I live next to the Lumiere house in the Viaduct and it’s awful

He has to listen to a cappella every 10 minutes for six hours a day


Kieran Moriarty doesn’t like Lumiere. For him, it’s nearly ruined his life.

Because Kieran lives next door to the house in the Viaduct which is lit up for six hours a day.

During that time, there is a recital about a woman who won’t use the internet in case she breaks it, a woman telling her story of being burgled and an a cappella version of Toploader so loud it shakes the walls in his house.

Read Kieran’s horror story here.


Lumiere is back: the Instagrammer’s dream come true.  Unfortunately my house mates and I have become more involved than we intended. Much to ours and most of Hawthorne Terrace’s dismay, the house next door is part of this festival of lights and now it appears, so are we.

The festival brings together international artists and gives them the freedom to decorate Durham like a five year old who has been left alone with the fairy lights and a bare Christmas tree for this celebration of light.

When four of us managed to finally change the lightbulb in our living room, that in my opinion, was a celebration of light. However invading a whole city with 30 wacky exhibitions, all vying to be more pretentious than the other? Sorry, that is just a bit too far.

Last time the light festival arrived in Durham, most of us dodged the tourists and “cultured” students aimlessly wandering around Durham. Some of us even tried to interpret the meaning of a large inflatable orange balloon floating over the Science Site. Most of us failed.

One of this year’s exhibitions,  Home Sweet Home Durham is actually my home – or rather it’s my neighbour’s home. It runs for four days and it is probably going to cause me to lose my sanity.

The exhibition is a 10 minute presentation where images are projected onto next door’s house, complete with two industrial sized speakers blaring out opinions from locals about how society has changed.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well try living next door to it.

The presentation is on a continuous loop from 4:30pm to 10:30pm each day which shakes the house every time it is played. Each time, it is the same story about the woman who does not want to use the Internet in case she breaks it and the same depressing story about a woman remembering how her house was burgled.

All of this culminates with the same a cappella rendition of “Dancing In The Moonlight”, a classic song I now can never listen to again.

My house were never told about this happening until a team of Lumiere stormtroopers erected a 8ft lighthouse outside our house and part of what resembled the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. Their website described this exhibition as “quite surprising at times” – you can say that again.

When we kindly asked what the hell was going on, we were unhelpfully told our concerns were duly noted. An hour later, we found ourselves in the sitting room, discussing the artistic merits of the project with the organiser of Lumiere from Durham County Council.

The concerns may have been dismissed but we did manage to bag free tickets to the festival.

It may be for only four days and it is only temporary but this first world problem is real. We’ll just have to get on with it and get on with our lives for the time being. However the one thing I can’t forgive is that a cappella version of “Dancing in the Moonlight.”

A minute of Glee based torture each day, every ten minutes, for six hours a day, the constant reminder of the blasphemy of tampering with a much-loved Klute classic. There are some things I just can’t take. That is where you crossed the line Lumiere. You made me hate Toploader.