It starts with the beeping of the huge van reversing into the square outside and parking right in front of my building. That's just the opening salvo though.
It gets better when the metallic back door of the van clanks open and he driver starts unloading the heavy bits of furniture onto his metallic trolley. The fact that it's metallic is important. It means that it clanks like crazy, reverberating in the otherwise silent square, as he repeatedly unloads and drags the furniture in front of building. For a whole damn hour.
So today, I did something completely out of character. I opened the window and unleashed a can of premium whoop-ass on the driver. His response: "Don't live here if you don't like the noise."
See, as someone who pays a ridiculous amount of Council Tax (that's what the municipality gets from you here in the UK), I feel I deserve a little better. There are environmental noise laws that state that noisy work should not be untaken before 8am and definitely not before 7am.
I've just written to the council to complain to them and I'm going to call The Pier when they open in a couple of hours time.
And it's not just The Pier either. One of the biggest culprits is Donatello, the Italian "restaurant" (if you've eaten there, you'll understand the need for the quotes).
These guys routinely clean up at past midnight, usually at around 1am or so. And cleaning up includes tipping a dumpsterful of glass bottles (after dragging said dumpster across the square) into the trash bins. (If you're wondering how much noise that makes, I've seen people who actually dump the glass bottles wearing industrial-grade hearing protection.) If you're lucky, it can also involve the crew shouting at each other in various languages across the square. And, of course, their delivery vans sometimes forget what hour it is too in the mornings.
Finally, let's not forget The Druid's Head pub which, on a weekly basis, gets beer deliveries from Carlsberg at around 7am. This involves people throwing empty metallic beer kegs from their basement onto the street, rolling them to the van, and rolling full ones from the van to the pub. It's an amazingly full, rich and continuous metallic sound that needs to be experienced to be believed.
All in all, the combination of all these factors means that you're lucky if you can get about five hours of sleep in between Donatello closing up and the square emptying of loud drunken people at around 1am (or 2am, if you're unlucky) to The Pier van arriving at 6am. Surely, that's just not acceptable!
This noise issue is not just a cosmetic "pea under the mattress" thing either, with reports that thousands of people die prematurely due to coronary heart disease caused by prolonged exposure to excessive noise.
Needless to say, I don't see myself living here this time next year. And it's such a shame because I otherwise love the place.
The Noise article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Not much comfort, but could be worse.. I stay in a very central location myself, and have both clanging delivery men, the glass tipping.. plus a violent pub (fighting/occasional riot on match day/nights + accompanying police sirens) and some sort of dodgy crime den house (whores+drugs dealers+punters fighting and screaming, usually 3/4am + more sirens) all within 50 meters of the bedroom window.
I eventually got an extra cavity window thingy that wasn’t cheap but money well spent, has deadened it a fair bit. It did occur to me to move elsewhere but I kinda like having a 5 minute walk to the office.
I lived in central Bournemouth once. People used to use our front step as a toilet, and we had a ‘massage parlour’ (quotes use obvious) in one of the flats underneath. And the pub opposite, the Church round the back with bells, and a club round the corner where someone got shot. Good luck with the council…
I tottaly understand you…I only had the last 2 nights of bad sleeping, because of a storm that is in my area. So the noise that the rain and wind does against my windows is making me insane. Lucky me that this is temporary and that in Lisbon we dont have many storms….
Hope you find a cool place to live next!
There are a couple of pubs just opposite my flat, who regularly have karaoke till past midnight. If you think smashing bottles is bad try a gang of scouse girls screaming robbie williams angels for the 15th time through a cheap PA system turned up far too loud. I remember the very day the smoking ban came in, they all headed outside to carry on wailing at the top of their voices. I might invest in a paintball gun.
Location, location, location. Or Aral’s getting old
At FOTB I thought the Old Ship was just in a bad spot but maybe the whole of Brighton is noisy…
Noise? I tell you about noise while living in Tokyo … That means ambulance cars with sirens and megaphone yelling out to other cars to make space for them all around the clock, yes even at 3 AM when there are barely any other cars on the street! That means stupid junk ‘buying’ cars with loudspeakers announcing that they want to have your old/new junk electronic appliances and it will only cost you a few bucks … from Monday to Saturday! That means Gyooza sale cars with loudspeakers yelling out from the streets right into your bedroom from afternoon to midnight!
And if there are elections in Japan, heck, even the politicians go down to that level and yell through lodspeakers from their cars (because they are not allowed to say anything directive, they instead just yell their names repeatedly!
Ah yes. The glass recycling truck. I love the mornings when that arrives. Zzzzzz… [sound of hundreds of bottles crashing into a metal lorry] …WIDEAWAKE!
Yes I live next to two pubs so also experience the joy of the bottle recycling… It’s getting to the stage where I sleep through it but only just! And I’ve been here 2 years! I think you’ll have that pretty much anywhere central, or at least within 5 minutes walk of “the office”!
Seb
Current societies are very sensitive to chemical contaminants (look at organic produce), but the health effects of noise pollution are far more obvious.
Foam earplugs can give up to 36db reduction. Any kind of ear covering (fleece nightcap with earflaps, eg) can reduce more atop that — the combo is stronger than an ear cover alone. Damage from external sound can also be reduced through internal orientation — doing mental sums, or remembering music — both have been shown in studies to reduce the physiological effects of noise pollution.
They’re polluters. A neighborhood picket line during peak business hours might be a way to improve things…?
I live in a central location, I’ve actually move my bed to my living to get more sleep during the seasonal period. I have 2 walls of supposed double glazing in my bedroom on the ground floor.
There is a certain truth though, you gotta take the rough with the smooth, they don’t change for us. Ear Plugs perhaps? Really good, rubber coated concrete ones?