SSSHHH. Next Thursday is Noise Action Day. I totally missed out on International Noise Awareness Day last month, it must have crept by in its carpet slippers. Now comes the follow-up.

The pedants among us may feel that Noise Action Day implies 24 hours of cacophony. "Action on Noise Day", while not so snappy, would have explained its purpose better because, next Thursday, we've all got to think about how we can cut down the noise we make in our daily lives.

Last week, I was gardening, making only a slight crunch if I walked across the gravel. Cars went by; planes flew overhead; an ambulance wailed along the main road; an electric lawn mower whined; nearby plastic guttering clicked in the sun's warmth; a power tool sprang into life and some of that audible scribbling known as world music burbled over it all.

Peaceful it was not but, apart from the music and the guttering, it was all necessary to somebody's daily round and making no more racket than normal. Bringing back half-round, cast-iron guttering would do the world a quiet favour.

Noise annoys. Not those perpetrating it, of course, or we wouldn't need a Noise Action Day, on which local authorities across the country are raising the question of noise and offering advice on how to lessen it. I asked my local authority what it was doing. "A couple of low-key things" was the answer. That'll be a quiet response, then.

Unsurprisingly, noise is a great generator of neighbourhood friction. Even less surprisingly, one of the two main causes of complaint is loud music (the other is barking dogs). The really interesting statistic there, if it could ever be collected, would be the number of people who'd love to complain about music (or dogs) but don't, for reasons ranging from fear of reprisals to not wanting to upset an otherwise good neighbour.

We could always tell when one young lad got in from school. The bedroom window was flung open so that we could all share his taste in music, even with our own windows and doors shut. We knew, too, the instant his parents came in from work because peace fell very, very suddenly.

We didn't complain, it wasn't worth it, though we came pretty near it during the school holidays. I did think of retaliating, but Bach and Buddy Holly didn't have the same level of welly. Wagner might have done, but I couldn't have stood it either.

Music is a personal taste, to be shared with like-minded friends, not something to be inflicted on everyone within earshot - earshot being anything from the other side of a party wall to 100 yards from a car's sound system.

Just as annoying as the full-on blast is being able to hear only the whump whump of the bass beat, generally from a party several houses away at a time when you'd prefer to be asleep.

On Noise Action Day, and for ever after, please turn it down. If Sir Paul McCartney can be asked to turn it down - he was last week during practice sessions at the Millennium Dome, and he did - so can the neighbourhood nuisance. But who'll be bold enough to ask?