Weatherwise it has been a beautiful, warm, sunny day. It's not even summer yet but the temperature must have been up in the seventies. It gets us British folk up and about doesn't it? We love to make the most of these first warm days. Get out in the sun. Absolute bliss. Get the sun lounger out, and settle back. Maybe have a book with you, in case you can summon up enough strength to turn a few pages. Have a bit of a read. Lovely stuff. Why not doze off for a bit? Have a bit of a kip. Go on. Why not?
Why not, why not? I'll tell you why not. Lawn mowers. That's why not. First bit of decent sunny weather and out they come, to irritate and annoy. Screeching, whining, buzzing and incessant lawn mowers. Loud lawn mowers, irritating switch on switch off electric lawn mowers, strimmers, brush cutters, chainsaws, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers. That's why flipping not!
It is difficult if not impossible, to get away from the noise we all seem so intent on making. Even in the so called dead of night there will be someone or something intent on disturbing the peace. There is always the distant drone of moving traffic. Be it road, rail, air or sea. Here it is now, just after midnight and a motorcyclist has decided to take advantage of the relatively empty roads and go for a high speed tear up. Ripping past the houses full of sleeping humanity, with a complete disregard for their need of a peaceful nights sleep. A couple of goods trains have just sauntered past. On their way to who knows where. Strangely enough the sound of a train at night, is to me a comforting one. Can't imagine why that should be. Nothing primordial about trains. So it can't hark back to a basic instinct. Can it? Difficult one to work out. Don't think I will bother.
Sometimes I like to imagine how quiet life was before the invention of the infernal combustion engine or the electric motor. I said infernal combustion engine just then. It wasn't a slip of the pen. But quietness is something it is very hard to imagine. Besides I have an awful feeling that perhaps complete and utter silence would drive us all crazy. After all isn't sound deprivation used as a form of torture?
I imagine that the towns and cities of the old days were quite noisy places.Where even the hustle and bustle of every day life could generate quite a bit of noise. But in the countryside, surely it must have been blissfully quiet. Nothing to disturb the peace except birdsong and the occasional lowing of cattle or bleating of sheep. Truth is if course, that we will never know.
Oh well, back to reality and the cacophony of sound that is our modern life. It might not be the peace and quiet we hoped for when we unfolded the sun lounger, but at least the sun is warm on our pale, light deprived bodies. So lets ignore the noise as best we can and have a nice little forty winks.
Oh for heavens sake! Who's lit that bloody bonfire?
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