Sigh, I've just had a really long and tiring day on top of virtually no sleep last night - courtesy of my neighbours' dog that barked practically every hour (not on the hour, that would be too freaky) but at midnight, 1.30am, 3am and 4am, and topped things off with a weird scrabbling sound on the other side of the wall at 5am (I'm in a ground floor flat, and my bedroom wall is their sitting room). My neighbours aren't pleasant; as I'm typing this they're having a very loud row, so talking to them about it isn't really an option. I have thought about going with a "I'm concerned that your dog might not be OK, and your house is so big you might not have heard it bark), but in a way I don't want their (considerable) rage turned on me. However, this can't go on. It's been like this since I moved in at the end of October, and it's starting to affect my work. I do have earplugs, but they're the foam kind and I find they hurt my ears (plus I have an irrational fear they're going to burrow inside my ear canal and burst an ear drum).

My council has a service where you can register a complaint about noise and then they investigate, but when I rang them today they were busy. I'm definitely going to ring back tomorrow, though, as I think I'll feel better once I've started to do something about it.

The one good thing is that their house is for sale, so they might be moving soon. However, in the current climate, and given the price their house is on the market for, I'm not that optimistic.

If anyone has experience in dealing with this sort of thing, I'd be really interested to hear about it - all help gratefully received!