Confabulations

I read a story in the Daily Mail the other day about a bridegroom and best man who were stabbed by an angry neighbour because they were playing music too loud at the wedding reception party. Now, this seems like a little bit of an overreaction. After all, wedding receptions tend to be one-offs and anyone who gets angry enough to stab someone over it is probably not right in the head. But I do have some sympathy for those suffering noisy neighbours – having grown up in a peaceful, detached house, my adult life spent living in various flats certainly came as something of a surprise.

There are dozens of possible noise complaints. The upstairs neighbour who has wooden floors and insists on walking around in high heels at all hours of the day and night. The teenager in the next flat along who turns on his gangster rap as soon as he gets home from school, and turns it up loud with his bedroom window open. The person who turns their washing machine on at 3 in the morning. Even having a flatmate with different sleeping patterns can be a nightmare if you have thin walls.

What’s the solution to all this? Well, good acoustic insulation would certainly help but in a lot of cases it can’t be done. It’s hard to convince your landlord you have a noisy flat without measurements to prove it and anyway, some noise like impact noise from shoes isn’t really stopped by normal insulation.

White noise generators are said to help because they drown out the noise of televisions etc, but do you really want to listen to one noise to cancel out another? My solution is to just move. Find an older property with thick walls and live there instead!