Soundscape

Someone was losing it tonight. When the air stills and grows cold before sunset, dinnertime dramas carry across the paddocks like a memoried song. Mostly it's Dave the Farmer shouting at his dog. His curses filter through the Karris and drift, complete and in all their unedited glory to my front veranda. But tonight it was a man from the valley beyond Dave who was cursing, shouting. Living in the gentile outskirts of town is quite different to tenement housing but kind of much the same when it comes to neighbours on a still night. After all the yelling and cursing, the revving of his car, the loud protests of his mates trying to stop him, the thumping bass of his car stereo, the romancing swamp frogs, the dogs setting up their howling and barking and the sudden honk of a heron flying home to roost ... well, the sound of his car getting bogged in the mud of a wintery driveway made me laugh out loud.