Heart Attack Number 3 at Northcott.

On Monday 19^th of February I handed in a complaint to the Housing Department that here on the 2nd of March has still not been dealt with. I asked for an appointment with my building’s client officer and did not get it. I rang in a notice to Maintenance, concerning the leakage of water from a flooded flat above me through my ceiling and into my living room. It dripped into my TV set which was on at the time and just as I tried to lift it away it blew up in my hands, so this is also an ongoing Health and Safety issue. Nobody has come yet to inspect the damage.

I have lived here for 28 years, am 68 years old, and have worked as a Palliative care nurse for much of my career, though I have also contributed to the city’s cultural life as an artist. I have suffered much while living here. My apartment at B02/50 is right on the common path through Northcott and everyone from the Estate plus many from Redfern and Waterloo walk right past my front door, I have no Security door/gate/wall, no concierge or guard ready to help. I’ve had many ne’er-do-wells come to my door at all times of the night and day on some nefarious agenda which I have to repel. I’ve had rocks thrown through my window and I was bashed at my front door about 10 years ago by a drug addict with an iron bar who was urinating against my wall and when I asked him to desist I was attacked in a rage, injured and the police had to be called.

I have seen many "jumper" suicides, one right at my doorstep jumping from the 4^th floor and dying before my very eyes. I was in the middle of the Surry Hills massacre in 1990 when five residents were shot dead, again not far from my front door. I was here the day the police surrounded the building to catch the serial gay murderer on the third floor above me whose last victim had his head chopped off and thrown down the garbage chute.

I am surrounded by the neighbors from Hell. In the apartment next to me, whose  front door faces mine, is a ghastly poly-drug abuser who I call Cursula; heroin, methadone, Valium, Zanax, alcohol, are all imbibed by the truckload, unconscious in her manky bed for weeks, nothing can mollify her existential angst. She is an egregious hoarder, so much rubbish piled into her flat she can't receive her guests, they can't fit amid the putrid garbage so she entertains them by my front door, yakking, squabbling, yahooing till I have to put my head out the door and scream for them to "fuck off!"

Every day she parks more junk from the local dumpsters on my porch and every day I cart it back to the dumpsters. She leaves a slimy mess behind her like some drunken slug, spilled coffee, cigarette butts, junk food packaging, empty booze bottles, cleaning it up daily has me exhausted, I just can't do it anymore.

She's always at my door whining, asking for something,  even if it's just verbal abuse, calling through my door when I'm trying to sleep or when I have guests so she can join in our conversations, she's driving me fucking bonkers till I hope some serial killer strangles her with a necktie like in Hitchcock's movie "Frenzy". I know this is a shocking incitement of violence towards a woman but it shows to what pathetic, psychotic depths I've sunk to think of such things, obviously not good for my mental health. And don't worry, every day I forgive her and we have a near cat and dog symbiotic relationship, she's the dog.

I stupidly introduced my non-friend Bawl to her as they both needed a root. He would've split after 3 days except as a means of hanging onto him she told him she had $30,000 hidden under her mattress which she'd scammed over a few years, (mostly from selling her methadone.) He must've thought, "Good one! I'll be onto that baby!" They fell into a co-dependent symbiosis and proceeded to shoot it all up in 6 months, sometimes 3 heroin hits a day. By the time the money gone Cursula was pregnant and Bawl reverted to his natural state of being the stolid, toxic male abuser, snarling nasty insults to every one of her pathetic pleas.

"You ugly useless cunt, no wonder I don't want to fuck! You're a slovenly slut who throws all your rubbish straight to the floor."

"Oh Bawl, why do you have to be so rotten to me? I feed you, run for the drugs for you, try to clean up your mess, if you're so worried about the rubbish on the floor, why don't you clean it up? All you do is sit there fiddling with your guitar like you're god's gift to the planet."

" You fucking piece of shit! I'm sick of looking at your sad sack face. Why don't you do us all a favour and drop dead! I'm fucking off from this shit heap!"

"Before you go can you pay me back that money you owe me? You've bludged off me too long. Where's my money? I want my fucking money!"

Of fuck off ya mole, you'll get nothing from me, I'm out of here. I don't know why I've stayed, you're a lousy fuck!"

I heard it all through her open door, even through the walls, they screamed so loud, it was horrible. One of my girlfriends heard it and swore she'd never look him in the face again. Bawl hid his monstrous toxicity behind a surly, stoic, sullen strong man's silent front, the big bad rock guitarist who nobody dare question as his bulk was intimidating. It all contributed towards Cursula's eventual destruction. While she didn't know whether she was Martha or barfer she allowed another kreepy guy to give her a hotshot and kill her at the age of 47.

 

For the last 4 years the whole building, and those back of us, have suffered from the disturbances of the guy living in flat LG02/50 above me. He verbally, violently abuses everyone constantly whenever he meets them in the grounds or stairway, especially old women who he loves to stand over. He slams his door many times a day, so hard the whole building shakes. He throws dirty tissues from his balcony. But worst of all he plays the same loud, bad music, which we call Russian disco, from speakers placed at his windows to scare the demon birds away, over and over 24/7 so I myself am having temper tantrums all around the city because I’m a nervous wreck and sleep deprived. The very beginning of the first few notes of his music now induces nausea in me. 

The cops have been called fifty times but he acts all innocent like butter wouldn't melt in his pudgy arse, "Who me, I wouldn't do that." As soon as the cops go, up blares the bad music, "The Boys of Summer", Christmas carols or the American National Anthem. Lately it's been Justin Bieber's "Sorry", it's sacharine melody prepping me to be an axe murderer.

Last week he left his taps running and flooded his flat so bad Maintenance had to come and pump it out, not before it seeped through the thick concrete of my ceiling. And my TV was ruined and I bet there was no compensation. I’m a Pensioner, poor, and now I sit without even the comfort of a television. The creep often runs around the grounds with his shorts down around his knees and we all have to see his ugly arse, buttocks like two soggy suet puddings wobbling... uggghhh, it makes me sick thinking about it!

The Housing Department has a Duty of Care for all the residents, including myself, not just one rotten apple who is spoiling it for everyone. I’m 68 and I think he will give me my third heart attack. I want an appointment with my Client Officer to talk about a solution to my dilemma, if there is one. (I think of Richard Widmark giggling maniacally as he pushed the old lady in a wheelchair down the long flight of stairs: that would make me happy, Birdbrain screaming as he crashes to squash under an oncoming pig van. I've put in this complaint twice and, after three weeks, nobody has yet come to deal with the problem. 

I sent this Statement of Living Conditions at Northcott Estate to every person who is the Manager at every level of the Housing Dept Bureaucracy, to the Ombudsman, to the Lord Mayor’s Office, to the Health Dept to see if someone will lend me succour. Nobody replied except, after a month, my "client officer" who commiserated but could do little except have a word with the nut-job, for the bastard's under the protection of the Mental Health Department. What a joke! In the meantime I'm writing, painting, keeping the wolves from my door, and trying not to have another heart attack.