Other People’s Noise

I’m sure other people’s noise didn’t use to bother me nearly as much as it does now. For a while I assumed it was simply a facet of age; and yet when I bring this up with my close friends, none of them report a similar experience (at least those who heard me ask the question).

Of all the things guaranteed to infuriate me on a daily basis, noise pollution is certainly up there in my top one. From my comatose neighbour’s unanswered alarm clock which heralds the day, to the last 190 decibel car stereo at night.

I am however, clearly in a minority. Perhaps because of its ethereal nature, society finds noise much harder to police than other elements of anti-social behaviour; or rather once it eventually dissipates, no one seems to care.

True, noise does not come with the physical inconvenience of litter, small children, yapping dogs and the inevitable mess they leave behind; at least the world agrees, someone ought to take responsibility for that. But why oh why do perfect strangers feel the need to burden you with their intrusive (and often pointless) racket?

Wherever you go, it’s almost impossible to escape the bombardment: personal stereos which are more communal in nature; those who leave their mobile phones ringing at full volume, then proceed to answer them at a scream; people who’ve yet to discover the joys of closing rather than slamming doors; shops which ‘entice’ you in by blasting you with aggressive rap music (and once inside, attempt to prevent you leaving with a dirge of ghastly muzak); restaurants where the cuisine is evidently so poor, it can only be served accompanied by a cacophonous din (presumably to deny the customers having their complaints heard); and my personal favourite: the builders who insist on unloading riotously at 6am, then sit around in silence for a 3-hour tea break like Buddhist monks, once everyone has been well and truly been roused from their slumber.

Surely a civilised society should have reached the stage where the peace of the many is not unnecessarily destroyed by the thoughtlessness of the few? After all, we managed to get there with smoking. I confess, even as a non-smoker I was initially against the ban, but now I can see the sense of it. Noise pollution, like passive smoking, ought to come with a government health warning.

Naturally, I have tried prophylactic measures with varying degrees of non-success. Earplugs help to a degree, but one cannot spend one’s life in earplugs. A few years back, I tried swimming regularly to encourage a build-up of earwax, but that proved a false economy when I set the house on fire and failed to hear the smoke alarm! I do however envy those amongst my cohort who have gone prematurely deaf – they claim they’re denied the pleasures of good hearing; in truth, they don’t know what they’re not missing.

My forlorn hope at this late stage of the game, is that we soon get the invention of the ‘anti-hearing aid’ – thereby allowing one to simultaneously decrease the volume of one’s surroundings, and enact a little revenge on the bastards causing it, by forcing them to repeat themselves!

Gazing at the sunflowers in my garden this afternoon, I was struck by a thought: What if Vincent wasn’t depressed after all, but merely suffering from noisy neighbours? I haven’t quite hacked my own ears off yet, but I’ve got to admit it’s looking increasingly attractive.

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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