Moaning About Noise

I just want to clarify a few matters about my constant moaning about noise.

For whatever reason - holes in the Heanor Haulage buildings [plentiful], acoustics, whatever - it seems noisy in our house without affecting my neighbours over-much.

Slight amendment to the above statement, I was talking to my neighbour today [25.1.10] and she says that she can hear something late in the evening and during the night but didn't realise what it was, she thought it was a compressor and couldn't imagine what they were doing working so late. I told her that it was PMB Pallet Express using their 'ultra-quiet' effin diesel forklifts but with the reversing bleeps turned off - they are switched back on during the day.

I am grumpy, I do like peace and quiet, everyday neighbour noise doesn’t bother me, that’s just part and parcel of terraced housing.

People have asked ‘what about the trains, don’t I hear them?’ …

The simple answer is no ... Unless there are railway workers on the line and the trains have to toot and slow down. Other than that I only hear trains if I’m actively listening for them.

‘What about if I lived near a busy road with constant traffic noise, then I’d have something to moan about’ …

I have lived next to busy roads, the noise becomes a hum that you also don’t hear after a while.

‘Where?’

I used to live at Heanor Conservative club, no double glazing, the end bedroom, right next to the road. After the first week I never heard a thing except the church bells every Sunday morning and Monday night [practice].

Oh, how we hated those bells, apart from them and my constant cough from living with cigarette smoke, the only other worry I had was looking through the bedroom window and seeing our cat sitting in the churchyard watching the traffic [oh dear], knowing she’d got to get back. She always did though, then she went on to live at Underwood Miners Welfare and survived without a scratch until she eventually succumbed to old age [having lived at eight addresses].

I went on to live in a flat at Red Lion Square, Heanor. Again no double glazing, constant traffic, never heard a thing.

So you see the point I’m getting at is ... regular noise - our brains filter out. The irregular noise of a diesel forklift truck - revving up time and again - going backwards and forwards at varying distances, sometimes clattering over a hump] is irregular. It was 00.15am when PMB woke me last night, so then I’m awake ages after they’ve finished their half-hour lorry filling/emptying stint because by then I’m too awake, so I started counting - no not sheep - all the addresses I'd lived at. Then they woke me again at 05.27am. I look and feel like a zombie because of this constant disturbance.

If they weren’t leaving for definite then I’d have filled in several ‘diaries’ for the Environmental health officer - with swearwords - yawn …