Until a few hundred years ago, the loudest noise, probably anyone would experience during their entire life would have been the occasional clap of thunder. Frightening, undoubtably, especially for the pious and true believers, but a pretty rare event nonetheless. Ironic, don't you think, and definitely depressing, that for so many nowadays, this may well be the quietest external noise anyone will hear. And it's likely to be the case for the legions of souls condemned to sleep-starved half lives, impoverished by someone else's whimsical decision to turn up the volume at a time of their choosing (never ours, of course) and always, but always at the worst time. Night time.

How many of us, and I can count myself in here, have resembled, with so many sadly still caught this way, the unhappy dead, each one of us yearning for sanctuary and peace, night after night, twisting wretchedly, with nerves stretched tighter than cat gut, from the 4/4 beat thumping through the partition wall. From A to Z, and all places in between and around, it's a world of noise.

Like love, noise comes in countless guises. If only it could be as pleasant. Yes, love, I know can turn and curdle, but at least there's the heady joys of early days; the private jokes, furtive glances, shared secrets. So there's an effervescence about love in the beginning anyway, sometimes all the way to the end. Try appropriating that sense the first time next door's washing machine hits spin cycle after midnight. Where's the sonnet on noise? Ode on first hearing four adults gallop across your ceiling? Unlikely.

Not wanting to list the sources, or guises, of noise. Too many to even attempt. I'm going for the varieties. Two as far as I'm concerned: continuous and random impact. The latter is the nuclear weapon; once dropped, life is never the same, irrevocable change. But let me dispatch the former before anything else. What is continuous noise? Well, it's a sound at first so disturbing, that it generates the "I can't live with this" reaction almost immediately. However, this is the chameleon of noise, which, being so repetitive settles eventually into the background. With it's status changing from threat to neutral. It's simply there. An instance: I live very near to a major arterial road, pumping traffic in and out of Central London. The road throbs day and night. No respite. It hums. The first few weeks I lived here, was a time of absolute despair, throughly unhappy, bitterly thinking of all the other places I'd turned down to live where I was, and now look what I was getting. Today, years on, it's a non noise, I no longer register it. Slipping the Zen spectacles on, then I'm at one with it. In fact I only notice it when I can't hear any traffic; that's when the existential panic crawls in. No traffic on a major road. Something's wrong.

Random impact noise is the neighbour who, following a reasoning pattern known only to them decides they can only listen to the TV a few decibels short of loaded Jumbo taking off; or who inexplicably comes home in the small hours, lacking the skill to close the door, any door, without slamming it shut the way someone might slam a car door; it's the braying, honking voices drifting across the garden fence; screeching, drunken voices wafting in from a few doors away, night after night. And always, but always, the steady thud of music.

We reach accomodation with continuous noise, mainly for two reasons; firstly, the sheer fact of it being continuous, secondly, it's the same noise, same tone, same volume. Barely any variation. If only random impact worked the same way, it does n't; it's random first and foremost, so can happen anytime, then it's impact, the sound obviously, but what it does to our lives, and that's more important. We end up waiting for it to happen. Altering our lives to it's shape. There was one point in my life when things were so bad, I used to aim to get to bed before a certain time, believing that if I did, then I'd get a few hours under my belt, before one of my neighbours came home. That's not living, it's a half life.

I do n't know anyone, who at some point during their lives has not, or in some cases still do, suffered the miseries of living under the siege conditions that random impact noise dictates. Living as many of us do, cheek by jowl with others, entails as many responsibilities as it does rights, of which a degree of understanding on what constitutes reasonable behaviour is paramount. Frankly, for me, this means no loud music, foot stamping, door-banging, appliances being switched on after eleven. Mortals sleep between then and seven the next day usually. Respect that, please. Not much to ask. Buddhists, apparently, regard this as a time of spiritual degeneration - Samsara. I don't. I just think it's bloody noisy.