One must admire, in the abstract sense that one admires a particularly ambitious act of self-sabotage, the theatrical commitment with which my neighbour, Zaps Charcoal Birds, has approached the business of aspiring to be the authentic "dirty bird". I speak, naturally, from the privileged position of their upstairs neighbour - a vantage point that has afforded me an education in precisely how not to conduct parochial diplomacy through a commercial enterprise, delivered with the relentless ardour of a masterclass conducted by Inspector Clouseau.
The genius, if one may call it that, lies in their multi-pronged approach. Why settle for mere incompetence when one can achieve a kind of symphonic discord? Their pièce de résistance: an air-conditioning unit that two specialists have condemned as unfit for purpose, yet which continues functioning less as climate control and more as a generator of heat, noise and structural vibration - a wasteful monument to environmental neglect. This antique contraption, positioned less than a metre from my bedroom window and installed with all the precision of a drunk throwing darts, can be heard on a nearby street corner, cycles on and off six times per hour with the subtlety of a small explosion and on a good day spews out what could only be described as a regiment of particulates convening for a mass-proliferation symposium.
I have become, against all inclination, something of an amateur chronicler. My records now span months - timestamps, decibel readings, correspondence with various officials who possess that particular gift for bureaucratic inertia wrapped in a nod and a smile. "Bob from Council" has become a recurring character in my life, which is a bit like saying I have developed a meaningful relationship with my own root canal. The police, bless them, have informed me with admirable clarity that running a business badly is not actually a crime - though it feels it should be - and that actively breaking noise regulations falls outside their jurisdiction of caring. Even though the law is being violated with enthusiasm, enforcement requires the correct official at the correct hour, which is rather like needing a specific key to unlock a door that has already been kicked in.
The apple-air "freshener" is another inspired detail. A pervasive olfactory assault that wafts upward through cracks in the walls and skirting boards that have shifted further after a recent earthquake. Some bright spark has decided that the optimal solution to their establishment's natural bouquet is an aggressive chemical masquerade. Isn't apple meant to go with pork? One imagines them standing among the rotisserating bird carcasses, surveying the aromatic evidence of their culinary endeavours and concluding that what the situation truly requires is a synthetic, piercing apple scent applied with the subtlety of a crop duster. Never mind that approximately 10% of the population experiences asthma attacks triggered by these fragrant assaults - a fact even Asthma Australia acknowledges.
Armed with the de jure immunity that apparently comes with running a chicken joint, it is far better, it seems, to assault the sinuses of passers-by and upstairs neighbours alike than to address the underlying issue - or, more radically, actually cook something that smells nice.
I have developed a Pavlovian response: the first whiff of chemical apple, and I know something downstairs has gone magnificently wrong. It is easy to understand why certain monks take vows of silence; speaking about such things makes them sound absurd, like explaining that one's neighbour has mistaken hospitality for hostility and rendered their inconsequential arsenal aromatic.
I have attempted, in my more optimistic moments, to engage directly. These encounters have the quality of theatre of the absurd, minus the redemptive artistic merit. "If that is your wish," the proprietress informed me when I suggested involving the council would be necessary, as though reporting health and safety violations were some sort of personal vendetta rather than, say, civic duty. The temperature inside their establishment that evening suggested they were either cultivating a bacterial colony or attempting some form of protest through voluntary heat stroke. It was a beautiful autumn evening outside.
The bare-legs incident - ah yes, their speciality. Twenty raw leg quarters sitting uncovered in an open blue plastic bag in a box in a shopping trolley outside in 30-degree heat, adorned with blowflies like some grisly still life - was refreshing in its straightforwardness. Here, at last, was something unambiguously wrong and potentially so dangerous: a Platonic ideal of food-safety violation, requiring no interpretation or sound-measurement devices. I photographed it with the grim satisfaction of someone who has finally found evidence that, yes, the situation truly is as rotten as it appears.
What is also less than fascinating is their apparent belief that being warned by the council numerous times constitutes mere suggestion rather than legal requirement. The letter arrived in late August; they celebrated compliance by continuing exactly as before, with the added innovation of screaming matches audible through the floor.
I have developed a peculiar sympathy for these people - trapped, I imagine, in a business venture governed by spectacular incompetence - until I am reminded that their primary form of resistance is weaponising a broken air-conditioning unit with all the tactical sophistication of a failed ninja: meaningless dramatic flourishes, a masked facade of gratuitous claim and zero finesse.
You see, I made the foolish error of transparency - informing them that the spray set off my asthma and the AC my hair-trigger nerves. From that moment, the AC became their primary weapon: deployed at strategic intervals, always when council offices were shut; heated to sauna temperatures on temperate evenings (with not a customer in sight) - wielded with the passive-aggressive precision of someone who has confused the ability to annoy with actual control.
I have written letters. Many letters. Each more carefully evidenced than the last, escalating from polite inquiry to legal threat with the inexorable progression of a Greek tragedy - except duller and with a cast composed of discontented middle-management paper-pushers.
One of these letters was to my property manager about the excessive use of the apple spray on Easter Monday that precipitated the worst asthma attack I had had in years. One that should have sent me to hospital. My property manager consequently spoke to them about this; they know. Yet they continue.
I have attempted to seek resolution from, of course, the property owners, the restaurant, their respective real-estate agents (there have been four since I moved in three years ago), the Department of Fair Trading, my GP and my own real-estate agency.
One Friday afternoon, after another breach - just after 5 p.m., when the council was closed - I called to speak to my property manager, who wasn't there and ended up speaking to someone I have never met to see if anything could be done.
Once again, there was more smiling and nodding from this fellow, who during our conversation attempted to confuse me using words like "decibels" and "compressor". Curiously, at the end, he didn't manage to hang up the phone properly and exclaimed, quite audibly to all in the room, "I knew I shouldn't have answered the phone" - it was 5 p.m. on a Friday - "That guy is a psycho!" A slightly tentative voice in the background asked, "Martin? Martin from next door?" Yes, he confirmed. The person in the background soon after changed the subject, apparently to avoid what sounded like an oncoming familiar event.
The fortunate thing was that I had just installed a new internal CCTV unit - not only to catch potential intruders in the traditional breaking-and-entering sense, but to document the other invasions. Employing the "your call may be recorded" strategy: if it may as well be recorded on their end, it may as well be recorded on mine. Success, finally - a small win. Evidence of being treated with care and concern in my ear, then - once out of it - expressing casual derision to the office that I am a psycho. This guy was having a really bad day.
This, combined with an email from my property manager a week or so earlier stating that I was an excellent tenant and highlighting my completely unblemished record, rendered the entire exchange a literal bumbling theatrical performance, in which every earnest nod and every saccharine compliment became merely another fading thread in their tapestry of consummate falsity. I rightly expect more.
The modern condition, I have learned, is this: one can attempt neighbourly common courtesy, document everything, follow every proper channel, maintain perfect civility, even be genuinely kind and still find oneself reduced to recording timestamps, diary entries and being outrageously ridiculed like some kind of demented court stenographer - because the alternative is accepting that other people's agendas can so easily colonise your life without consequence. This is no longer the case.
Bravo, truly.