It is early morning. I am staying with a friend, Anna, near Glasgow in a sub-urban environment. It is quiet. Very quiet. In fact cocooned in a double-glazed, well-insulated house with the windows closed it is hard to realise that there is anything going on outside. For all I know there may not be! So when I just read Librarian's comments on her blog post All that NOISE!!! I suddenly started to think. As my regular readers and friends will know, making me think is an achievement in itself!
I'd started reading blogs this morning because, although I'm off on my travels again in a couple of hours, I thought I would try and get my Thankful Thursday post done. Now the annoying thing is that something happened last week which made me very thankful indeed and I set out at one stage to write a TT post and schedule it for today knowing that time would be at a premium. Somehow ARADD intervened and since then I've been unable to recall what it was. So this morning I was sitting trying to think of a TT post subject when an angel of mercy provided one to me.
Like most, or at least many, people I find noise stressful. I live in a rural - very rural - environment. In Eagleton on the Isle of Lewis the most noise comes from natural causes - usually related with the weather in the form of wind and rain. I hear relatively few birds and no agricultural noise. The occasional vehicle turns near the house because I live at the end of the road. Occasionally people use motor-mowers to cut their grass - I am probably the worst culprit in the neighbourhood in that regard! In New Zealand the noises I hear are natural - the birds are exceptionally 'noisy' - or agricultural. I have few neighbours within earshot even when they are using things like motor-mowers.
So today, thanks to Librarian, I am thankful for the fact that I live with the noise that I want to live with, the noise of music that I initiate, and that, for the most part, I live in the 'quietness' of nature.
I'm much more susceptible to noise than Ian, but we both have trouble in this house, especially in the summer when it's so hot we have to have the windows open. There are cars, lorries, helicopters, police sirens, dogs, herring gulls and all those combined can't compete with next door! I suppose with all our hammering and drilling we're nearly as bad (we don't come home drunk at 1am every Friday and shout on the street for an hour!)
ReplyDeleteI long for the day when we too hear only the sounds of nature.
I live not very far from the town centre but yet aside from traffic. If I get stressed by noise it's usually neighbours playing music too loud, or loud chatting out on the balconies in the summer. Sleeping with the windows open in the summer I can also sometimes get disturbed but noises of nature in the morning - gulls and crows... But among the advantages of living in an apartment building among other similar ones owned by the same company is that when they mow the lawns or use other machines, they do the job in one day (or less), and that's it (until next time). And it's always done in the daytime and on weekdays. I never hear a lawn mower on a Saturday or Sunday.
ReplyDeleteI read your comment on Librarians blog and decided to come over and check out your blog. I enjoyed it and your profile (being an old fart myself - except my alter ego personas have materialized for me) I think I will try and put ou on my follow list. I already follow Scriptor. Scotland gets more and more interesting all the time.
ReplyDeleteHere we are all together again :-)
ReplyDeleteI hope I won't get sued for speaking against motor lawn mowers... it is not that I am against them per se; why, I even chipped in with my family when we gave my dad the money for a new mower as his combined Christmas 6 birthday present last year! But I am never at the garden when he uses it :-)
hate the sound of even my lawn mower, but I don't have the energy or strength to do the nonmotor kind. I live in the back area of our mobile home park so other than mowers and fireworks around the 4th of July, I too am grateful for the quiet.
ReplyDelete