I am beginning to suspect that the lengthy and
noisy ‘reformation’ of the house next door is being done solely to drive us to
distraction and out!
Houses
here have tile floors throughout; the bathrooms are tiled and so are the stairs
– this means that if a new occupier wants to renovate there is a quantity of
loud banging to replace the coverings.
As we live in a conjoined house, and as those houses have a framework of
concrete, all thwacks against one part of the structure is seamlessly transmitted
to the adjoining houses giving a reproduction of the attacks that cannot be
bettered by a Bose loudspeaker. We have
been living through a positive battlefield of noise for months!
Today,
apart from a few desultory hammer knocks almost for ‘old time’s sake’ the noise
is now emanating from the front approach to the house where a walkway is being
extended to cover the whole of the front ‘garden’. Nothing really grows in our front gardens
because of the overshadowing pine trees where lack of sunshine and a covering
of pine needles ensures that the ground is vegetation free – apart from the
needles. The laying of footpath slabs is
not in itself noisy, but the radio turned up full to accompany the labours of
the workmen is. I have retreated to the
opposite side of the house and am typing in relative tranquillity.
I am
very well aware that typing such stuff is an open invitation to the Gods of
Perversity to fill the silence with the hammering-by-proxy that has become so
much an irritating part of our lives.
And, even as I type the low timpani roll of hammer thuds rings out from
next door!
There
is always something to keep me grumbling!
The first responses to the pre-publication copies
of The eloquence of broken things have started to trickle in and
they are positive and encouraging. What
I need to do is think more about marketing and publicity, which I am sure can
be just as intellectually satisfying when done properly as producing the
writing in the first place! But I am
constantly beset by the signal disadvantages of writing in a foreign language in
Catalonia and writing poetry too! Niche
in a niche!
I will
have to reach out more to the cultured ex-pats who might actually read what I’ve
written!
