Malone is kept awake at night

I’m struggling to get up to make my child breakfast. This is not because I’ve been out partying. It’s because the elderly man who lives above me goes to the toilet at 4am, every single night. He wakes me every night at the same time. It sounds like someone is dragging a body across the floor… I presume he’s going to the toilet, but I don’t know what he’s doing really. Even after 10 months of living here I have not got used to it. I cannot sleep through it. Once I’m awake I can’t get back to sleep for hours, yet by this time he is back in his bed and snoring and suddenly it’s 7am and my daughter wants breakfast.

“Perhaps he moves the furniture at the same time every night ”

Thing is, I can’t get angry as he’s a delightful old man, he’s 97 and wears a suit every day with a trilby, he’s just adorable! I miss having older people in my life as I don’t live near any of my relatives. I want to adopt him. Hey, I’d probably sleep better if I was helping him to the loo, rather than under his room listening to the floorboards squeak! He is helped to the toilet every night and it is this shuffling and bumbling that is so noisy. It’s not easy to move a big old man, it sounds like they are moving the furniture around every night. Maybe they are, maybe I’ve got it all wrong! Perhaps a teenager with OCD lives up there and he moves the sofa and table perpendicular to the chairs at the same time every night. I wish it was, I would write a cross letter suggesting he developed more social addictions like other teenagers.

Instead I feel sorry for him, yet I don’t know what to do as I’m getting such awful sleep, it’s affecting my daily routine and my work. I took the child to school late today because I was so sleepy! I’m exhausted all the time. When we first moved in, I was so shocked by the noise I went up and knocked on their door and they were very nice and I thought it was sorted. But then it just started again… You can’t stop an old man needing the loo! Is the only solution to move out? I love the flat though! I have tried earplugs and yet I was still awoken by the noise… through earplugs! A mother shouldn’t really wear them anyway; what if my child needs me in the night?

Perhaps I need to go to sleep every night at 10pm, and just get six hours kip in before I’m awoken by them. I’ve got it! I’ve got the solution. I need to just get up for work at 4am. I need to become a postman. Or a radio presenter. Or a baker. Phew, that’s that sorted then!