Suddenly there came a tapping....

.... as of someone gently rapping, rapping..... on the inside of my skull..... at 3 in the morning!

Yes, just when I thought I had rediscovered the secret of getting a good night's sleep..... my building management switches on the winter central-heating. This means that I have gurgling and trickling and tap-tap-bloody-tapping in my water pipes for the next 4 months.

I've never been particularly good at sleeping with things like clocks ticking loudly in the bedroom; but this is far worse. Not only can it be astoundingly bloody LOUD, but it is also tauntingly, maddeningly bloody variable. It settles into a steady once-every-second-and-a-half rhythm for a while, and you almost get used to it, and start to drift off to sleep....... and then it suddenly adopts a different interval, but even louder...... and then it stops........ or seems to have stopped, but then you realise in fact it's just slipped into a once-every-thirty-seconds cycle. The occasional silences are almost more tormenting than the noise, as you lie in bed in agonised anticipation: has it really stopped, or is it just about to start again?

The real God-screws-with-me-again aspect of this is that my bedroom (where I cannot now sleep because of the building work outside the window) is the only room in the apartment without a noisy water pipe. The living room, where I am now forced to spend the nights, is one of the noisiest tap-tap-tap-tap rooms. Cruel Fate, you are a c**t, aren't you?