I lived in an apartment which obviously had very thin ceilings. Whenever my intercom buzzed, the dog in the apartment underneath would howl. I did get on fine with my downstairs neighbour, she said the dog seemed really scared of any intercom buzzer or doorbell.

He was a nice dog, but not particularly brave. There was a communal garden in this block. At one point, we had a rat problem. The landlord and council were dealing with it by laying down traps and the like, but rats were coming through a lot. On one occasion, a rat appeared and the dog howled - and then ran up the fire escape. I had no idea that a dog would be scared of a rat because this was a bigger dog, and yet I had a friend who had a Jack Russell - and that would frequently go after rodents.

My wife and I were pretty lucky over the years when we lived in apartments/condominiums. A few noisy parties every once in a while, but no night after night noise issues. We once had a guy on his deck below our bedroom who smoked so much weed he made Snoop Dogg seem like a neophyte. It did get annoying in the summer when we had our window open through the night and this clown would be out at 2am smoking and coughing. The worst was when he was on vacation or in between jobs or something and he seemingly smoked weed all day long, deep into the night, day after day for multiple weeks. We finally slipped a note under his door politely suggesting he maybe find somewhere else to smoke or we would get the building manager on his ass. This did work

The funniest story I can recall about a noise issue was when we were awoken around 6am one day to the sound of two extremely drunk guys dragging a grill into the parking lot of our building, thinking it was the perfect time to noisily BBQ some hot dogs or whatever. It didn't take long for our building manager (who took no shit) to arrive looking ready to kill someone. Eventually a cab came and took the two drunk dudes away (poor cabbie). They didn't live in the building and had been invited over by a girl who did, who was also blotto

I have recently had to help a friend with her car. Her rear tyre’s pressure is going down rather quickly. It should be 32.0 PSI, but it’s often going down to 20 PSI within a week - and often lower than that. I have used a tyre inflator, and I am happy to do that weekly (as I have been). She doesn’t know about the technical side of a car, which is fine.

What I am concerned about is the bad advice she has been given. One of her siblings told her driving at 5 PSI is safe. Which it isn’t. Would anyone here agree with that? Personally, I believe anything below 20 is under-inflated and not at all helpful. I’ve known people - including a friend - tell me they’ve driven at 10 PSI, and that is absolutely not safe at all. But 5 PSI? That’s bad advice, and thankfully she won’t be listening to her sibling.

I will be checking it again in a few days. If necessary, I’ll change a tyre for her, but I do want to check the valve first because I wonder if that might be the problem, especially as it’s only the rear tyre that is under-inflating on a regular basis. A new valve, if needed, will be cheaper than a new tyre (she doesn’t have a spare).

Anyway, all that boring information aside, in my life, I do feel - and I don’t know if this is the same in a lot of countries - people, other than those of us who drive for a living, don’t always seem to care about maintaining and looking after a car. It seems they’ll wait for a problem. I’m not on about my friend now, but I know people who have their car serviced and then don’t seem to care about it until it’s serviced again.

I feel you should at least keep a check on windscreen wipers, brake fluid, tyre pressure, oil, belts and hoses, the battery, coolant level, etc. Not every day - who’d want to do that? - but regularly. And skills such as changing a tyre should be paramount. But in the conversations I’ve had, I’d say at least 55-60% of friends and acquaintances don’t bother to do it regularly. And then when there is an issue - e.g. screen wash not being topped up regularly causing visibility issues - it only means they have to call out a breakdown service or mechanic anyway.

There are some car owners here, I’m sure. Do you conduct regular checks or do you just leave it until your car is serviced?

I reckon it’s the valve, too. And a new valve is a hell of a lot cheaper than a tyre. A new tyre might be about £60, a new valve would be around £10.

Thankfully she did ignore her sibling’s advice about 5 PSI, I was astonished. That is death wish behaviour. And I’m dismayed that her sister, who does own a car, is driving around with that mindset. Personally, I don’t ever want to be below 25-20. But humanity never fails to astound me, and that there is someone out there who claims 5 PSi is fine, well I am dismayed…

Our washing machine died two weeks ago. It was only 5-6 years old or so and had already required service twice (and since neither the leak nor the control panel problems were motor-related, they weren't covered by the warranty. Not that the technician could do anything; on both occasions, his advice was to "start shopping for a new one").

After my traditional cranky old man's diatribe about how the industry sells us overpriced junk nowadays, my wife and I went and bought a new machine. Because the gods decided I wasn't cranky enough, the young seller who helped us described the shop's extended warranty program... which is basically "if anything breaks during the next five years, we'll take away the machine, scrap it, and replace it with a new one". Visions of mountains of discarded washing machines somewhere in a poor country crossed my mind. We keep talking about a sustainable economy, but this "can't fix anything anymore" attitude strikes me as eminently unsustainable. I get that it makes selling things faster and makes some people a lot of money. But it also seems absurd.

Well, anyhoo... I gotta admit that the new machine is remarkably quiet. Here's hoping the next five years will be equally quiet.

My wife and I put our house on the market last week and have pretty quickly found another house which really ticks a lot of boxes for us. So, it'll be interesting to see how many offers on our house we get in the next few weeks.

Getting our house listed has been fairly full on though, as we wanted it on ASAP. I think it's going to be going live on the Estate Agent's website and other sites like RightMove etc today or tomorrow. We already have one viewing arranged for this Wednesday from somebody who spotted the "For Sale" sign outside the house late last week.

Anyway, it's all kind of exciting so far.