Just after dark last night I noticed some lights flashing outside the kitchen window.

We live in a fairly quiet neighbourhood. Sure, there's the occasional neighbourly shoot-out (although the boy swears that those shots are just the guy around the corner's truck backfiring and therefore not really shots at all, but I like my story better because it brings back sweet memories of the year that I lived in Johannesburg), but other than that, it's really quiet.

Because after all, one doesn't actually HEAR stabbings. (Unless the victims live long enough to scream a bit.)

Anyway, I digress.

So since our neighbourhood is so peaceful and we don't often see any ambulances or fire trucks around these parts, I promptly grabbed the boy by the hand and dragged him to the kitchen window to see which vessel was the bearer of the bright and flashing lights.

Much to our surprise and - I admit - my slight disappointment, there was no shiny red fire engine in the alley behind the house. Also no ambulance. Or even a police car.

The source of the strobe lights piercing the darkness then?

The Towers.

You see, we live at the foot of a hill in Baltimore. The hill is home to the majority of the television stations in the city - it even has the very imaginative name of "Television Hill."

One of those television stations is famous for once employing a very young Oprah Winfrey as a cub reporter/anchor woman. She had some glamorous assignments back then. Nowadays, whenever the esteemed Ms. Winfrey is in the news for some reason, the station loves to repeatedly play a segment from their archives showing a flustered 20-something Oprah fending off a vicious parrot at the Baltimore Zoo.

But that hill isn't just home to the humble beginnings of Oprah's career. It's also the dwelling place of... The Towers.

Until now I've actually kind of liked these television towers. Never mind the fact that the images on our television screen gets all warped when we're watching a show and we dare to move even so much as an inch on the couch; or that I can't sit down to watch the one and only Ms. Winfrey chatting up various celebrities every afternoon at four, because Oprah coincides with rush hour and heavy traffic on one of the major routes just so happen to interfere with our television reception. Even though the major road in question is TEN MILES AWAY, and the towers are just one mile away.

So when I want to watch Oprah and not snow* (or blue. The screen sometimes go entirely and hypnotically blue), I have to stand on one leg while spinning a white saucer on the tip of my right index finger. If I want to have the luxury of standing on both legs while watching, I have to insert a coat hanger in... well, never mind.

Still, despite the fact that the television towers that are looming directly over our house does nothing to enhance our television viewing experience, I like the towers. Besides, I employ them for other things.

Like assessing the weather. On foggy winter days when I want to determine the thickness of the fog, I need only look out the window to see if the towers are visible.

Up until the night before last, I loved the nightly ritual of being lulled to sleep by the friendly, winking red lights at the top of the towers.

Those nights are over.

Right now it's just after three in the morning. But gone is the black velvet cloak of Night. Forever banished is the comforting darkness that had cradled me in sweet slumber a mere 24 hours ago!

In it's place, LIGHT.

Light brighter than the noonday sun in South Africa, penetrating the tightly drawn blinds and drapes and flooding the house EVERY TWO SECONDS and blinding my already bloodshot, bleary eyes.

A light that makes a powerful lighthouse beam seem like the innocent, weak glow of a children's night light.

A light. Probing. Flashing. Constantly flashing. NEVERENDINGFLASHINGFLASHINGFLASHING like a psychedelic disco light.

Robbing me of sleep.

Can't sleep. Can't. Sleep.

C...a...n...'...t

S...l...e...e...p

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