As a young boy, in fact up until I left my parents home to start looking after myself, or in English we would say “flown the nest“, I remember the waking-up process I did.
I refer to one way in particular that involved my mother.
My mother never slept, or that is what she said, but many a night, I would be kept awake by her snoring, something I do not do, snoring that is. She would insist that she had not slept, and nothing would alter her belief.
Although she never slept, there would be different times of the morning she would wake-up, depending on what she would have to do. If I had school, she would be up before me. If it was the weekend, it would be later.
But, if mother was up, then everyone else would have to be up. If mother was asleep, then we had to be quiet. “We” being my father and myself.
It seems to be the same with some of the hotel guests I share the many hotels I stay in.
I have noticed that Middle Eastern families are very close and large often using several rooms. They allow the children to run up and down the corridors late at night, they leave their room doors open, and instead of using the hotel telephone systems or walk to their friends room, insist on shouting, their voices booming through the hotel. And, for some reason, they seem to have to shout to each other, even if they are standing face to face.
The walls of a hotel, are often thin.
My German (I think) next room neighbours, plus their friends, brought back the memories of my mother and previous hotel experiences, as last night at 11:30pm, someone started knocking at the door of the room next door.
This went on for five long minutes, as he shouted his friends name, and banged on the door. Surely after no answer on the first knock he would have realised his friends had left him and gone out, that they were not in.
Then this morning, at 7am, the same person came again, knocking the door, and shouting for his friends, this time in the room.
They could have been in my room, because it sounded like it. As they opened the door, they laughed and talked in loud voices, then headed off to breakfast, banging the door shut.
So OK, I am now awake.
Gives me something to write about.
“flown the nest“, is a saying that refers to young birds, that once they have been fledged, the parent birds have finished feeding them, they leave the nest, perhaps never to have anything else to do with their parent birds.