Open Writing

I don’t suppose they are discussing nightingales in the boardrooms at Ford and Vauxhall, Toyota and Volkswagen - but they should be doing so.

Fact is, nightingales are becoming noisier. And it’s all because of the racket coming from the steel “beasts’’ produced by the motor manufacturers.

Nightingales are having to raise their “voices’’ to make themselves heard above the din.

The noisier the traffic, the louder nightingales are forced to sing.

Researchers in Germany found that nightingales were singing at 93 decibels to make themselves heard above the morning rush-hour wall of sound.

The noise coming from the throats of the little brown birds is equivalent to that emitted from a motorbike exhaust pipe at full power.

Nightingales singing in the leafy suburbs of Berlin, where tests were carried out, were five times quieter than those singing near the main highways.

All of which has left me brooding about my own daily intake of noise.

I’m caught up in the great urban noise machine. I regularly drive on motorways. Almost every week I visit Leeds or Sheffield.

Yet compared to many folk in urbanised Britain I lead a quiet life.

I live in a village which is a thousand years old - and more. My house is set back from the road. With the loyal and unremitting help of double-glazed windows, we cannot hear the cars that pass by.

Every day I spend some time at a keyboard, publishing poems and columns, articles and short stories in Open Writing - with the sibilant hum of the computer as the only sound to accompany the whirring of my thoughts.

Then I lace on hiking boots and go walking through fields and woods, sharing the day with birds singing at a normal tuneful level.

After that, following a good meal, with a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other, I voluntarily accept a breaking of the silence.

But the noise is deliciously tuneful. Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn, served up by BBC Radio Three.

I live in a part of the world where thousands of workers were assaulted by noise. A daily barrage of destructive sound from the machines in textile mills and engineering workshops.

If you talk to a chap who has spent a lifetime working in a woollen mill you will probably have to raise your voice by an appreciable number of decibels - as do the nightingales.

I love cities. I love the bustle, the excitement, the rush and push of the street scene - and noise is a part of that. Snatches of laughter, half-heard conversations, the grind of traffic accelerating from one traffic light to the next…

You know that you are alive when you are in a city.

But afterwards, back home in our village, ‘tis bliss to be quiet.

By the way, those nightingales fly into Germany, Britain and other northern European countries in mid-April. Being sensible creatures, they spend their winters in Africa, where it’s warm.

Remember the song?

That certain night, the night we met
There was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
And a nightingale sang in Berkley Square.

Hm! For how much longer, I wonder, will that particular birdsong be heard in the Square?

You can imagine a nightingale conversation in the pleasant African sunshine at some future date.

“When are you leaving for London?’’

“Oh dear, it’s that time of year again.’’

“I’m thinking of setting out next Tuesday.’’

“OK…I suppose so. Though to be honest, I wouldn’t mind staying here in Africa permanently. You just can’t hear yourself think in London these days.’’