We live in a very violent country, South Africa. More than 50,000 people are murdered every year. Rape statistics are shocking. And yet, we have the best climate in the world. It is a beautiful country though. Our economy is very protected and we have not felt the economic pressures that other countries have felt..
After years of desensitizing to the non-stop noise of Malta - constantly blaring car horns and thumping music loud enough to rattle the windows (especially when literally outside the window as they'd leave the car running to 'pop' into a shop for 20 minutes), people believing it the norm to shout to their friends (or enemies) from the other end of the street, 'bombas' (ear shattering type of firework explosion) being let off during the day whether or not there was an event - bliss. We hear birds singing (Twerp had only ever seen pigeons & ducks as everything else was blasted out of the sky, protected or not), trees rustling, the (to us) gentle sound of tractors and lawn mowers, crickets in the grass, a friendly 'Bonjour' along the street or in shops. The ones I feel sorry for are our neighbours. It's been 6 months and we haven't yet managed to turn our own vocal levels down, having grown too used to yelling simply to be heard. One day...
I know the feeling regarding airforce jets Terry. On the IoM during TT week, the Red Arrows perform over Douglas Bay and after peeling off, they scream over our house up here on the hillside, as they prepare for the next bit of the routine. It feels as if they are just above our tree line!
We used to have an apartment in Cannes, which had a Lidl supermarket round the corner and every morning at some foresaken hour we would be woken by the bleep, bleep of the delivery lorries reversing into the delivery bay. Fine if I was working, but not on holiday!!
I just wish the ewes and lambs wouldn't make quite so much noise when they lose each other! Oh and there's the donkey braying in the distance and this year everyone seems to have gone in for guinea fowl who gossip non-stop. Utterly bucolic like most of Lozere. Until, that is, the French air force turn up. We're right under the flight path for their low-flying training flights. Fortunately they only train once a week max and it's never more than three or four Rafales and Mirages at a time or I might be tempted to find the nearest source for ground-to-air missiles! Noisiest place we ever lived was Les Halles, before they knocked down the Baltard Pavillions and moved the market to Rungis. Refrigerated artics rumbling away from early afternoon right under our window and then at night, porters pushing metal-wheeled tubs loaded with pig carcasses over the cobbles and shouting to each other. Didn't sleep a lot for the three years we stayed there but loved every minute.
It's very interesting to see where folk have settled down in France, scattered across the country. Perhaps my title should have been, "where do you live in France and what's it like there?"
Really peaceful here in the sticks of Cote d'Armor. All I can hear is birds unless one of the other seven people living in the hamlet is driving a car home from work. Seriously quiet. I've lived in the countryside in Gloucestershire - farm machinery noise all the time - and in Cornwall - planes, and people enjoying themselves on the beach below - here just birds and me and my animals in the hamlet for most of the day - perfect!
Here in darkest Vienne, I often sit outside and listen to the silence, only punctuated by woodpeckers,buzzards, goldfinches etc. At midnight, I often sit on our verandah and marvel at the peace. Of course, we have the odd tractor,and, in the harvesting season, the harvesters, but these only add to the overall “countrysidishness”. My SIL lives a few hundred metres from the M25 and, even at 3am, there is a constant “buzz”. Having been brought up in “string o beads” ( that’s Leeds ), I really do appreciate the serenity of our abode.
South Wimbledon, the estate just behind the tube station. No, I am nae a Gleswegian, ma fowk come fra aboot Elgin, wee place ca'ed Dallas (not Texas). Digression over and out...
I grew up on the junction of two major roads with an underground station underneath that was making its way to the surface at the next station and end of line. There was a goods only railway line, in the days of the old wooden trucks and steam locos, a couple of hundred metres away. Opposite was a factory doing some kind of metal work. There were four red and two green bus routes with stops outside our sitting room window. I vowed never to live in such a place again. After my first year at university I moved to the city suburbs and the next year into a small village. Here, we can hear and see the main road about a kilometre away but none of the cacophony of my childhood and youth.