Don't you wish your night was this eventful?

5 am. An electronic fake bell shrills me out of sleep. And peals again. And again.

I wander sleepily into the sitting room, thinking it might be the smoke alarm. But no, the doorbell is ringing, and from there I can hear that every other doorbell in the apartment complex is also ringing. Someone is pressing all the buttons at once.

Geekman mumbles, "Ignore it. It's drunken louts."

But I can't. It might be someone who has been attacked and escaped from her attacker and barely made it to our apartment and is now desperate for someone to let her in before her attacker finds her again. (I have an overactive imagination).

Geekman says, "If you let them in, they'll just start banging on someone's door, which will be even louder."

I go out onto the balcony and look down. There are two guys so drunk they are struggling to stay on their feet, laughing while they push random doorbell buttons. One of them has a mobile phone. If they need help, they are hiding it well. Plus, with that phone, they can always call the police.

I go back to bed.

5:30. The doorbell is still ringing and sleep is not a happening thing for me. I am about to call the police. I go back to the sitting room to see if I can disconnect the bell from up here. No such luck. But miraculously, it stops.

I go back to bed.

5:38. Clatter clatter! Ping! Ping! Crunch! Crunch! Bang! Someone is climbing up the balconies at the back of the building. I look out the bedroom window, see nothing. But I can hear drunken male laughter, which suggests it is the same two guys, rather than a not-very-subtle burglar.

They must have reached the door they were after, because BANG BANG BANG! BANG BANG BANG! BANG BANG BANG! Non stop. For ten minutes.

Then: Clatter, clatter, ping, ping, crunch, crunch -- ARGH! Thump!

Somebody fell off the balcony. (Or was pushed.)

And here I discover how callous and uncaring a person I am deep down. I smile at the silence and go back to sleep.


Postscript:

This morning I did go out to see if anyone was lying dead in the back garden. And they weren't. But I still feel a little guilty for valuing my sleep over the life and health of a noisy loutish drunken yobbo who was trying to break into someone's apartm-- Wait. No I don't.