Tolerance to Noise

Your flat would be my idea of heaven. I am so lucky I live in London but most of the time I feel as though I am living in the heart of the country because I can hear so little unless it maybe the odd low flying aircraft going to a nearby military base.

No, I don't think I'd like to be that disconnected from the outside world. Noise can be a nuisance, though - we live on a main road and from time to time suffer the noisy, drunken idiots stumbling home from the pub at the bottom of the road. We have always dreaded Christmas and New year, any Bank Holiday weekends, World Cup fixtures, Cup Final day etc. because it seems young men (in particular, but young women can be as bad) simply can't get through these things without having a 'skinful'. We have taken to sleeping at the back of the house now, with the master front bedroom being left for guests.

I like to hear a bit of traffic too, although not too much.I don't think I would like being deep in the countryside.

I am extremely tolerant to some pleasant noises, cow bells and birds.. love to hear kids laugh and play- can't stand it if they scream their head off for our and swear...tolerant of Church bells, and tractors- but not of much traffic and drunken idiots in the middle of the night...

I am very intolerant of noise, particularly traffic noise and canned music. That is why I live where there is silence around - unless you count the birds singing, the cattle tearing the grass, the bees and other insects buzzing and the occasional tractor. My idea of heaven!

I feel the same Falconbird. I have a radio in every room and at night drift off to sleep with an earphone in one ear from my small portable radio.

In addition I love the light, especially at this time of year. When our first grandson was born we stayed in a nearby hotel in Hove. To my utter delight on the other side of the road was Zippo's Circus with a long stream of coloured lights which stayed on till 11.00 p.m. Heaven

Funny that- I love light, as much as I can get, during the day- but at ngiht it has to be pitch black, can't stand light intrusion. Fortunately here we have no light pollution at all and thick wooden shutters, hurrah.

And no noise, radio, tv, computer, tablet, phone... in the bedroom. A friend of mine has difficulty sleeping, but her phone is always buzzing and as soon as she is awake she is on her computer - so now wonder.

We are all so different- I suppose it is what we got used to as children which seems right for us. Always sleep with windows wide opened at this time of year- but even in our very cold winters, I have to have fresh air coming in- or wake up with a headache. Mum used to put me in the pram in the garden in all weathers- freezing or not, when a baby.

My sleep pattern is the same as yours granjura. Plus, as I live on a busy road, I use ear plugs to block out the noise from early morning traffic which would wake me. I find it very difficult to tolerate noise as I have become older. Coffee shops with all the chatter, and the noise from the espresso coffee machines are difficult to tolerate, and I can't wait to return to the peace and quiet of my home. I think I've turned into a grumpy old woman!!

I am intolerant to some noise like music from my neighbours son who as they are away this weekend decided to start bawling along to Robbie Williams at 8am this morning after coming home at 4am with friends and talking loudly all the way up the street!!! I don't like total silence either. In the main its a pretty quiet street and although we back on to the railway don't get much disturbance from that. what I don't like however is if I come back from shopping or golf DH has turned off the radio I leave on in the living room (on Classic FM) and the house is silent as he is in his study on his laptop. Contrarily I sometimes want silence - like this morning probably as my ears have been assaulted by bloody Robbie Williams -( I cant stand that man!!!) so I'm in my study with no radio on.

We are in Birmingham but our road is SO quiet. Quite a lot of cars go by at the front of the house, but rarely a noisy lorry or anything like that.
A canal at the back, so very peaceful.

Many years ago in the 1960s I worked in Ludgate Hill overlooking the canal which was in a sad state or repair.

A few years ago I returned with the WI and what a transformation the canal had seen. Brilliant.

I still think of Brum as my home and I left 57 years ago.

Meant to direct this comment to you KatyK.

NanKate - Our bit of the canal is fairly well kept. We are in an ordinary road on the outskirts of the city. The canal is at the back of our house, there is a right of way in between our garden fence and then there is the canal. Yesterday we saw a heron and a pair of Canada geese with 6 babies . Occasionally we open the blinds in the morning and there will be a duck sitting on the patio. It makes living in the city a bit more pleasant. I agree regarding the city centre canal area. It is really lovely.

I've had the neighbours being noisy all day, drinking, music etc. How dare they have fun in the sun when I am busy doing the garden fence! No, I had done the fence by 3pm and wanted to have a rest in bed but they were sat in the front garden (don't know why when they have a large back garden) and being really noisy so no sleep. Tomorrow will be a definite rest day now.

I have a problem using my hearing aids. I put them in this morning because I knew that I would need them to converse with two quietly spoken people after Mass but unfortunately they didn't half magnify the conversations going on before the service started. Sometimes I feel that I hear more clearly without them than with them. It's a bit of a quandry

There was an interesting experiment done in which people were subjected to loud noise whilst they did a simple cognitive task of proof reading a document, and the number of errors was recorded.

The process was then repeated again, this time with a switch to turn the noise off, but the subjects were asked to leave the noise on if at all possible. What they found was that not only did most people oblige by leaving the noise on, but they made fewer errors than in the previous instance.

Conclusion: It's the lack of control that causes the stress, not the noise.

Tolerance to noise eh!

6 years ago we moved to the country, surrounded by trees and fields. The lovely soothing sounds of cattle mooing, birds singing and bees buzzing surrounded us. Bliss after living on a busy main road!

However, this spring we have had new visitors. Noisy ones. Before the leaves opened on the trees, we noticed rooks building 2, then 3, nests. We watched fascinated as they carefully turned their eggs, then flew backwards and forwards with food for their chicks. Then they were obscured by the leaves. NOW every morning at about 4:30 it starts. A huge cacophony of squawks and caws which continue most of the day. All of the trees are filled with rowdy rooks and jackdaws fighting and calling to each other. A few evenings ago I watched appalled as over 100 black birds descended into the trees in our garden to roost! Hadn't bargained for this The garden is covered with black feathers!

Ah! The joys of country living.

I've got magpies, this year and last year, also noisy.
I plan to try and put them off nesting next year, apparently they don't like things like hanging CDs that flash in the sun!

For nearly 30 yrs I have lived just over a mile away from a major motorway which is to the West of us!
I really became aware of the noise when we first stayed overnight in my DDs new house in 2010.
This is a housing estate to the West of a big city on the top of a hill. I was really surprised how quiet it was up there !
This was just because we could could no longer hear the background noise of our motorway. That is almost certainly just tyre noise. Before that I had never been so aware of the noise it made. It now rather gets to me.

Noise doesn't bother us at all - neither the presence nor the absence of it. We live 300yards from the M4 and while we are aware of the constant drone of traffic, it doesn't bother us. And when we are away in the caravan, we can be in the middle of the countryside in perfect silence and that's ok too.

But light is a different matter. DW insists on absolute darkness. At home we have theatrical blackout curtains hung inside the vertical blinds on our bedroom window, and in the caravan she blocks out every source of light - even putting a sticking plaster over the blue LED the shows that the 'fridge is working properly!