Open Your Ears

Have you ever heard something for the first time and then realised that you had heard it before but just not paid any attention to it? Did that even make sense? What I want to say is that I heard the birds singing outside my room this morning and then was told that they sing like that every morning. I decided to open my ears for the rest of the day. What else did I hear?

I got a bit of a start when I heard a loud metallic crash come from my neighbour’s house. I thought that either he had fired his shotgun or the Martians had landed. Or both. It turned out that he was closing his overhead doors. It seems he does this at 8am, 3pm and 10pm every day but today was the first day I had heard it for some reason.

I passed a couple of hair salons and decided to see what kind of noise came from them. Surprisingly they seemed pretty silent. However, I did get a noseful of that distinctive hair salon smell which always reminds me of the day my sister got her photo taken for an advert in the local newspaper.

I went to visit our pigs in the countryside and was greeted by absolute silence. The porkers had all fallen asleep and there was no one else in about a 5 mile radius it seemed. It is amazing to hear such silence and to know that no one would hear you if you shouted a bad word. So I shouted a bad word. And then another. Anyway, on the way home I passed a farmer using some old, used farm equipment and some oxen. It was all surprisingly silent and I thought that I had lost my hearing. Are oxen always so quiet? I don’t know many of them.

Right now I can hear a lot of dogs barking. To be honest I hear them even when I have my ears closed on other days. There are some big English bulldogs in my street and they keep from sleeping most nights. I wish my neighbour would get some oxen instead.