Here’s something that has been my salvation at times: headphones. We live in a noisy world, with few places in which to escape it.
Perhaps you are coming up with examples, but I cast doubt upon them all. I refer to the time I moved to a really remote place, living in a little wooden house beside a lonely firth.
Disturbing the peace
Hardly had I been in it a week when local salmon farmers fetched up at a small beach in front of the house and started hammering rhythmically all day for days as they repaired one of their metal cages.
There must be factories and industrial estates quieter than some villages where I’ve lived.
One day, there were four sources of horticultural racket, a lathe or stone-cutter (worst of all; all day, every day for nearly two years; it was like living next to Heathrow) and a radio blaring.
Headphones to the rescue
So, increasingly, I resorted to headphones. I did this already with music or watching football on my laptop, using a fantastic wireless set.
This also has a noise cancellation button, and so I’d wear them when The Droning started and I was trying to work.
Then I started wearing them outside when gardening. I was reluctant at first because I like to hear the birds and the wind in the trees.
But the surrounding racket would scrape my nerves so, reluctantly, I’d listen to music on the headphones and found I rather liked it.
You need appropriate music, right enough. I’m not sure rap or death metal would work in the garden. Generally, I used “ambient” sounds and found the experience peaceful.
Soundproofing? Not really
But you don’t want to wear headphones endlessly. Recently, fantasising about moving back to the city, I Googled “Are all modern flats badly sound-proofed?”, and found discussion forums confirming that, not only were new houses badly sound-proofed, but old ones were too.
Sometimes, the latter might have ashlar between walls, but not all did and, in modern flats, builders put absolutely nothing between properties. It’s a hidden sin.
One poster, noting that in the past there were far fewer sources of racket, particularly electronic, argued that folk today deserved grants to sound-proof their homes.
Alas, it was also the case that, in the past, public bodies had money. Now, they never have any. It’s called progress. So your chances of a grant are limited.
Scrap that idea
There are measures you can take, with various materials. I’ve done this in the past, to reasonable success, though it meant bringing a wall forward by a few inches. Bit drastic.
You’ll recall that, desperately seeking peace and quiet, a recent fantasy of mine was to move to rural Scandinavia. I envisaged a cute, red, wooden house, surrounded by trees, perhaps beside a lake.
It sounds like a fantasy, but there are places like that to be had, and relatively cheaply too. Many videos on yon YouTube feature young folk who’ve made the move.
But I’m too pessimistic about it now. I can’t drive on the “wrong” side of the road either, could never learn the language adequately, wouldn’t fit in (as usual), and would miss my fish suppers.
And, inevitably, after a week, someone would arrive to set up a nightclub by the lake shore.
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