Silence is not golden, it's fucking boring

My trip home to see Mother for Easter was not too bad, we didn't have any disasters or anything, but it wasn't exactly fun either.

Whenever I speak to her on the phone, she normally complains incessantly about how noisy the neighbours/neighbours' children/railway line/nearby school is, are, or have been being. Any noise basically means that she can't rest, and therefore feels worse than even her usual level, and so she is obliged to spread some of that misery out to adjacent parts of the world. And this happens all the time apparently, it's like a non-stop noisy hell.

So when I got home on Saturday I was expecting there to be at least a pneumatic drill going off in next door's garden and some sort of monster truck derby happening in the street. I was surprised therefore to find no pneumatic drills and instead just complete, uninterrupted silence. Like serious silence too, you could practically hear it. I'm sure at one point my heartbeat was the loudest thing on the street.

"It's never normally like this!" says she. "You won't believe us now will you? They're normally screaming at each other next door! And coughing! You can hear them coughing all the time!"

Erm... coughing?

Anyway, it was very, VERY quiet. So that's good for Mum, I suppose. They don't do anything in that silence, they wouldn't want to break its pristine completeness. So instead you just end up sitting there. Reading. Or talking, but only very quietly, otherwise Mum says "You're being very loud Thomas!" (that's my Dad) and he is obliged to apologise.

And it's BORING. I need some damn stimulation! They even have the lights down quite low, so it's like you've wandered into one of those sensory deprivation tanks.

I was only there for 24 hours, but I'd gone pretty stir crazy by the end of it. No doubt the endless noise started up again as soon as I left, or so they'll tell me. Or perhaps no it won't, because it's never actually THAT noisy, but they've got nothing better to do than bang on about it all the time.

On the plus side, I did receive six Cadbury Creme Eggs in memory of the Baby Jesus (or something), so it wasn't all bad.

And I'm off to New Yoooooooooooooooork on Thursday, so it's not all bad.

Also, the General Election has been announced today, so I shall blog about that tomorrow if I get time. It's terribly exciting! Sort of.