end of a street that opens on a cute little square, that was re-cobbled ten years ago, so that the now numerous tourists coming to visit find the place quaint and cute. On the right side of the square, looking from my window, there's a narrow canal with houses built along. It's the back of the houses, the front opening on another street. So you have very small yards, the kind big enough to set a few chairs and a table and the occasional barbecue, when the weather allows, from April to October.

In one of these houses, lives one of the diehard residents. Mid to late 20s, must be unemployed, got married a couple years ago (I remember the noise of the party), got a kid less than nine months later; I suspect him of dealing hashish, because of the odd visits he gets, but this isn't my point.

A few years back, prior to his marriage, sometime in late April early May, I heard some party starting and the noise increased over the evening. Well, all wasn't lost, I wrote a song about it.

An Evening Racket

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