Back home in suburbia, it is a Tuesday morning. Pre dawn I was awoken by three metallic taps. In conversation with Re we realise the same three taps disturb our sleep at the same hour every morning. Comforting in their regularity, like all the other sounds which accompany us out here in the ‘burbs…

There is the ‘Bing Bong Bing’ which sounds like the beginning of a PA announcement in a train station. If we are home we hear it every morning between 9 and 10. The train station is surely too far away for the sound to carry this far, what could it be?

The bird calls which become a cacophony in the mornings.

Our neighbour #1’s motorbike chundering down the hill at 5:30am.

Neighbour #2’s son revving his car up the clanking metal ramp on their driveway late at night.

Our dog at bedtime huffs and puffs, her claws tip tapping on the deck. Any rustles from the trees, fences or gates elevate the huffs to barks.

Our neighbours dog ‘Mad Stare’ Trevor groans and moans in ecstasy as he writhes on his back, apparently he has a ‘skin condition’. His little Jack Russel sidekick, Daisy, normally runs up into the bushes during the small hours and lets out a shrill scream which sound like a nightmarish child being brutalised.

Then of course we have Neighbour K who screams at her husband. Sometimes weeks go by and they are quiet but then she starts with the swearing and screaming. It normally ends with her husband scuttling out to his car with Neighbour K smashing whatever she has at hand across the bonnet as he starts the engine to leave in a rumble of gravel.

Most of the time, like now, I hear magpies call; the clock ticking; the Kookaburras cackling down the hill; distant truck brakes down at the traffic lights and the turtle plopping and splashing. Did I mention we have a turtle?