AM I turning into a Grumpy Old Woman or is life getting noisier these days?
All around us the general hubbub of daily life seems to have increased without us realising: we all live with the constant background noise of cars, machinery, tools, loud voices, music and (if you’re near the coast) Herring Gulls!
Probably subconsciously, we all turn up the volume of our personal noise to drown out everyone else and so the effect is cumulative.
Our collective measure of what is acceptable noise seems to have gone off the scale.
True peace and quiet is very hard to find.
Earlier this week, enjoying the dry spell, some new neighbours set about reclaiming the jungle that was once a back garden.
I don’t blame them after so many weeks of being housebound, but whatever happened to gardening with fork, spade and trowel?
These days it is a highly industrialised occupation and everything seems to require an irritatingly noisy petrol-driven engine.
So from 9am until midday we had the dulcet tones of a strimmer beheading every green thing to within an inch of its life.
A short break for lunch and then the petrol-engined blower was used all afternoon to blow all the debris into a large pile.
What will happen to all this shredded greenery I don’t know, but somehow I doubt composting is on the agenda.
Some other neighbours have installed a trampoline in the back garden. It sounds great fun and good exercise too, and their children certainly seem to enjoy hours of pleasure bouncing up and down on it.
But do they really have to scream constantly while they’re doing it?
Is it life-threatening?
Are they really as terrified as they sound, or is this an essential part of trampolining that I’m not aware of?
I can hear my mother’s words, telling me as a small child that “you can have fun without screaming all the time!”
Was I really just a brow-beaten child?
Screaming should be for falling off, not jumping up and down
I don’t remember life being any less exciting because I had to turn down the volume a little. But then, listening to a succession of adults simply walking along the road today, I realise that every one of them is talking at top voice.
They have to. It’s the only way to make themselves heard above the general cacophony of urban life all around us.
As I’m typing this, a car alarm is going off to my left, and the 8.20am dog has started up.
Its owner regularly leaves for work at this time, and the daft animal still hasn’t realised that barking for a couple of hours won’t bring them back any earlier.
To my right, there’s a revving car engine and a roaring motorbike accelerating into the distance, White Van Man has just hooted as he pushes through a gap, and somewhere further off, I can hear the beep, beep, beep of a delivery vehicle reversing.
In the flat above me, the washing machine has just reached spin cycle, and now a pneumatic drill has just started up outside my window.
Aargh!
The smoking ban has certainly improved the atmosphere inside our pubs, clubs and restaurants, but an unfortunate by-product is the increase in punters taking their drinks and cigarettes out onto the pavement during the day, even when the sun’s not shining.
If you live within earshot of a pub, as I do, you can expect to be entertained all evening with the noise of increasingly loud and raucous voices and laughter as the evening progresses.
I’m sure the punchlines are very funny but somehow we’re missing the joke.
Police and ambulance sirens are also a regular occurrence as it gets later, and the boom-boom-boom of a car stereo on wheels goes past in the wee small hours.
Are bodywork, windows, seats and interior décor just optional extras for the ultimate mobile ghetto blaster?
And it starts all over again before dawn as our Herring Gull neighbours greet the morning.
So earlier this morning I gave up. I stomped up the Great Orme in a bad mood and tramped along some of the lesser-used footpaths to get myself some rural sound therapy.
In a secluded spot near the edge of the limestone pavement, I threw myself down on the soft grass, closed my eyes against the glare of the sun, and listened.
To nothing. No cars, no engines, no sirens, no music, no voices. Just the sound of the breeze, the occasional high-pitched twitter of a Meadow Pipit flying over, and the distant soothing call of Kittiwakes on the sea below me.
Absolute bliss!
I could feel myself relaxing, de-stressing, being soothed by the peaceful sound of natural, unmodified nature.
At last I felt ready to face the urban world again, though maybe I’ll keep my iPod plugged firmly into my ears!
