Dear LPG,

I think that one of the most annoying things that your neighbour can do to upset you involves noise; a sudden and new continued and repeated sound, that always seems to be with you, can change a long lived friendship into war. 

I have lived in my present home for over 50 years, and I have seen neighbours come and go, but one of my oldest neighbours has suddenly become the cause of discomfort to the ears of all around. 

It can sometimes be late parties or the sounds that arrive in a house with a new baby or dog, and there is one more classic that can be really irritating although it has the potential to be a little more short-lived.

When you are younger you tend to meet your next door neighbours on the way to work or while taking the children out which means that you learn quite a bit about what is going on in each other’s lives, but then you get a bit older and your outings are less regular so you tend to miss each other and a close neighbour can become just the person next door again.  My very good next door neighbour, and we have been exactly that; good neighbours for at least four of the five decades that I was talking about, is getting older and her state of health has forced her to make a few choices. 

I have lately learned that getting upstairs is one of her biggest problems and so her children have decided that her house be converted so that she can live completely self-sufficiently on the ground floor.  Her children arranged for her to stay somewhere else while the work goes on, and with good reason, and they did mention a few modifications.  Even so I was not prepared for the drilling and banging which has been going on for weeks now and, although it starts just after nine o’clock in the morning, it continues, sometimes with no let-up, for the whole day.  The times of the disturbance are within socially acceptable parameters but continuous noise from nine in the morning till six at night can get waring never-the-less. 

The other day I was expecting a visitor and thought that it would be good for us to be able to hear ourselves speak during the visit, so I popped over to have a word with the workmen who were very obliging; so obliging in fact that they offered to show me just what they have been doing.

We used to visit for the odd cup of tea back in the day although, like many neighbours, those meetings degenerated into occasional chats across the fence and not much contact at all of late.   So my most recent visit was an eye-opener; I had to marvel at what I saw.  For some reason when you visit a house next door you expect different wall paper, and your memory of the décor the last time you visited comes to mind.  The colour and carpets absolutely everything was in a different place.  The kitchen had moved from the back of the house to the front, the walls were all in different places and in spite of the age of the house it looked completely new inside. 

The workers made a point of finding some really noiseless work to do on the day of my planned visit and I think that finding out a little about how much longer the transformation was going to take, and being invited to see the finished conversion, has left me thinking really differently about the noises that will continue for a little bit longer…

I suggest that if you are going to be the source of serious noise for a bit, talking to the neighbours before you start is a way forward, especially if you live in terraced houses.  Even if you only tell your closest neighbours, word is more than likely to spread and they will all think a little more kindly of you; and give a bit of detail about the time it will take.

DP, Lee