IT'S TOO QUIET . . .  I DON'T LIKE IT.

A key consideration in our recent house move was quiet.

Not too difficult around here. We live among the dairyland byroads of a postcard sea-village that's literally the last parish in Western Europe.

The 'Old Country'. The world my grandfather came from. The world my father left behind. And the world I myself -- in that inexorable 'three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves' way -- have been drawn back to.

I remember the first time I hitchhiked around Connemara. (I was fifteen, incidentally. Different times.) And the thing that impressed me from that trip was waking to hear the sea lapping quietly -- just yards from my tent.

That sound stayed with me for a long time afterwards, whispering through the chaos and cacophony of my later life. The promise of a place where serenity, sanity, centredness prevailed. A moment that I registered only lazily at the time became a 'Rosebud' memory for many years.

Now I get to live 'the quiet life' once again, my only turmoils self-inflicted -- the incurable masochism of anyone who must take up a pen. (And Brando thought acting was a neurotic impulse.)

Country life is a sort of bliss -- after the souk-like bedlam of apartment blocks, and the machine-house madness of construction sites, truck parks, ferry crossings -- my 'School of Life' as it was fetchingly packaged.

Not that my white-collar incarnation was much quieter. I remember racing into an ad agency once, at 5 AM -- vital deadline: four hours off -- only to find the nightclub in the basement still pounding deafeningly away.

And I have to concede that my ability to tolerate noise is probably less than, well. . . the vast majority of the population's. Noise gets to me, and I mean literally. I imprint, as if I'm made of celluloid or sound-recording tape. (I haven't been digitised yet.) I'd rather run with scissors than run with headphones. Noise doesn't just intrude on me. It territorialises me, which for a male is a serious, in fact primal, issue.

But now that I have my precious peace, I notice two things. Firstly, I think part of me misses the old urban racket. Secondly, I've discovered that there are different types of quiet. And the type I like has loads of wind and rain to it.

To wit, our last house was set in a glacial valley running east-west -- the perfect landfall for those wonderful Atlantic storms. Now steep hills sit behind us, and the insanely unpredictable microclimate of the Dingle Peninsula -- the national weather forecast doesn't really apply here -- seems less in evidence. Suddenly I feel cheated.

Apparently quietness comes in endless gradations and shades!

It's as if each one has a different chichi name, with a reference code, like those thumbnails you see in paint brochures. 'Breathless Calm' 358, 'Vernal Ambience' 714. They should have air current ratings on the Beaufort Scale.

I think I may have to get myself some of those CD's with lightning and torrential rain!

When I read about writers' retreats, where you can go for a week to create 'in peace and quiet', I think, 'Great -- if you live next to an iron foundry'. Otherwise don't do it, buddy! You need distraction. That's why they have coffee houses. Trust me. There's no greater distraction than having no distraction at all.

If the worst comes to the worst, I'm getting headphones. You can probably get recordings of road-drilling now. If the urban withdrawal becomes too much for me, I bet I can find one with an incessant barking dog!

(Originally posted in WritersCut.net, 1/7/2012.)