La boîte de nuit

New pillow: check.

New mattress from Jimmy: check.

No longer 35 degrees in our apartment during the nights: check.

4 year old daughter no longer waking up bi-nightly to tell us she hates school: check.

Barry and Ginger now having great, restful sleeps. Yeah, not so much.

In our home back in Canada the nights are usually very quiet. Apart from the odd dog barking or coyote howling, or the random drug house explosion, or the infrequent car skidding of the road on icy mornings, waking up because of outside noise is uncommon. I have never lived in a city and so the night time sounds of people walking by, cars starting, garage doors opening, are still all things to which I am trying to get accustomed. I think that it is not so difficult for Barry, perhaps because he is not as light of a sleeper, and perhaps from his years of living in downtown Vancouver. For me, I’ve resorted to using ear plugs every night, and it worked for me.

Until the music started.

And not even real music at that. A thumping, repetitive bass with an irregular rhythm: thump, thump, thump, quiet for 20 seconds, thump, thump, thump, thump, quiet for 10 seconds. And it gets going well after midnight, 2 a.m. until 4 a.m. is a good rule of thumb. I’ve tried the 3 pronged course of defence: a) ear plugs b) duvet over my ear c)electric fan on full blast, even though quite chilly in our small bedroom these nights. Still, thump, thump, thump, 23 second pause etc.

And, not even Barry can remain sleeping through it. A few nights ago as we lay awake trying to figure out where the music came from, why it started so late, why it is only on some nights, and why no French people were phoning to make noise complaints, Barry said “I feel like this music is controlling my heart beat”. “Exactly”, I replied. It really makes us a little crazy.

So, Saturday night at 1:13 a.m., after several nights of lying awake obsessing about this heart controlling beat, Barry sat up, told me he was going on “a reconaissance”, pulled on his leg and shorts and headed out into the night.

He followed the noise outside of the city walls, across the highway, next to the police headquarters, to, voila!, a large white building housing, “une boîte”, a night club - opened Thursday to Sunday night from 11:00p.m. until 6:00 a.m.

Mission accomplished, mystery solved.

Now, if this was me, as soon as I had the answer, I would have headed back to report my findings. But, even in the early hours, with his pajama tops on, Barry couldn’t pass on the opportunity to visit and maybe make a new friend. So, he approached 2 guys in their nightclub gear who were busy chatting up 3 young ladies, and said “Hey, c’est une boîte de nuit?” One fellow turned, smiled, and did a little dancing motion while answering “Oui, oui, un discothèque”. Barry was encouraged. So, he started to explain, all in his tired, middle of the night French, how there was a great mystery, he sleeps and then he doesn’t sleep, something about his heartbeat, and then the friend making ended pretty soon after. I guess even friendly, young frenchmen excited to share the news about “un disco” can become weary of a rambling, sleep deprived, pajama wearing, étranger.

Barry returned home and downloaded half a dozen white noise applications on our i-touch while listening to the Canuck’s game until 5:00 a.m., while the thump thump continued. I’m not convinced that the white noise applications will be the solution, as our cheap, Castorama fan is abnormally loud, and we hear the bass over it. But maybe, if we use the new speakers we bought...

At the very least, it won’t be as cold.