Day 34 - Sounds

 SOUNDS

Prompt - Sounds : Sit outside for about an hour.  Write down the sounds you hear.

"Sit outside for about an hour."  Hah!  It is the third of February, in Scotland, and we are going through a pandemic-induced lockdown.  A look out the window tells me the weather is 'seasonal'.  That is gusting winds and rain that verges on sleet.  I will not be sitting down anywhere outside!  I will not be sitting anywhere inside either, for the cafes are closed and the notion of pavement seating is not to be entertained at present.  Give it another three months...

So this exercise might be one to try later in the year, in a climate more conducive to the experience.  For now I'll make do with the sonic experience of today's walk to the shop.

As soon as I'm outside it's clear there are three distinct sets of background noises, all of which will be with me, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the hour and bit I am out for.  There's the weather itself, with wind noise in vegetation rushing in and out, and the rain falling, drumming on windows and pattering on the shoulder straps of my backpack.

Second there's the traffic noise.  At junctions, where queues await the green light, engine noises come to the fore, but most of the time they are subsidiary to the road noise, the which of rubber on wet tarmac and the occasional splash as a puddle is raised.  Buses and lorries have their own special dominance.  Despite lockdown rules this noise seems not much reduced from what was once considered normal - whatever that is.

And there's the thuds and clanks and hum of machinery.  As I walk along I'm rarely far from roadworks or building constructions and I hear rather than see the sounds of powered tools that I probably wouldn't even be able to put a name to if they came into sight.

Into this bland melange occasional other noises intrude.  As I pass by the cemetery wall there are workmen shouting to each other on the other side, voices raised to carry over the sound of the mechanical digger that is part of their team.  Gravedigging probably, but all I can see above the wall is a couple of hard hats and arm and roof of the digger.

Further down the road there's a persistent alarm wailing for attention.  Car or house?  As I near it's clearly a house, and the noise steadily diminishes once I walk past.  No sign of any problem, no smoke or anyone around, and this is not the right weather for standing to observe.  I hear the siren of an emergency vehicle in the distance, but it isn't coming this way.

Taking the steps down to the Water of Leith walkway the background noises drop to a gentle and indistinguishable whisper and, for the first time, I hear birdsong.  It's hard to concentrate on listening, because there are more people down here and I'm using a lot of my concentration to keep my distance from people who don't seem to have understood why social distancing is so important right now.  Especially some of the bloody joggers!  There are few voices raised, except those calling children or dogs.

Although it's a hundred yards away, the weir is much louder than usual, the river flowing faster, as it's fed by the rain and snow of recent days.  Further along the water is more gushy than burbly today.  

Back on the streets, the buses again do a good job of drowning out the rest, and there's tinny pop music coming from a builder's radio.  I take a walk down a narrow cobbled lane.  For the first time the thud of my boots becomes more dominant in the soundtrack.  The lane takes me into peaceful backstreets I have't encountered before.  As I negotiate my way around the dead ends the background sounds dim once again, the traffic distant, and there's less construction noise.  The noise I hear now surprises me, as it comes from within my chest.  It sounds, and feels, like a large globule of liquid moving around.  Not worrying, just strange.

Now on the busier roads that strangeness once again fades beneath the general blanket of this part of the city.  There are few people on the pavements, there's nobody in the shops.  The wind and rain are effective partners of lockdown strategy.  I go into the supermarket.

My ability to listen to my surroundings as I let my mind work on getting the items I need, as quickly as possible, and avoiding proximity to other shoppers.  There's a bland tannoy announcement about keeping safe, there's a shop assistant at the tills calling out to someone that she'll help them in a moment.  Clinks of cans and clinks of glass, freezer doors thud shut.  But I want out and back into the relative safety of the wet windy world as soon as I can.

The shorter walk home sounds much like the outgoing journey, those three major background sources again.  With one outstanding exception.  As I pass a column of cars waiting to be released from the red, one has music pumping out from behind the streaming windows.  Not the usual whump, whump, whump of a driving bass, but something more carnival like, as if from a funfair.  An atmospheric illusion no doubt, for I don't see the young driver as likely to be a fan of wurlitzers or oompah music.

And home again.  Insulated from most of the above.  But the wind still howls across the skylights at times, and in the distance a siren wah-wahs.  A warm dry flat is a better place to listen from on a day like today.