A landlord's life

I want to jump and shout when I hear the words sound proofing. Especially when I hear the words sound proofing in relation to building standards in the Irish Republic, aka southern Ireland.

I especially want to jump and shout and extend the shout to a roar when I hear the words building standards. Do I make myself clear? Or shall I shout?

That rant was brought on by a chance remark made on an inspection visit to a UK development. We were being taken around a new apartment complex, beautifully designed and finished. An Irish colleague asked about sound proofing. The developer said it conformed to the UK regulations, which were strictly enforced. For good measure, he said, added insulation had been installed as a defence against excess decibels from a party or loud music.

Seeing our scepticism , he added "or somebody being murdered". He suggested my colleague go into an adjoining flat and shout. Colleague departed, doors were closed. We stopped talking. Nothing. And more nothing (it was the week of the Beckett centenary). Colleague returned and avowed he had shouted. We had not heard him.

I, of little faith, was disinclined to believe he had given full vent to his lungs. In response, I was offered to enter an apartment below or above and shout. I duly went upstairs and, for good measure, jumped on the floor in simulated rage, an exercise greatly helped by imagining I was watching Dana dancing on TV.

Only the tiniest distant cry (for help) penetrated the walls or floors, according to those I left below. Not sufficient to come to my aid, to relieve me of Dana's dancing.

This left some of us nonplussed, as we had come from southern Ireland, aka the Irish Republic, where you can hear conversations in the next apartment, amplified and muzzled as if these speakers are in the same room. One of our party explained the walls of his Dublin apartment are so thin that he hears his neighbour ordering a Chinese meal most evenings.

So intimate has he become with his neighbour's culinary tastes, that to preserve his own sanity, he posted on his kitchen wall a chart of how the days match the meals. He knows Monday's culinary delight will be chicken vindaloo, giving way on Tuesday to tiger prawns with ginger, scallion and black pepper. His neighbour is quite specific about the pepper.

On Fridays, his neighbour's wife will arrive earlier from work and they will splash on crispy fried duck with bean sauce, washed down with a large bottle of Coca-Cola. Then, if he is to be believed, coke of another kind and wafty muzak.

When his neighbour on a whim changes, the menu, my colleague has to resist shouting through the stud-board walls that, really, he should stick to the crispy duck on Friday evenings, as there is a delay for tiger prawns in hot curry paste.

My colleague has taken to timing the deliveries, because the bell on his neighbour's door sounds as if it were his own. When he first moved in, he often answered his door, only to find a delivery man at his neighbours.

Sometimes, too, he will reach for his phone, only to realise it's the neighbours. As for more intimate matters, life being what it is, he and his wife have moved into the smaller bedroom, to avoid a mutual timing of activity which gave new vibratory meaning to wall-to-wall surround sound. All this he told our host developer in Britain, whose building career begun in Ireland.

Why such disparity between "both jurisdictions", he asked. Were there not building inspectors in every local authority in Ireland, employed to maintain standards of finish and sound insulation?

The developer looked at him steadfastly, to establish he was not being sent up, and carefully replied. "Maybe they play a lot of golf."