Every morning I wake up to the sound of chirping birds, trees hustling in the wind and the cows mooing in the fields.

No. I don’t.

I wake up every day at 6am sharp to the dreaded sound of the alarm clock, which gets louder and louder with each second I leave it ringing.

It stalls when I thump it. But then right on cue, the baker in the street starts chopping off wooden planks. Then the washing machine timer kicks in and the whoosh-whoosh sound takes over the background noise.

Meanwhile, there’s loud hooting in the street. It can be the school van, the gas truck, the bigilla van or tad-donuts. In a few moments, some distant neighbour starts hammering and chasing, car engines are being revved and in the main road behind me, cars are throbbing with bass rhythms as they sit in traffic.

It’s but the first half hour of the day and I am already noise-bombarded. When, last week, the European Environment Agency told us that 90 per cent of Malta is noisy and the island is one of the noisiest places to live in the EU, I only had one thought: where is that 10 per cent of land which is quiet?

To be fair, we are not exactly unique. More than 125 million Europeans are exposed to levels of road traffic noise above legal guidelines, causing up to 10,000 premature deaths each year, according to the report.

We are special in the sense that even protected sites and natural environments like Natura 2000 are not free from the cacophony.

“In small countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and Malta, the share of quiet areas is very low and noisy areas represent a significant portion of the protected areas,” the EEA said.

What can I say? I lived in Luxembourg for a couple of years. There I really used to wake up to the sound of the birds (it helps that there’s no spring hunting). And in all the time I lived there, I don’t think I ever heard a car hoot a horn. Even ice-cream vans played gentle fairy-like music.

We are the worst of the lot because being loud is part of our survival. One of my girlfriends is British. She is so soft-spoken that when she speaks we all pipe down, otherwise we won’t hear her. However, some of our volume must have rubbed off on her, because when she goes back home, her family tell her: “Shh! There is no need to speak so loudly!”

We are the worst of the lot because being loud is part of our survival

It’s the same if you compare adverts on the radio. Here’s one Maltese played on a loop on Magic Malta: “One, two Uniflu! Mur għalihom Champ.” And here’s a British Classic FM advert: “Mum, there’s penguins in my room.” One is loud and coarse, the other is sing-song soft.

Take our reactions when we bump into each other in the street: It’s either a loud “Aw xbin x’minnek?” or a very shrieky “Hiii, how are you?”

Admittedly there is nothing we can do about some noise: our ears are subject to a battering from modern technology.

The invasive chimes of the mobile phone, for example, the app notifications. Now that there’s apps for everything, it keeps getting worse.

Every couple of hours, my iPhone snaps into a rendition of Ave Maria. It’s a Drink Timer app, which reminds me and all my keyboard-hammering colleagues that it’s time to drink a glass of water.

Then there’s the sound of television (preceded by “Can I watch television. Can I? Can I now?”). In our girly household, it’s usually the background sound of Sky News or Angelina Ballerina sobbing her heart out.

In the household of my significant other, it’s the sound of BBC news, or FIFA Playstation or Juventus football matches.

Where is the sound of silence? Don’t you ever find yourself frustrated that you can’t hear yourself think? Even going to a restaurant these days can be headache inducing. I am convinced that sometimes the background din registers louder than commercial flights.

It is worrying because noise health risks can be anything from sleepless nights to heart diseases. We also know that too much noise does have serious psychological consequences, especially in children.

At one New York school, pupils in classrooms facing an over-ground subway track fell a year behind students elsewhere in the building; similar effects have been linked to noise from Heathrow.

Other studies suggest noise reduces our willingness to act generously towards strangers. And that is bad when we live on such a tiny island.

I therefore want to make an appeal to the European Environment Agency. Please send me a private message to tell me the 10 per cent locations of peace and quiet in our raucous country.

Don’t issue a press statement or the whole of Malta will be heading there with me.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti