When you grow up in a town with more than 10,000 population you will get noise, it cannot be avoided. The rumble of traffic is night and day. Growing up in the 1950’s I got used to it. Our old house in Bethnal Green in London seemed to be the main connection through London for trucks, lorries and busses. We also had the market criers selling their vegetables. The roads were still suffering from the after war lumps and bumps and so the wheels of the traffic also bumped as they moved along the streets and roads. At the same time London was being rebuilt. The rubble from the bombed buildings was being removed by noisy machines. That was a shame really, I had the ideal adventure playgrounds stumbling in the ruins of half demolished houses and even discovering their gardens which still had a few remnants of plant life from the previous owners.
London was being rebuilt. It was the time of the first cranes. The were poking up everywhere and they made their own noise. Today we still have cranes, but they have been developed and make hardly no noise. We would hear every twist and turn of the cranes in Bethnal Green, one of the densest populated parts of London, the East End.
The noises were my background music. In 1966 I moved to Switzerland. Where was the noise? Of course there was traffic in Zürich, but it was not the hustle and bustle of London. Even Swiss traffic behaved.
Noise does not bother me today, I was programmed at a young age. Mr. Swiss discovers all sorts of disturbances to his peaceful calm Swiss life. I have developed my own system. When the kids were at their noisiest, I could exclude their shouts, and comments and even read a book. I would close to my ears to the noise, I had years of practice growing up in London. Of course if the kids needed my attention, I would be there for them, that is motherly instinct.
I now live in an area where the cows make the most noise and perhaps now and again an ambulance will be on its route to the hospital in the next town. That is a noise I pay attention to, especially if the horn stops nearby.
At the moment I just hear the tap of my keyboard on the computer an Mr. Swiss is listening to some classical music in the living room,
I have come a long way from the disturbances of London Town, but it had its positive side. I am not noise sensitive, I can ignore it.
Daily Prompt: Noise
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 