I recently wrote a letter of complaint to my local library.
Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to lodge an official complaint with your management team regarding the horrible amount of noise that emanates from your establishment. I recently bought “A Touch of Frost” on DVD and your supposed “place of learning” has made it increasingly difficult to enjoy my purchase.
I constantly have to turn up the volume to drown out the hideous thumps coming from the library. Overwhelmed by this outrageous sound, I yesterday visited the building to investigate it. It has come to my attention that people are closing their books too loudly.
I understand that your building is several kilometres from own place of residence, but this does little to mitigate the sound. One would think you’re running some kind of roller skating rink filled with sugar-guzzling cretins like that rude little boy in Alone in the Home or whatever it is called. Yours in a never-ending stream of complaints and frustrated rage, Jason Tin.
The library in question promptly apologised and promised to move their Homeless and Disabled Orphan Reading Group to a different location. Good riddance.
Now, before I continue, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I realise I’m writing a whingey column about people whinging too much. This, as I’m sure you’re aware, makes me a wanker.
Good, I’m glad that’s out of the way.
I was recently speaking with a woman post-floods whose husband had lost his place of business in the deluge. Her nine-year-old daughter decided she would raise money for flood victims like her father and began planning a street party to kick things off.
Her mother proudly watched on as she made handwritten invitations, which she placed in every mailbox in the neighbourhood.
Spongecake was made, balloons were bought and three-legged races were scheduled.
A large group of young kids and their parents showed up, an impressive sum of money was raised and the day went exceptionally well. That is until a police car showed up.
It seems a certain Mrs Grinch, who lived a few houses down, called in a noise complaint.
Apparently, someone dropped a cupcake and the resulting shockwave killed her dog. This, coupled with the unfathomably annoying rattling of gold coins in a donation tin, convinced her that a bunch of nine-year-olds needed to be tasered mid-egg and spoon race.
To their credit, as soon as the officers arrived at the “party”, they ignored the noise complaint and turned on the sirens for the kids. Mrs Grinch promptly wrote a letter to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.
Mrs Grinch, you see, is part of a growing culture of whinging. She is a mere foot soldier in an army of pen-waving loons who relentlessly march towards their promised land of silence and homogeny.
With permanently narrowed eyes and clenched fists, they measure lawns, yell at other people’s children and rant to council officers about how rubbish day was yesterday and Mrs Shipman STILL hasn’t taken her bins back inside.
Watching telly on a rainy night in Wellington a few months ago, I stumbled upon a show dedicated to this exact sport.
“Noise Patrol”. That’s a real show. A bunch of polite cops follow up noise complaints and travel from street to street telling young people to turn down their Oasis (remember, it’s still the 90s over there).
I can still remember my primary school principal telling us that the people living behind the cane track next to the school had been complaining that we were “playing too loud”.
Apparently, after living beside a school for ten years, they finally realised that children do indeed make noise - horrible, high-pitched wails of joy that pierce the early afternoon air like predatory pterodactyl screeches.
One lady recently told me that Brisbane should no longer host music festivals in the botanic gardens because it was “far too loud”.
Despite the fact she lived on the other side of the river, she felt those three or four days of noise a year were spoiling her nest egg.
Her rationale was that she had paid good money to live where she did and so reserved the right to live in blissful silence. Like many others, she doesn’t yet realise that the purchase price of her villa doesn’t include the entire city.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Parklife, but I still think it’s important that Brisbane nurtures a variety of cultural scenes. Plus, the event brings with it tons of money that flows into the tills of convenience stores, bottle shops, hotels, pubs and clubs.
And let’s not forget the city’s tattoo artists, tanning salons and hardworking drug dealers – who greatly benefit from the sudden demand for pingers, anabolic steroids, southern cross tats and melanomas (obviously, I don’t think tattoo artists and tanning salons are in the same league as drug dealers).
Germany, encouragingly, has just passed legislation that protects normal folk from frothy letter-writers.
The country’s government had been dealing with an incredible amount of complaints relating to noisy children in playgrounds. Many of these outbursts actually resulted in kindergartens being refused planning permission.
Child care centres were also forced to build noise-protection walls – which undoubtedly added extra financial strain for parents. The new laws will put a stop to that. It’s a massive win for commonsense.
Personally, I don’t think this sort of legislation goes far enough.
I firmly believe that all frequent complaint-lodgers should have to soundproof their house – because I’m sick of calling council to complain about them licking envelopes too loudly.
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