3 am

I tend to sleep with the balcony door open. Last night, around 3 am, I was awakened by loud, drunken shouting down in the yard. Not fighting, just the sort of shouting that drunkards do after drinking so much as to have lost all concept of their surroundings. I guess they might have been at the pubs in the mall across the big road, and were not in a hurry to get indoors after the pubs closed, it being a warm night. There was a woman who seemed convinced that on some bridge somewhere - I didn't quite catch what bridge - there was or had been a group of men (or youths?) who had shot somebody at the back. Being only half-awake I didn't quite catch the details of it. A drunken man's voice was telling her she was talking nonsense, but she seemed convinced of it, repeating "I'm telling the truth". Strange what alcohol can do. Maybe the woman was confusing in her booze-hazy mind reality with something she'd seen in a film or a tv show. These people sounded not so much like occasional excessive drinkers but alcoholics who've drunk so much for such a long time that the alcohol has caused permanent damage to their brain. Or perhaps they had just lost it with the drinking in the summer. After a while someone shouted down from a balcony, telling them to shut up and go home to sleep, and a bit later they either quietened down or left, or then I fell asleep again despite their voices.