SUMMERTIME, when the living is easy… yes, thank you very much George Gershwin, we’ll let you know. Actually, it’s all right for you waxing lyrical about the ambience of the American south where the noisiest thing is probably a catfish cavorting or a whip-poorwill wittering in the white oaks. You wouldn’t feel the same if you lived in a British city like Worcester, George my old mate.

Noise. That’s what summer in the city means… and lot’s of it. The Lovin’ Spoonful wrote about the subject, rhyming ‘city’ with ‘pretty’ but they might as well have been on another planet as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, noise. It’s other people’s children by day and boy racers at night. How come the police don’t do anything about these rat-faced youths in their flatulent sardine tins? In my day, anyone who drilled a hole in the baffles of their motorbike could expect a red-faced copper to pull them over.

Sorry, I forgot – causing a nuisance is not worth preventing these days as it doesn’t come under the file section headed ‘targets’. Silly me.

Child noise is rapidly becoming a public menace. Because of parent paranoia, kids are prisoners, kept under house arrest in open jails called ‘gardens’. They no longer run free, and mums and dads have long forgotten the words “make sure you’re back in time for tea.”

The result is the cacophony that announces the presence of what should be a quiet suburban street long before it appears on the horizon.

Yes, yes, I know this is grumpy old man syndrome. But why should the consequences of mere lifestyle choice – unfettered breeding – impose itself on the rest of us? Why do I have to be an unwilling participant in this endless festival of procreation worship?

I think we owe it to our neighbours to bear in mind that it is only schools and teachers who break up at the end of term. The rest of us must turn up at the pitface through the July rains and the dog days of August, dreaming of that bucket of red that waits beneath the clematis when the sun has sunk over the horizon.

All I want is to be able to enjoy it in peace. Is that too much to ask?