Yesterday was, according to our laws, a day of reflection in the build up to the European Parliament elections which are being held across Malta and Gozo today.

So here, at this media house, we decided to try and reflect. It was not very successful. When you actually stop and sit and think, you realise just how noisy this country of ours is. You get ready for work, and you can hear the hawkers beeping their completely bombastic horns to coax you out to buy fish, bread, gas or whatever. If you are really unlucky, then you get the donuts guy driving around with the same piercing call time and time again, causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand on end.

The you walk to your car, and you hear the inevitable thumping and thudding of a construction site, with cranes clicking and clacking and engines roaring. You get a brief respite as you start your engine, and then it begins, beeping, hooting, swearing and cussing – an everyday drive to work.

You finally get to work and you hear lorry after lorry zooming along the roads... residential or arterial, it does not matter, the lorries and trucks are most definitely there. You look for somewhere a bit quieter, and there it goes, the dog barking on roof, somewhere in the vicinity. The moments of silence between barks punctuated only by some boy racer blaring out hardcore tunes that are loud enough to shake glass windows.

As the day drags on, the boy racers in their pimped out hatchbacks come out to play and they screech their tyres as they try and impress some girl that walks by. If they’ve really spent some pennies on their car, you might even be treated to an oversize exhaust pipe’s blare of auditory assault as they accelerate away. Oh, and let’s not forget the church bells of course, and the awful two stroke motors that kids are putting on their pushbikes nowadays.

We are Mediterranean and that means we are fiery and noisy by nature. But the noise that surrounds us constantly cannot be doing our health any good. Summer is on its way in and the next thing will be the daytime fireworks and the dreaded open air summer night clubs. Noise is part of life, it is the sound of activity. But excessive noise – as we are all subjected to every day is an entirely different matter. There are rules and regulations that are supposed to limit noise levels, but it is clear that these are flouted constantly. The government has sought to improve people’s lives, but this is one area where urgent attention is needed.