I guess that we live in a sought after suburb of Bangalore – a modern day equivalent of the Surbiton of Tom and Barbara Good. Our own Bengaluran version of the good life is accompanied on a daily basis by a relatively reliable but eclectic version of the dawn chorus. I am not really sensitive to background noise having been brought up directly beside Newcastle Airport runway, but this proceeds regularly in approximately the following chronological order, and is starting to get on my nerves:
Ca 5am: Call to the faithful from the local mosque
Shortly after: Neighbourhood dogs have an early morning discussion which escalates to a vigorous Indian level
Ca 6 am: Strange half guttural squeaky noise (as yet un identified) passes by on the road
6:30 am: Just getting back to sleep when the incredibly annoying alarm from Mrs Reivers Blackberry goes off
7.00 am: In case we might drop back off to sleep builder drop of a load of bricks at the building site next door, throwing them on a brick-by-brick basis into a metal skip to ensure maximum impact
7:05 am onwards - persistent but stupid humming bird repeated tries to get through our bedroom window replicating the sound of a very hestitant hotel waiter trying to deliver room service breakfast
7:15 am: Driver arrives, car roars into life and moves its ritual 2 mtrs down the drive
7:30 ish: Local veg seller with cart passes by with his plaintiff cries of what sound worryingly like ‘she dies’…’’she dies’
7:45 ish; Traffic starts to pick up with ritual honking and major axle groaning as trucks pass over the sleeping policemen just outside the house
8:00 is: Daily election vehicle with unintelligible loudspeaker message passes by – all Indian politics is equally unintelligible to me
9:30 ish: Driver returns from dropping Mrs Reiver at work and starts his regular cricket game with the taller of our security guards up against the garage door – listening to to regular thump of the ball makes me feel just like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape.
So goes the days, and though incredibly comfortable it does sometimes feel like the cooler. Any resemblance of our next door neighbours to Margot and Jerry is of course completely coincidental, and rumours that I have already started two tunnels are completely spurious. To keep the good life vibe going though we do get the odd sacred cow stopping by next door - it all helps the MOOd music I guess
4 comments:
The sounds of warmer climes ... something I miss from SA. There's a large bird there called the 'Ha-de-ha' or something and makes a right old racket at all times of the day. That noise, and the squawk of guinea fowl and the buzz of crickets sum it all up.
WW1 - where to start discussing the futility of the human condition? We need to fix up a day or two in a bar to chew that one over, but all aspects of the war still hold me as gripped now as a quarter of a century ago. In fact I'm writing this in the Kempinski Palace hotel in Portoroso in Slovenia, not far from the Isonzo campaigns of the Italians ... a little known - to us Brits, anyway - slaughterhouse in 1916/17. A sort of Passcendaele in the mountains, if you will.
Read 'The White War' for an excellent account of how stupid generals can be. Would make an impressive book-end to one of your library shelves!
Completing your correspondence from exotic and luxury foreign hotels - very Somerset Maugham - will give the White War a go..
So you're a Somerset Maugham fan too? I love the travel book Gentleman in the Parlour and one of my top five books of all time is Of Human Bondage. Except the last 20 pages, which are crap. Flawed genius - a common enough problem. And he was a h*****, as if to prove it.
this is a bit like the flat I used to live in next to CLS bus depot, only worse. Come 5.30 am the clatter of diesel engines of bus drivers arriving in their cars complete with musical accompaniment to let us all know that their cars have stereos still rings in my ears!!! And yes, I like YES - but not at that time of the day - I remember wishing that one owner of a lonely heart would just s*d off.Living near the east coast main line is much more civilised, the schedule of trains is a sort of snooze button....
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