1, 2, 3, 4 - I declare a stereo war

We are currently having a stereo war with our next-door neighbours. It's extremely passive-aggressive on my part, but I'm entirely lacking the energy for confrontation.

The way it's going is that our next-door neighbours keep putting on inappropriately loud music at annoying times of day. Like 4 o'clock in the afternoon or 10 at night. This is particularly selfish, as they have neighbours on both sides. Also, they have (imo) appalling taste in music - most of what they play is the stuff that's currently called "R&B". So I can have coming through my wall just the same 3 or 4 notes repeated over and over as the bass throbs through.

So I put on our stereo instead, usually with something fairly obnoxious. Like Paradise Lost (doom goth metal/synth crossover), Punk covers of Pop songs (Britney Spears & Backstreet Boys done punk-style), or Richard Cheese (lounge & big-band covers of rock, metal and rap songs). Not extremely loud like theirs, just loud enough to say "hey, if you can hear my stereo, then I can hear yours". Generally speaking, within 5 minutes of me doing this, their stereo gets turned down to a sensible volume. Result.

It's obviously not a very good result, though, because I have to keep doing it. Now, I quite like music, especially when I'm doing housework. so it's no skin off my nose. Plus we have no neighbours on the other side, so no one's being inconvenienced except the offenders. But I'm wondering what the best thing to do long-term would be, as they're just Not Getting the hint.

Write a letter to the neighbours? (made awkward by the fact I have no idea what their names are or how long they're going to be living there). Write to the letting agents? Write to the local papers? Or the council noise-prevention people? Or all of the above? Note that I really am not up to going next door and reasoning rationally at the moment - my nerves are all frayed by being ill.

totally had enough

Also, I am depressed and frustrated today. Got another letter from the hospital. Now, my initial appointment was September 22nd, which was tentative yay because I was told the surgery would be a week after the first appointment, and September 29th gives me plenty of time to be recovered before alt.polycon. The new appointment is October 6th, which'll make the surgery around 13th... if it doesn't get postponed again. Fuck.

There is an exciting new meal in my life in the form of vegan rice pudding, invented by bfo, but apart from that what I can eat is this. I'm not joking - if I try to branch out from this I get pain of a sort I don't really want to mess with, as that's what put me in hospital before.

On Monday I went into London to meet polyfrog because we were in the same part of the world for the first time in about 3 years. We didn't really do all that much, but I still had to sleep for 12 hours yesterday to recover from it. Was in enough pain courtesy of having eaten A LIGHTLY-FRIED VEGETABLE DISH with boiled rice to have to take painkillers, and that knocked me out for 15 hours.

I want to have my fucking life back, ok? I want to be well enough to do ordinary boring things like go out the house. I want to not be in pain, and to eat more than 10 types of food. And the longer this gets postponed, the more distressed I get.