What noise annoys?

'Good morning! Do you live there, in the village?'

We were cycling homewards as he called to us, in English, from the open window of his car. In San Sebastián it's not unusual for a car to pause briefly to exchange a few words with a friend as they pass a bike or a pedestrian or another car, and drivers following behind will generally indulge them without hooting. (Don't try that in Madrid.) In this case there was no hurry because we were already out of town, on a quiet local road where only a couple of sheep showed any interest, looking up briefly from the dry riverbed with weeds dangling from their mouths.

The car driver was a young man in a hired Fiat Panda. We told him, yes, we lived in the village. His response took me aback: 'How do you stand the noise?'

'Noise?'

Our village is near the town but definitely rural, no lorries rumbling through or noisy markets or wild parties at three in the morning. It's a small, quiet, country village.

'I was hoping to find somewhere to rent here for a few weeks,' the car driver continued, 'but I've changed my mind. The dogs!'

'Ah, the dogs...'

'There's always a [beep] dog barking. Listen!' A high-pitched yelping in the distance obliged him with a demonstration, floating across the village from someone's flat roof. Occasionally a deeper, throatier bark responded from someone else's flat roof.

I've discussed Gomeran dogs in an earlier story (Try not to look scared, 16 June 2016). They have progressed from being either hunting dogs or guardians of goat sheds and garages to much closer integration into family life as pets. Everyone's got one, except us. Many live cossetted lives within the house, others are housed more traditionally on a flat roof or in a garden kennel made from wooden pallets and scrap metal.

'You get used to it,' I told the English visitor. 'We don't really notice them.'

He pulled a face, shrugged and drove away. A towny, I thought, slightly miffed. He'd be happier with the roar of a motorway or aircraft taking off over his head. In our earlier existence in England we lived briefly under one of the flight paths from Heathrow Airport, where Trident jets and Boeing 707s screamed overhead every couple of minutes, drowning conversation. Our next-door neighbour would stand in his garden shaking his fist at them, face red with rage. He bought a noise level meter so he could phone the airport to quote decibels if a plane exceeded the permitted limit.

What's a barking dog compared with that? Today, newly sensitised, I registered the welcoming barks as we arrived home and felt strangely protective of them. These creatures endure boring lives for most of the day and the arrival of two people by bicycle, opening a door, unloading shopping and perhaps greeting a neighbour is a big event. Why wouldn't they bark? Sometimes we see a black-tipped snout peeking above the wall of a flat roof, a pair of ears pricked up to capture any disturbance.

Everywhere's noisy, in one way or another. In our village there are also cats, of course, which sometimes yowl mournfully at night until I open the door and hiss at them. There is also a flock of hens nearby with their strutting rooster that cock-a-doodles throughout the day, sometimes causing English city-dwellers we're talking to on the phone to pause in astonishment: 'Is that a cock crowing?!' This particular cock's predecessor crowed all day and also throughout the night, but not for long. 'Crowing at dawn is fine,' its owner commented, 'but not at three in the morning. No, no, no. Into the roasting tin for you, my lad.' You'd think that the process of evolution would by now have eliminated such over-enthusiasm in roosters but evidently there's an occasional throwback.

Nobody, as far as I'm aware, got impatient with the parrot that lived in a cage on a neighbour's balcony and was able to bark like a dog, yowl like a cat and wail like an ambulance siren. This was straying a little far from nature, if you want to nitpick, but constantly entertaining. Unfortunately its owners moved away before I could teach it to whistle the Colonel Bogey march.

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The title is a reference to that immortal childhood tongue-twister, What noise annoys a noisy oyster? A noisy noise annoys a noisy oyster...

So, what noise does a dog make? It goes woof, doesn't it? Woof woof! Or in the case of Snoopy in the Peanuts cartoon, arf arf!

Spanish dogs don't do either of those, they go guau, guau! In my unbiased judgement this is more authentic than either woof or arf. Pronounced correctly in Spanish it goes something like goo-OW! with a very gutteral 'g', right at the back of the throat, and is about as close as you could get onomatopoeically.

Spanish cats go miau which sounds much like the English meeow, so that's a draw, but for roosters I think English wins. A Spanish rooster is supposed to say quiquiriquí or kikirikí which sounds something like kee-kee-ree-KEE - and to be brutally frank, I've never heard one say that. Cock-a-doodle-DOO isn't very accurate either but - here's the key - it improves greatly if you slur it as though appallingly drunk. Try it, go on, it's fairly convincing. Cheers.