You are in:
- Archives » 2007 » August 2007
Anything For A Quiet Life
Increasing numbers of Europeans are seeking respite from city noise in rural peace. But one French village is warning newcomers to stop whinging about the "natural" noises of the countryside.
The World Health Organisation says that stress from noise could be killing people: Perhaps one in every fifty heart attack deaths could be caused by excessive noise, it reports.
The chronic stress noise causes - keeping bodies in a twitchy state of constant alertness, even while sleeping - keeps stress hormones flowing and makes for enormous pressure on the body.
Noise from overhead aeroplanes has contributed to criticism of the expansion of Heathrow airport; complaints about noise pollution and noisy neighbours have increased fivefold over the past twenty years. One in seven British families complain that their quality of life suffers "a great deal" because of noise outside their control.
Earlier this year, the Telegraph reported that noisy neighbours caused some 600,000 Britons to move house in recent years.
In France, however, noise is even less tolerated. Forty percent of French respondents to a survey complained that the noise of their neighbours was intolerable.
No wonder, then, that the French are beginning to return to the countryside in unprecedented numbers.
Unfortunately, rural bliss don't always mean rural peace. France has a lot more countryside than Britain, but it's working countryside, as its original inhabitants are keen to point out. According to reports from France's Committee for Victims of Noise and Pollution, criticism of countryside noise has reached a high too, with crowing cockerels, braying donkeys, barking dogs, farm machinery and church bells high on the list of newcomers' complaints.
One couple even took a farmer to court in protest against his cockerel, who had an annoying habit of disturbing their slumber by crowing at dawn. The owner of the bird won 400 Euros damages and renamed the cockerel "Victoire."
The Telegraph reports that the Mayor of the Normandy village of Cesny-aux-Vignes, Jacques Bischoff, has written to citizens praising the sounds of the countryside and warning people in a new housing development not to moan about the "natural" noises of the countryside.
A critic, though, said that none of the new tenants had complained about noise, but one had grumbled that the town hall needed renovating.
However, one country noise most French people can agree on is the full-volume whine of "ear-splitting scooters" with their exhaust pipes sawn off, tearing up country lanes disturbing locals and newcomers at night.
A few years ago, the then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy enacted legislation banning these machines; they are fairly common in Paris, too, and are mostly used by thugs from the banlieu determined to make a noisy impact in the city. However, as the head of the Committee for Victims of Noise and Pollution says, ruefully, the police do not seem to want to enforce this law.
