Neighbours, lend me your ears
IT’S the cats, said my neighbour, when I asked him recently whether he too had heard the neighbourhood’s dogs barking all night, disturbing our world-class African peace.
The cats? I thought, peering at him through the hedge thinned by the winter freeze. Yes, he said, detecting my puzzlement and irritation, and my disappointment at his easy defusing of my annoyance.
Yes, he said, the cats prowl all night, in the lane, and a hidden, silent cat is an affront to any decent, law-abiding dog, whose response will always be a long — and meaningless — bark.
I was disappointed that my neighbour should take such a rational approach to the emotive issue of not being able to sleep because the neighbourhood at 2am sounded like a kennel club on a Sunday afternoon. Was he not also outraged at this wall of noise assailing us in the not-so-dead of night? I’ll know better in future than to expect him to be an ally in my quest for peace.
Another neighbour some years ago decided I was to be called “Mr Sensitive Ears”. Noise being a delicate issue for me, I’m afraid I protested too much at my new name and rewarded that neighbour with 18 months of silence from myself. Can’t say she minded.
On that occasion I hadn’t been complaining about any noise she had made, but rather about another neighbourhood nuisance in the form of a clunking gate that sounded like a cow bell. There was nothing I could do about that gate except moan, which I did. At other times I’ve been known to spray a little lubricating Q20 on a neighbour’s gate late at night, to keep the peace. A desperate pssst amid the tsunami of disturbance.
The problem with noise is that it’s hard to measure, and a bit relative. Once I asked a colleague to switch off his radio at work, and he responded: “But it’s jazz!” Noise is measured in decibels, which is fine if you’re an expert in the Oscar trial, but what’s the point of a decibel? Noise is noise. Why try finesse it?
As a form of self-consolation, I insist on knowing where a noise comes from. Some years ago, when I tried living in a townhouse, I found the noises from the couple above me an unbearable torture, especially because I couldn’t identify them. When I could take it no longer, I approached them in the spirit of neighbourliness and they graciously agreed to perform their various routine noises for me.
It went something like this: “Pulling out dining-room chair,” he would say, and I’d make a mental note while the chair was dragged across the floor. He performed all, or almost all, the noises they made: slamming bedroom door, closing oven, and so on. This let me worry about money and other stuff when next their activities kept me awake, instead of lying there, wasting time and wondering: where did that noise come from?
I suppose there’ll be time enough ahead for quiet aplenty, but until then I’m all ears, and certainly not suffering in silence. No chance of that. And why should I? Noise is spreading. Why, even the cats are barking nowadays. LS