Things that go bump in the night (and the day)

To add to my ongoing woes with the builders in the park beneath my bedroom window, I found on my way home last night that some major roadworks had also been begun right outside my building.

Fortunately, the noise didn't carry that strongly to my apartment. And the work seems to have been swiftly completed.

Or almost completed, anyway. There seems to be an unfilled trench stretching across the entire width of the road. Thick steel plates have been laid across this, and stapled to the tarmac to keep them in place. It looks worryingly like a semi-permanent arrangement.

Now, these sheets of metal are highly resonant. Their edges stick up proudly, well above the road surface, so vehicles (which, of course, this being China, slow down only slightly if at all to allow for this hazard) are hitting them pretty damned hard. Moreover, they are not bolted down all that securely: I'd say there's a good half inch of movement available, so there's a huge wobble when anything runs over them. Yes, someone has built a HUGE METAL WOBBLE-BOARD outside my home. And the empty space beneath them amplifies the sound most impressively. It is very audible from my living room, on the other side of the building (which, as the space most insulated from external sounds in the whole apartment, is now also having to serve as my bedroom as well).

It's a distinctive, two-part THU-DUMMMP: the opening quite abrupt, the second part more extended and echoey - rather like the roll of distant thunder, in fact.

And, even on a slow Sunday, there are probably several hundred cars going along my street every hour - in each direction. I'm getting that dratted THU-DUMMMP every few seconds. During the week it's going to sound like a battlefield.

I can only hope that there won't be too much traffic overnight. Oh, please, god.....