There are certain things, that you take for granted...

Like sleeping through the night...

Not last night, however... last night I was visited not by insomnia, not by too much liquid too late in the day, oh no... by random and unexpected intrusions...

I went to bed at 11 - I know, 11 on a Friday night? But I am on holidays shortly and trying to stock up my sleep for the long flight to South Africa...

So, phone set to silent, room in darkness, sleep landed with a gentle thump on the pillow... Until 1:55am... When the doorbell went...

Now, a doorbell at night, is a challenging thing...

In the day, it can only mean three things

1) Aha, Friends or relatives have called to see me, Hurrah
2) Some old fashioned door to door charity collector or salesperson has an offer they wish to entice me with...
3) The postman has a package of such magnificent largesse that he must hand it to me personally...

Now, almost none of those apply at 2am...

So, logically, it is either someone I'm not expecting, but in a crisis... or it's drunken random people walking the street and having the most amsuing of adventures by pressing random doorbells...

Not exactly cutting edge logical proceses I admit, but when you have to go through them, with a mind fogged by sleep in total darkness, it takes a while... Of course a ringing doorbell is a limited time offer anyway... Because people don't wait... They go - and you never find out who it was...

Anyway, left doorbell to its own devices and returned to sleep...

To be woken an hour later - at 3am...

Not this time by the dooorbell, but by the rather more urgent harbinger of doom - the house phone!

Gasp...

Yes, the conventional landline... rarely used, but maintained principally for the broadband connection it enables...

The thing is, very, very few people have that number...

So, I'm thinking, disaster, family in trouble, death, famine, pestilence...

And scrambling out of bed, still in the dark, up the stairs to answer the phone...

And is it an emergency?

No.

It's a drunken friend who was annoyed that I wouldn't answer my mobile at 3am (it was set to silent)... She wouldn't let it go - and so rang the home number...

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a drunken someone at 3am when the main things you're thinking are

1) Grr...
2) Yawn
3) Eejit

It kind of ruins the conversational dynamic...

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Anyway, here's a picture... for Clarabelle, it's Howth, although it looks far more exotic...

Noise

I've been thinking about Noise...

We're surrounded by it, but the human brain has developed such complex processing that we actually don't notice most of the time the level of noise and noises that we are dealing with...

Where I work, noise is pretty much part of what we do, we provide a coherent, continuous stream of music, chat, news, etc which pumps out across almost 100,000 radios in Dublin.

Not boasting, not moaning, but the product of my job as such creates a fair amount of noise in peoples lives... I'm responsible for that radio burbling away in the back of the shop, or the thum thump as some kid in a car drives past you at the traffic lights.

So, you become accustomed to it, you live in the middle of it... You forget about it.

But somedays it gets to you...

I find myself, on the phone, radio on, tv in the newsroom, people shouting, mobile phone ringing, sound playing from my computer... Suddenly it just all seems to much.

Shut up.

Stop the noise.

So I do... at least for me...

It sounds simple, but I drove home in silence tonight... only slowly becoming aware that being in the car means the radio is on, that means, I'm working, jumping from station to station, thinking about links, about how songs fit together, about what the competition is doing, about whether that's the right ad or not...

Silence makes things noisier for me...

And when I get home, I leave the TV off... No Seinfeld, no chatter, no burbling brook of television... just quiet.

I definitely live on my own...

There are only really three noises in my house at the moment

1) This sound, the sound of my rattling away at the keyboard
2) That sound, the sound of the whirring computer fan
3) The distant sound of the oven

And the funniest thing of all for me is, that these three sound are so terribly noisy

You know if the blog ever becomes successful, I'll have a staff of writers...

Then you'll log on one day and see...

"Welcome to this evenings edition of From here I Can See Ireland's Eye, Liam is on hiatus, I'm Pete McPeteypetersenpete... Good Evening"

Anyway, in the absence of staff writers, I have to explain not one, not two, not three, but I think 4 days absence...

Do you want the short or the long version?

Well, here is the short version... In five word sentences

Friday, awards, won nothing, drunk
Saturday, out, drunk, all good
Sunday, quiet, walked on pier
Monday, London, secret, party, Woohoo!

And that is 4 days in 20 words...

Beat that, word economy bloke...

And as if it's not enough that I have to put up with him being drunk and paternal, now Rick is texting me to say, "where's the blog entry?" in a tone of voice...

Hmmph

Impatience is clearly a virtue for him...

Now, I had something to say... what was it?

The document is finished, London rocked... Damn it, can't remember...

Tomorrow then?