View from my window this morning
One disadvantage of living with or among other people at all, is that one is not in complete control over sounds vs silence. Today was one of those days for me. A distant irritating bass beat was forced on me by a neighbour for hours on end (will that youngster never go out?!) – not really loud enough to formally complain about in the daytime, just still loud enough to slowly drive me mad... The only way for me to distract myself then is to put on other music of my own choice, but too loud for my own taste – while what I really want a lot of the time is just plain silence (or from time to time an audio book, which does not go well with music either)…
The most welcome sound to my ears lately has been when the constant background beat suddenly stops, followed by hasty steps running to and fro for a bit, then the slamming of a door, and finally someone rushing down the stairs… Phew!
14 comments:
A very beautiful sunrise. I hope the silence will return soon. :)
Thank goodness for some peace and quiet....it seems the younger folks all have a hearing problem since anything they listen to MUST BE LOUDDD.
Have you heard the loud music that comes from the headphones over the ears, I can usually hear every beat and every word, what's the sense of headphones then if everyone around can hear???
Hurray for some peace and quiet and a rising sun too!
sunrises and sunsets are perfectly silent! most 'natural' things are ... thank you for the beautiful picture.
ja, silence is golden - sometimes I even feel disturbed by the early morning birds.
much worse however, are the DIY-home-handymen in the neighbourhood. they are coming out now, after the winter - and they have machines for anything and everything. the bigger the louder the better - in order to impress the handymen next door and make him envious ...
the youngsters, however, developed a kind of mobile disco on a truck, torn by a tractor - as loud as can be. they go round in circles for hours, standing up there, drinking beer in bawling dullness and terrorize the whole village. nobody stops them. they are white male catholics.
one must be drunk or deaf to endure this ...
hope your youngster will grow up soon :-)
The silence comes and goes, Mersad. :)
I know what you mean, Virginia. Headphones sometimes come in handy when I want to shut out the unwanted sounds though. I use mine sometimes to watch TV when I get tired of playing the game of "who can turn up the volume the most"...
Monica, I know everything about noisy neighbours!!! With mine, it is hardly ever music or telly. It is the door-banging that really gets to me. I have talked to them about it, but the elderly lady does not speak German well enough, and although I have explained to her husband and her son (who speak German well), it has not really helped. Her son apologized and said that his mother would probably need reminding again, since at her age, she tends to be rather inflexible in her habits. Whenever she leaves or enters her flat (and she does that dozens of times a day, no idea why), she bangs the apartment door shut. Sometimes this happens as early as 5.00 in the morning. Not the nicest way to be woken up!
Ah yes, Mo, the handymen. Actually that's one of the things I have to put on the "pro" side of living in a rented flat on a bigger estate, like I do, rather than in a small private house with neighbours all doing their own thing at different times. When there are machine-jobs to be done here, they do it all in one swoop, and that's it. Like lawnmowing once a week in summer: the noise lasts for a few hours and then you know that's it for the rest of the week. And you never hear a lawnmower or handymen at work here on the weekends!
Nothing you can do about the "mobile disco"? If the whole village were united against that, they'd surely have a way to stop it?
As for the handymen... oh yes, leaf-blowers and all sorts of noisy garden-and-house-devices are my pet hate!! The nicest, sunniest spring afternoon is spoiled by their noise.
Sounds like the old lady must be very restless, Meike. (Or angry?) I can well understand how that can be annoying to neighbours in the long run though. Where I live, the mornings are usually the quietest time of the day. Actually, not having to get up early myself, I interpret the sounds of other people leaving as a good omen! :)
the 3 years i lived in an apartment the neighbors noise drove me mad.... even with a house we still have noise... i long for total quiet....only the sounds of nature....some times the sound of traffic in the street pushes me to distraction. i think we have to many people in our world now and there is not very many spots for quiet..
I'm with you, sometimes I just want silence. We're very lucky, we live on a acre with no large roads near us, once people go to work it is so quiet here. All you hear is the sounds of nature. Of course that changes on the weekends when the lawnmowers and leaf blowers start up.
Oh that is so annoying, sometimes silence is the best thing. That's why I am so happy to have moved out on the country side again :)
I am so conscious of my good fortune in living both here (in NZ) and in Scotland with no noise other than those of nature to affect me.
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