Once again it's summer, and sometimes it's rather hard to sleep well
because of all the noise; even more so if you don't sleep strictly at
night. It may also be hard to sleep well because of the hot weather,
but noises don't help.
Perhaps the least annoying noise source is construction works, since
those are more or less necessary. Then there are loud music and kids
(or drunk adults) screaming during daytime, which is quite annoying
and unnecessary (so you wake up angry and it's harder to get back to
sleep), but generally accepted. And sportsball fans, drunks, and
people with firecrackers or fireworks at night: in those cases one
actually should be able to call the police to sort it out, but chances
are it won't work or will backfire (noise complaints require some
proof, you can get fined for unintentional false complaints,
complaints aren't anonymous and police isn't necessarily competent,
occasional noises can later be made out of spite, noises don't
necessarily continue long enough for policemen to hear them upon
arrival, and so on, in addition to it requiring to get up and ruin the
sleep completely). Or to go and reason with people who make noises at
night, which seems to be about as good an idea.
A somewhat working strategy (usually employed by older people) I
observed is just to shout out of a window, asking for silence and
optionally threatening with the police, but it doesn't always work,
sometimes leading to more screaming. And it's for nighttime only:
doing that during daytime you'd sound like a crazy person.
There also are birds and occasional insects (particularly houseflies,
which wake me up sometimes). And dogs barking, but that's an issue not
specific to summer.
One option to deal with most of that at once is to soundproof the
room, but it would be tricky to do without sacrificing air flow.
Though perhaps loud noises are not frequent enough to bother with
that.
