Dear LPG readers, 

Have you noticed how sometimes, if you make a midnight cuppa, the kettle seems to be twice as loud and the sound of the teaspoon stirring the sugar round the bottom of the cup seems deafening no matter  however quietly you try to make the necessary preparations?  Yet when you make one during the commercial break in the middle of The Chase in the afternoon, those same sounds are hardly audible and seem as natural as ever?

But somehow, those noises seem even louder if you know that everyone else in the house is asleep in bed.  It's as if the dark amplifies all those little sounds and, if you are the one in bed listening to another of your house mates making them, your mind usually plays all sorts of tricks while your imagination wonders what's going on.  You can hear the cat’s midnight fighting, and the neighbour who has a bit of trouble parking after a bit of a night out.  If you set the automatic timer on your central heating, the pipes creaking their way to hot before you get up and don’t ask about the feet of other night walkers as they bring their hot freshly made chocolate drink up from the kitchen. 
  

If you are a light sleeper all those noises seem so much louder when you are tucked up nice and snug, and depending on the size of your imagination,  the big question is what will you do about what you hear.  Are you one of these people who will get up and investigate, or do you let your imagination get the better of you while you stay in the warm?

If I am listening to a loud version of one of those noises which we normally ignore during the day, I am often inspired to join the tea maker for a cuppa of my own and a bit of a chat, but I have to say that the night-time noises that bother me most are the natural and electronically generated ones.  The wind blowing through the trees, heavy rain hitting the ground or thunder, when it is coupled with lightning often leave me lying there with some of the best unwritten horror stories roaming around my head.  These are the sounds that are likely to make anyone stay put and envisage all sorts of worrying things and not only the children.  

 I suspect that the only thing that does definitely get us older people out of bed in the early hours is the need to go to the loo, and depending on the urgency needed, the lights come on and all those really loud, worrying noises resume their normal volume again which  puts everything back into perspective. 

Just a thought…

CL, Lewisham.