SILENCE IS GOLDEN, DISCOVERS OUR COLUMNIST, LOOSE WOMEN STAR AND SEASONED CITY DWELLER JANE MOORE, AFTER AN ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY
Earlier this month, I headed to the countryside to stay with a friend for the weekend, and initially felt unnerved by the sound of complete silence. After all, I live in the heart of London, where the soundtrack to daily life is emergency services’ sirens, heavy traffic, car alarms, lorries rattling over speed bumps… you name it.
Noise is so common that you don’t really notice the effect it has until you don’t hear it, and realise how much calmer you feel.
Consequently, I slept like a baby and actually had a lie-in until 9am – something I never do at home.
I’m a good sleeper, but pretty much anywhere you live in our capital, the low hum of aeroplane noise is ever present, and can start as early as 5am. Then there are the office workers who set off around 7am, chatting on their phones outside your window and slamming their car doors, followed shortly afterwards by the school-run brigade with their laughing/crying children, barking dogs tied to prams, and more phone chatter.
After that, it’s the delivery lorries, taking wrong turns and beeping as they reverse, or parking in the middle of the road and prompting other drivers to honk in frustration.
By contrast, sitting alone in my friend’s conservatory and looking out over her fields, I could hear nothing except birdsong. It was a beautiful half hour of utter stillness in my mind. So I can see why frazzled people check themselves in to meditation retreats to get away from all the distractions, and simply concentrate on their own stillness. It’s imperative for our mental wellbeing.
Sundays are a little calmer in the city, but now that it’s summer, what’s the betting that the second my head hits the garden sun lounger for an afternoon snooze, some unthinking halfwit four doors down will decide it’s the perfect time to try out their new leaf blower that sounds like a punctured hovercraft?
Or decide it’s a good day to start tinkering with their car, revving the engine and drilling something metal that sets your teeth on edge?
And whilst children playing in the garden is a lovely sound, an under-exercised, over-excited dog barking all day long is not. Take it to the local park and wear it out, for heaven’s sake.
Noise, noise, and more noise. There’s no escaping it.
These days, even the supposedly ‘silent carriage’ on a train isn’t immune from having that inane ‘see it, say it, sort it’ slogan piped through the tannoy with annoying regularity. Or regular messages telling you what you can buy in the buffet c
