Comments on: The Music of the Night

By: K-Line

K-Line — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:59:34 +0000

Wow, I only just discovered your blog and I have to say – strangely – we have many of the same attitudes. Noise makes me homocidal, especially bass noise, especially at night. I live in an urban neighbourhood on the very edge (mercifully) of the student ghetto and I’ve been known to call the police many a time. Bass thud in my room at 3 am is a strange kind of torture…

By: Katie

Katie — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:54:08 +0000

Oy, I hate that too. The people who live above us are constantly stomping around. Little old lady me responds by hitting the ceiling with the broom. Nice.

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:18:37 +0000

I hate noise. It really distresses me, loud and/or uncontrollable noise actually causes physical pain for me. I feel so sorry for you guys!
I had to travel to take an exam today, on a train with kids running up and down screaming, and my nerves were shot to pieces by the end of the journey. Then, during the exam, my invigilator had to go out twice to tell people in the corridor to shut the hell up, because apparently the giant yellow sign saying ‘EXAM’ didn’t do the trick.
When I rule the world Amber, it will be perfectly legal for you and Terry to hunt down these people with a cricket bat…

P.S. I do the headphones thing too. Slightly more alarmingly, I have in the past told my sister off for breathing through her nose. Yes, I am mental.

By: Wickedly Scarlett

Wickedly Scarlett — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:52:48 +0000

A noise assessor?? How infuriating! As though the fact that you are disturbed by the noise isn’t enough for them to send one of their bored patrollers out to hush up the offenders! Poor Terry! I would have gone through the roof…

By: Amber

Amber — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:39:38 +0000

So glad to hear it’s not just me who suffers from the intolerance to noise! (Amanda Nicole – I make Terry wear headphones too. I honestly thought I was the only person who did that.)

From the police’s point of view, their main problem was that we couldn’t give them a specific address to go to – this being because the music was coming from two streets and a forest away, and we weren’t prepared to get up in the middle of the night and go trecking through the woods to write down the address. And we’d probably have had heads kicked in for our trouble. But seriously, if it was loud enough for us to have heard it from that distance it would have been more than loud enough for a police car driving into the street to identify the source of the noise. For them to want to come and carry out a “noise assessment” from OUR house just seemed ridiculus at that point – and as Terry pointed out to the woman on the phone, it wouldn’t have been just us that was being disturbed by it, either.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:19:51 +0000

“The woman who answered the phone, you see, wanted to send someone round to our house to “assess the noise level”. This person would call us first, she said.”

The hell?

That’s the strangest / shitiest thing I’ve heard about our ‘polis’ yet.

By: Amanda Nicole

Amanda Nicole — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:30:59 +0000

I totally agree. It makes me feel like an old biddy to admit it, but I have zero tolerance to noise at any time of day. It just leaks into my brain and a switch turns on and I’m instantaneously annoyed as hell. I make Dave wear headphones at his computer because I can’t stand computer sounds (my volume is always off). I keep the apartment stuffy because I can’t stand the street noise when the window’s open. I keep the phone on low. I like to chock it up to my super sonic sensitive hearing, which can hear a pin drop. You’re not alone!

By: Erik (Sorrento)

Erik (Sorrento) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:27:55 +0000

Noise assessing? Standing in front of a house of the residents who complained about the noise to “assess” the volume of a loud party is a woefully inadequate method to properly “assess” anything. There’s a big difference between sitting on a front porch for about 10 seconds and attempting to sleep in a bedroom when most humans require either silence or distant natural ambient noise and being endless jolted and nagged by THUMP THUMP THUMP reverberating through the walls and floors. I’m wondering if amplifier companies have contributed to your local police pension fund.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:26:54 +0000

I hate noise in the night. It’s awful and really unnecessary. Our neighbours are being good right now, but when we first moved in they would start their parties at midnight and they would go on until I left for work the next morning. Which is 8 am. I tried knocking on the door/ringing their bell etc. Nothing. I left them notes and they said they’d be quiet and it started again. Plus their friends would come and ring our doorbell at all hours.

Obviously I am still not over this, but what I am trying to say is, I feel your pain, and it should not be allowed. There does need to be better noise pollution prevention. Or something.