Go placidly amidst the noise and haste...

It is a beautiful day here in South West England, but - as I have been explaining to Sarah over on my last post - we are currently undergoing torture by noise pollution in our particular little part of it.

To recap, at sometime late on Friday night, someone set off the siren alarm in the empty building at the back of our compact but adorable city apartment - probably acting on Sarah's advice - and it is still howling away now at 11.30 on Sunday morning.  Despite the local police's best efforts (yeah, right) it will carry on all night and the earliest we can expect it to be silenced is monday morning - if we're lucky.  By that time I will be out of the house anyway.  As I write in the front of the compact etc. another alarm has been set off in the street outside, so there is now no escape except to the countryside.

Of course, the countryside has it's own set of problems as can be read about in Cro's latest post, but - just so long as you can tolerate the smell of the pig-shit that is spread around by the tanker-load this time of year, it is generally a lot more peaceful than town.

To add to our rear-view misery, builders are continuing to demolish large parts of the building directly behind the lane, using pneumatic hammers.  I thought there was a law about doing that on a Sunday, but I am probably wrong.  The policewoman told me that - contrary to what I believed - there is no law dictating that alarms should silence themselves after 20 minutes of being set off.  Most alarm manufacturers set them like this, just out of politeness to to others (I say most), and because 20 minutes gives burglars plenty of time to be caught by flat-footed,  over-weight coppers.

I suppose that if laws were in place to protect the peace and quiet on Sundays, then the nearby church would not be allowed to add to the general din by ringing their fucking bells for hours on end, as they are presently doing, so fair's fair.  I still want to start my own mosque here though, to give them a taste of their own medicine on Fridays.

I am sure that all the property owners who let their alarms howl on continuously over the weekends, spend their weekends in the country (the one out the front here just turned itself off, only to turn itself back on again 30 seconds later).  I wonder how they would react if I parked my car outside their opulent houses and let it's alarm run all day and night, all weekend?

The above photo was taken in the lay-by yard which is the car park outside my workshop in the country, and the grassy banks around the road are currently covered in primroses.  But, I hear you say, what brightly coloured primroses!  Surely they cannot be wild ones?

And you would be right.  Amongst all the varieties of rubbish dumped regularly there, about 20 percent of it is garden waste, and these primroses are some of the survivors amongst the beer-cans, old armchairs, cat-litter complete with shit, hypodermic syringes, beds, dirty laundry, spent earth from cannabis farms, old sinks, plasterboard and rubble, condoms, ash-trays, burnt-out stolen cars, etc. etc.

It amazes me that if someone has a garden big enough to produce five bin-bags full of grass-cuttings, why don't they set aside a tiny area as a compost-heap, rather than taking them out to my place and chucking them in the hedge?  They don't even bother to empty the plastic bags and take them away, they chuck them all filled, so the contents cannot even rot in with the rest of the vegetation and do some good to the environment.

At the last estimation, fly-tipping in the South of England cost rate-payers about £650,000 in one year.  The last builder to dump commercial waste in my car park was stupid enough to leave invoices with his name and address on it, mixed in with the rest.  I gave the council the information, and he was fined £8000 after being convicted.  I haven't seen him since.

Someone on the same site told me last night that someone has dumped some more rubbish, also leaving a builder's invoice.  Tomorrow I will give our local enforcement officer that invoice.

What is it about beauty spots that compels drongos to dump rubbish on them?

Anyway, this is turning into a rant, but that's the effect that 48 hours of continuous noise-polution has on old men.