Blood-curdling screams

[nineveh_uk]

My office is close to another building that is having major renovation work done to it, by which I mean it is being gutted of all non-essential parts, having bits torn off it, and surrounding concrete broken up. As you can imagine, this can get quite noisy. This is not helped by needing the windows open at this time of year to cool things down. Most of the time it isn’t too bad, being the sort of steady rumble that is present, but not necessarily intrusive. Sometimes it makes the radiators shake or sounds like a very large gear wheel is being tortured, and then I want to bang my head against the wall, and wish I had been organised to enough to take whatever I am doing home to work.

And then there are the blood-curdling screams, because the builders are quite vocal. Obviously, tossing scaffolding poles to one another or handing large planks of wood up to the second floor does involve a certain amount of communication, and it’s fairly obvious when they’re doing that, or organising things, or having a chat, or perhaps sometimes just overcome with the desire to imitate the calls of newspaper sellers. What is not obvious is why every so often they let cry a blood-curdling scream, such as might be uttered by a man who in renovating an old hospital building has accidentally awoken an evil spirit from beyond the grave, and in his surprise has dropped a sledge-hammer on his foot. Since evidently no harm of this sort has come and the building is only pigeon-haunted, I can only assume that this is not what it is going on, but it is quite distracting.

Comments

[clanwilliam]

Urgh. We have a huge demolition job going on across the road from us, and major road/pavement works, so we can't open a window at all, as the dust level is too high.

I wound up with an inhaler for a chest infection thanks to all that, so my deepest sympathies for what's going on.

[nineveh_uk]

That sounds less than fun. While we had some demolition, it was a section that was sheltered by the wings of the building, and overall there has been very little dust.

[antisoppist]

Gosh. That sounds not a very ideal working environment. Have you not got rain yet (I have) or do they carry on howling come hell and high water?

[nineveh_uk]

Much as spring in Lorien, the rain seems always imminent, but has not yet come. I am going to take an early lunch, though, as I need to walk to the other side of town.

Ed. I spoke to soon, it is chucking it down.

[antisoppist]

I have hail. I only came home to eat eggs and bacon and then I was overcome by eggs and bacon and lay on the sofa for a while and now I don't think I am going back to work again.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Shades of M R James ...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Sometimes a mysterious figure may be seen to pass as if floating off the ground (i.e. there's a man walking on a plank).

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

'Quite distracting' sounds like a classic British understatement ;)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the screaming too much - it is random and weird, but not actually painful to the ears. The pounding, drilling, shriek of tortured metal, on the other hand... Hmm, maybe I just don't mind the screaming in comparison.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Circular saws and their close relatives the table saws will shriek, is it possible that's the source of the blood-curdling screams? (People coming in contact with both those items also give out blood-curdling screams, but since you fail to mention ambulances I will assume that's not the case.)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. I've heard a circular saw, though not for some time, but this was outside and (though I didn't clamber over the tables to check, as last time I did getting back was tricky) in an area where I thikn it is still more the dealing with concrete and metal stage, certainly no wood. And we are two stories up and in a stone building with double glazing.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps they're all being possessed by the evil spirits, which then have a settling-in period before running amok in their new habitat?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That's got to be the explanation. Time to stock up on holy water in the office.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

That sounds immensely unnerving. Maybe it's the pigeons.
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At my last workplace, a neighbouring building was being renovated and we spent a while with scaffolding up against the side of our building, complete with lots of extremely shouty builders. As we were a charity working with female victims of domestic violence, this was slightly unfortunate - partly because it could have been intimidating for our service users, partly because the scaffolding led neatly to our fire escape and it would have been quite easy to break in. It was not great.