'Of building sites and broad beans….'

I usually have fairly high levels of patience and tolerance, but this month I have become increasingly bothered by the noise and mess coming from the house next door. 

My partner and I rent a tiny terraced cottage, one of eight arranged around a little grassed area with a pump in the middle, in the most peaceful place I have ever lived - and I love it. 

However, for the last month, the house adjoining ours has become a building site. It's going to be a 'holiday let'. This saddens me because two of the other cottages that sold here last year have already become holiday or weekend lets….and yet another is now on the market, advertised as 'perfect for holiday let.' That will be four out of the eight, so the wonderful community we moved into last year is rapidly beginning to dwindle. Curtains in one of the houses remain closed for months on end... and come summer, there will be comings and goings as people book the cottages for their summer holidays. They will be lovely people, but we won't have time to get to know them.

Our walls are quite thick, but yesterday, after nearly a month of banging, drilling, sawing and (very loud) radio music; the noise finally got to me. As did the mess, and the fact that the beautiful plants outside my front door are no longer green, but are covered in brick dust, which I know will wash off when it rains….but there's no rain forecast in the near future. 

I know I should rise above all this because it is only a temporary situation and the new owners/builders are very nice friendly people, but yesterday it all became too much. So I went down to the allotment to see the broad beans we'd planted out at the weekend.

I told the beans what was going on, and this is what they said….

"Go back home and be accepting of the noise and the dust coming from next door. Know that you are lucky to have the gifts of hearing and sight. Some people have neither. Accept this noise and mess, and wish good things to the people who are making it. Neither noise nor dust will last forever.

Tune your ears, instead, to the sounds of the woodpeckers pecking, the bees buzzing and the chiffchaffs chiffchaffing. Then, instead of noticing only mess and chaos, shift your focus to notice the blackbirds digging up worms for their young, the queen Tree bee gathering pollen from winter flowering currant to provision her nest, and the happy smiling builders next door enjoying the April sunshine as they listen to Radio 2 whilst they work. 

Then make yourself a cup of tea and have a large slice of that amazingly delicious fruit cake with the florentine topping that you made your lovely man for his birthday yesterday"

The beans are, of course, quite right. They reminded me how incredibly fortunate I am to live where I live; with someone I love and who loves me back; that I have eyes to see and ears to listen; and that I have good health. Had I been disabled I wouldn't have been able to walk to my allotment. Had I been blind I would not see the mess, but neither would I be able to watch the blackbird collecting worms. Were I not able to hear, I would be oblivious to the noise coming from next door, but I would not hear the birds singing or the bees buzzing or the wind in the trees. All cliches, I know, but profoundly and soberingly true.

So, today, instead of being a grumpy bum, I am going to count my blessings and enjoy being alive despite the fact that I am living next door to a building site.

Thank you beans!