What's that noise?

Where has all the silence gone? Is it just me or has the world become an increasingly noisy place and electronics are to blame for some of it? We are daily bombarded with noise.

If you are waiting for a bus, for instance, there is the background chatter of the street, the rattle of diesel engines, the duff-duff pavement-shaking vehicles being driven by starry-eyed individuals who are well on the way to deafness. The same vehicles, usually with a ‘spot the P-plates’ challenge, often have exhausts akin to a power station chimney and are designed to tear at the air in a cacophony of sound that sets the ears trembling.

Closely following the starry eyes and often gyrating set come the Harleys and their leather-covered riders who have their own program of peace-shattering devilment, much to the delight of the riders.Then there are the music and promotion announcements in supermarkets urging us to tap our feet and skip down the aisles waving our wallets in the direction of the latest absolute bargain. Outside individual shops stand the spruikers in bow tie and straw boater plus other inappropriate clothing who, with a wireless microphone coupled to a PA system, urge you not to let this day pass without enriching your life with one of the best products this side of Bourke.

And while you are in the shopping centre, take no notice of the wandering people apparently raving to themselves, their mouths going at top speed and hands going at top speed like an orchestra conductor as they chat with someone who is hopefully on the other end of this mobile phone conversation. Listening to or hearing a one-sided telephone conversation has become a 21st-century entertainment in which anybody can participate and it’s totally free!

It’s no better at home. If you can rise above the sounds of television, the hi-fi, radio and computer games and are looking forward to just the murmur of gentle family chatter, think again. A plethora of home machinery from lathes to the screaming angle grinder will have you reaching for the earmuffs.

In the garden it's just as bad. Next door is cutting the grass with a two-stroke mower while his son works the whipper snipper at about 4000 rpm above where it needs to be and just across the street a clipper clatters a hedge into shape closely followed by a blower that cruises along like a jet on low power taxiing to the runway. Overhead, the peak hour is on for aircraft hurrying like blowflies to carrion. Then, as if in competition, nature takes a hand with the white cockatoos who have selected your place to carry out circuits as they screech in squadrons of feathered dive bombers seeking a target to destroy. And a lull in their aerial activities will be filled by a chorus of kookaburras who perch and laugh scornfully at your predicament. No wonder you run for indoors with hands over ears.

Three streets away a house alarm goes off, wailing its invitation to small boys, and perhaps bigger ones, to throw stones at the flashing beacon, which wouldn’t stop it wailing anyway. The alarm will be on one of those houses where what there is to steal is on view to everybody like a smug statement of ‘don't you envy us?’ The blue flashing light looks good and contrasts well with the white boat and silver Porsche four-wheel drive sitting outside.

There is little that is likely to change our noisy world - in fact, it will probably get worse. Audiologists may get richer and hearing aid makers could also develop more than a cottage electronics industry. It brings to mind that old question asked by someone new to silence: what’s that noise?

While youth may be blamed for much of the noise, it’s not all their fault as we older generation make our own fair share of sounds unwanted.

For me, I’m in the market for a pair of designer earmuffs with a built-in low noise generator just so that I don’t feel that I’m totally on another planet.