Everyday life has become one great noise machine. By Rev Peter Mullen
I am an oldie, no doubt demented, but not going mad. I know this for sure, because I am mad already. I was driven mad long ago. It’s the din semper et ubique. What a lovely summer we’ve just enjoyed! Cue every morning the cry goes up from a pile-driving building site, five sets of road works and a thousand gardens:
‘It’s a beautiful day. Come along guys, let’s get the noise machines out!’
No escape by taking a walk through my leafy suburb, for here is the fortissimo racket of antiphonal lawnmowers. All unnecessary. Proud gardeners all, they take gadgets big enough and loud enough to clear a path through the Amazon rainforest to mow their postage-stamp sized lawns. I came upon a man using a hideously cacophonous Brobdingnagian machine to trim his miniature hedge. When I pulled a face at him, he removed his industrial capacity ear plugs so I said,
‘If you’d told me earlier you were wanting to do this Sir, I could have lent you my pair of nail scissors.’
And then there is no gadget in the world more pointless than a leaf-blower: blow them away and they blow back. There are millions of these spurious bits of tackle. Why? Because they are advertised in the weekend editions of all the newspapers. And in our consumer society all you have to do is advertise something and people will buy it. And it’s boys’ toys isn’t it? My thingy is bigger and shinier than your thingy.
They’ve been tree-cutting under my window for eight weeks. There aren’t that many trees, so why does it take so long? I suspect that, after they’ve been cut down during the day, some mischievous municipal sprite replants them after nightfall.
You turn for relief to a nature programme on TV. Here’s a bucolic stroll through the peaceful Yorkshire Dales – with a loud and vulgar presenter and pop-music accompaniment.
Stay in then and read! That’s no use either. I have a pal a couple of streets away who has a bad back and so he can’t get out. One day last week I went round to see if I could cheer him up. He looked as if he was suffering his seventh nervous breakdown of the day – and that was before teatime:
‘Just listen to that noise from next door – it goes on from dawn till past curfew. I know the bloke who’s responsible, but I don’t resent it. In fact I pity him. You and I have our jobs to do but when we’ve finished we can always sit down and pour ourselves a nice drinkie. Not my neighbour: when he’s finished his chores, he has to put in all those extra hours clog-dancing on my ceiling.’
Night at last and you get under the duvet. But then 3am comes when the intellectuals from the local uniworsity come howling through our Close on the way back from their squalid entertainments. And then they treat us all to a full recollection of what they’ve been up to – in flawless but deafening Anglosaxon.
What else should I expect except this endless din? For I am a sinner and I was told long ago that for the likes of me hell will be Pandemonium. And the Recording Angel told me personally:
‘What you are now experiencing is the Devil’s Pandemonium Acclimatisation Course
