TRANQUILITY SHATTERED

The mind is a wonderful yet terrible thing. Early on a recent Saturday morning, I wrestled with the knotty problem of quite what had happened to my internet service. Now, because I am just the kind of person who will fret and worry over such things and is unable to just let them go, it gnawed away at the back of my mind for most of that day, finding me pottering about trying to do other things, but with my mind still sifting through the contents of that electronic brain and trying to come up with solutions of any kind to make the problem just go away.

As I sat here, staring at the various plastic boxes in front of me, I became increasingly aware of a loud hum that was causing the entire house to vibrate slightly. I remembered quite wrongly that this noise had been there for about two days, or from around about the time when the computer started playing up. By this time my madness and focus was so desperate to grab a hold of anything that I could consider to be the culprit, that I decided that somewhere nearby the entire road surface was being torn up, because it was precisely that kind of a noise, and that any kind of major roadworks was most likely to be responsible for tearing up all sorts of underground cabling and, ultimately, have the knock-on effect of rendering my electronic connections worthless.

I decided to investigate.

I went downstairs and opened a window, which immediately increased the noise level from the bearable to the almost intolerable, but did nothing to narrow down the direction of the  source of the racket. The fact that no-one else in my street seemed at all enough bothered by it themselves to investigate too did not yet concern me. Maybe their double and triple glazing was better than mine, or maybe they just slept better than I do.

That, of course, would not be difficult.

After stomping around the house for a while in a bit of a strop, I grabbed some shoes and went outside to have a bit of a look around. Immediately it became clear that the noise was coming not from any roadworks, but from the industrial estate in the valley below. Walking along the row of houses, those rather fabulous instruments we have on our heads that we humans call “ears” managed to sort out the direction rather quickly as soon as I shifted position, and I headed across the road, towards the trees and the public footpath leading down into the valley to see if I could find out what it was that was going on.

The nearer I got, the quieter it seemed. This was very odd and not a little counter-intuitive. If I did finally reach them to quibble about the noise they might very well remove their ear defenders and legitimately ask “What noise, mate?” (I presumed that they’d say “mate”. Everyone seems to be everyone else’s “mate” in such situations, despite evidence to the contrary…). Some kind of big blue tanker was tilted at a high angle doing something vital for whatever industry it was delivering to, and it was pretty obvious that this noise would not continue for long afterwards, could not possibly have been going on for the two days I’d convinced myself it must have been, and in no way whatsoever had any possibility of being involved in the disruption of any underground cabling.

I slunk away, chastened.

Eventually, the green lights on the little plastic boxes finally returned, albeit intermittently, and sanity was, if not exactly restored, certainly given a vague hope of the merest possibility of reappearing for a while, so whatever it was that was happening to effect the electronics in these here parts, seemed to be starting the process of eventually not happening any longer.

Probably.

Later on that same weekend, the stifling heat of the only recent swealtering summer nights meant that it seemed wise to leave the window open overnight to ensure a smooth flow of something resembling fresh air. This rickety old house is hardly what you’d call a sealed box anyway, but on those hot, sticky summer nights, even the considerable air flow through the gaps and cracks and slates that will normally reduce the entire interior to something resembling a refrigerator, despite the heating pumping out at full tilt, is not enough to keep you breathing comfortably.

After all, we insomniacs need to give ourselves all the assistance we can, which is why it was slightly galling that, at around about five o’clock in the morning the trucks and movement down in the valley started to sound like a building site in the middle of the day. Who the hell (I thought) starts building work at 5.00 AM??? Naturally I made the decision to accept the lesser of the two evils and closed the window, but sadly, the damage was already done. I was totally and unequivocably awake with little to no chance of regaining any state of slumber, and so yet another working week began with me in a sulky old mood and the kind of fatigue that doesn’t ever seem right after the two supposedly relaxing days of the average weekend.

I’m not even going to describe the passing motorcycle gangs on a typical Sunday morning. I’ll leave that one to your imaginations. Just think. I moved here for the peace and tranquility of the countryside.

No wonder I can be such a grumpy so-and-so…