Last Updated on September 1, 2023 by ADMIN-TOM
Noise. It’s an everyday occurrence unless you live on a desert island with only the waves, birds tweeting and the odd volcanic eruption to spoil your tranquility.
I live in a small village in the foothills north of Paphos, Cyprus. It’s quiet, there is very little noise. With two very noisy exceptions.
Noise No. 1
I’ve numbered my noises not in order of preference or severity, but simply because I’m feeling lazy and can’t be bothered to re-arrange in any preference. This is a noise that occurs only infrequently, specifically at bank holidays. I have a neighbour who seems not to want his/her/their grandkids around when they visit him/her/them during school breaks and bank holidays. I know this as a fact because they hand the kids the keys to a variety of noisy motorbikes and scooters and two very noisy beach-buggy type vehicles, complete with extremely noisy radios. This blares out constantly as the kids drive through the narrow streets where I live. I can hear them coming from up to a kilometre away. Luckily they don’t hang about and are literally gone in 60 seconds… yes, I know, good title for a film! Luckily there aren’t too many Bank Holidays and school holidays in a 365 day year.
Noise No. 2
Originally this was more of a background noise and not at all irritating. But it’s become a daily occurrence, and can be measured in noise level depending on numbers of people? Confused, dear reader. I was, until I worked out what was going on. My neighbour, an elderly lady, seems to be a little deaf. It’s hard to say as she only speaks Greek and we only speak English. However, our one conversation with her was both verbal and with gestures, all to do with us leaving our gate open to the road for us to drive our car into our property. Her Greek was in fine swing that morning and she was shouting the odds and gesticulating. It seems her daughter couldn’t drive her car out of her mother’s drive with one of our gates open. Having seen the daughter’s dreadful driving I’m not surprised.
Now we come to the noise level, every morning, depending on visitors. One visitor is fine. Two and the noise level rachets up significantly. Three visitors and we are verging on a slanging match. Four and five visitors and the noise can be measured in decibels. Get the picture? Well, you add into this who it is that’s visiting and the noise level can be greater or less, a sort of sub-woofer setting if you know what I mean. Some people, it seems, winds the lady up more than others. And it can get pretty bad after their Sunday church service.
But when lunchtime comes round, a miracle occurs. Everything goes quiet, not a peep is heard from anyone, all afternoon and right into the evening and night. All is quiet, all is bliss. Until dawn breaks and the visitors arrive.
Still, you can’t have everything your own way in life, and at least we don’t have any volcanoes round here, just the odd earthquake. But that’s another story, you can read here, dear reader.
Copyright © Tom Kane 2023
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