This used to be a harmonious neighborhood.
You could wake to hear eagles in the trees, and fall
asleep to the lullaby of sea lions barking. But last
week the peace was ruptured by Spinal Tap
hammering out I Just Want to Make Your
Ear-Drums Bleed. A house was going up on the
lot next door and a crew of young construction
workers was hammering away to their music.

My husband, when he found me wadding the
moming newspaper into my ears, suggested I do
what any rational person would do — get dressed,
go next door and ask the workmen to turn the
music off.

But that would have made me feel small.
Anyone could see that these men were working. I
had to work, too, and I pictured confronting them,
trying to make writing sound like a legitimate job.
Every time I sat down at my word processor I, too,
broke into a sweat, albeit a cold one.

I didn’t go next door. Instead I took two
Tylenols and went to my office where I sat
tapping my foot to the rhythms of Cum on Feel
the Noize. The best music, I believe, should have
good form, clarity, interesting melodic and har-
monic progression as well as convey some
emotional message to which the listener can
relate. But with Quiet Riot belting into my
consciousness, the lot between my ears was
growing more vacant by the decibel.

I vacated my office. For someone who has a
predilection for going off the deep end, the
images Heavy Metal invokes could create some-
thing dangerous. Later that day when I had made
my predilection plain, my husband did the
rational thing himself, and went next door.

He explained the situation — his wife was
trying to compose poetry in the momings — and
asked for a compromise. Could they possibly
leave the music off until noon?

The next morming everything was quiet again.
More or less. The sounds of Skilsaws and
pneumatic drills seemed positively melodic. I
closed myself in my office and tried to come up
with an idea. I had three whole hours before the
noise started again, though I'd never been the sort
of writer who felt comfortable with a deadline.

Normally, when I was stuck I went out and lay
in the hammock — if I didn’t doze off an idea
would come to me eventually. Now I was faced
with a new problem. My husband had said I
worked in the momings — if the builders saw me
in the hammock, what would they think? Later in
the week I even started feeling guilty about going

The Sound of their Music

to the mailbox, and I put off watering my fuschias
until the workmen had left for the day.

A month passed before the framers finished
their job and moved out. For two days the eagles
retumed to our neighborhood, and then . . . the

plumbers moved in. I watched as they began —

hauling equipment from their van. The moment I
spied a coffin-sized stereo speaker I retreated to
my office.

I hardly had the door closed before Van Halen
opened with a wall of sound. I tried beating my
head against The Poet’s Indispensable Handbook,
but it was no use. With Cabo Wabo on the brain I
couldn’t think,

There was a time, when rather than risk having
to think, I, too, would have deafened myself.
There was a major difference in those days,
though: the music we listened to made you think.
Bob Dylan, for instance. It occurred to me
suddenly I had become middle-aged.

At the end of the day I gave my husband a
shopping list that included arsenic, cyanide and
strychnine, another group known as heavy metals
and used by the Victorians to eradicate trouble-
some types. My husband went next door again.
“Gee,” I heard one of the plumbers say, pulling
the plug on his speaker system. “I can listen to
music any old time. She didn’t have to get upset.”

He was right. I could have laced his Slurpee
with cyanide instead while harmonizing right
along with You Don’t Have To Drink Blood To
Have Fun. Fortunately for him I was more rational
than that; I’d only been planning to-put our house
on the market, and if it didn’t sell, take my own
troublesome life:

My husband, when we discussed it, said the
housing market was down, and that suicide was a
short-term solution. I should, he suggested, get to
the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter was, I didn’t like
change. Each time I heard music coming from
that lot it reminded me that something was lost,
that now when I stared out my kitchen window for
inspiration I would be staring into some total
Sstranger’s den.

Friday afternoon when the plumbers left I
collapsed in my hammock. All was quiet again on
the waterfront and I decided not to list the house
without giving it-further thought. Change was
here to stay. With time, even I might learn to live
with it — at least until Monday when a new wave
of workmen would arrive.

The Carmanah Giant, the big-
gest and oldest tree in the Car-
manah Valley on Vancouver
Island, is in peril. Too many visi-
tors are making the pilgrimage to
the giant spruce.

To counteract the danger, the
parks ministry has asked MacMil-
lan Bloedel to close the main

access road to the tree.
“We're taking this action even

though this area is not yet legally a _

park,” Parks Minister Ivan Mess-
mer said last week.

When the Carmanah Act, now
before the legislature, is passed,
British Columbia will have a total
of 390 provincial parks, covering

SHOP
SIDNEY
FOR
SERVICE

Sidney is known for neighbourly service.
Each month the Sidney Association of
Merchants recognizes one employee

whose extra effort makes shopping in

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
Trevor Christian
ISLAND FURNITURE MART

Sidney a pleasure.

See you in Sidney!

5.5 million hectares, an area as
large as Switzerland.

TheReview Wednesday, July 4,1990 — Al

Opinion :
tc eee ach EN

Reniers’ rights changed

A number of changes in B.C’s
residential tenancy laws, intro-
duced in the B.C. Legislature last
week, will give more protection to
renters with children and manufac-
tured-home owners.

The changes prohibit discrimin-
ation against families with chil-
dren by landlords, except in build-
ings rented specifically to seniors
or the disabled. Cases of alleged
discrimination will be dealt with
by the B.C. Council of Human
Rights.

Ax MAYCO

The new legislation will also
require landlords to give renters
who become new parents 24
months notice if they are to move
out because the birth of a child
puts them in contravention of the
number of family members speci-
fied in the tenancy agreement.

“The changes address serious
concems of young families and
others who rent, giving them addi-

tional protection against discrim- gy:

ination and un fair eviction prac-
tices,” said Labor and Consumer
Services Minister Norm Jacobsen.

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