I’ve never understood what possesses people to buy a house, say, under the flight path of a busy airport and then spend years complaining about the unbearable noise of the aircraft.

I once worked with a designer who moved into a house in south London that backed onto a busy railway line. Not the sort of thing you could easily overlook when viewing a property to purchase I would have thought, if, that is, you were at all interested to discover potential sources of noise and irritation before signing on the dotted line. But my colleague went ahead and when I joined the company, was already involved in a long and bitter legal battle with British Rail, as it then was. He claimed that the vibration from passing trains was causing structural damage to the foundations of his family home. The poor man was almost demented. He had dug trenches, taken readings and measurements, provided photographs, written a daily journal, even made sound recordings. The kid’s bedrooms had mattresses up at the windows to muffle the noise of passing trains. He would regularly take half days to appear in court, leaving the studio with an armful of colour-coded folders containing the evidence to support his case. Alas, it was all to no avail and after months of fighting his case, at great expense and emotional turmoil for himself and his family, he lost. Unable to take any more, his wife left him, taking the children.

Last week, while in France, I came upon another mystifying error of judgement. A new acquaintance of my hosts had recently moved in to the village. A Dutchman, he had moved to the area seeking peace and quiet. So what does he do? He buys a property on the busy road that skirts the village. The house is also opposite the small park that is home to the village war memorial, where the local disaffected, unemployed youth gather to rev their motos, smoke dope, drink, make noise and generally set out to be a big pain in the ass. He also hates gardening, so naturally has a third of an acre to mow and tend. And what does he do? Complains of course. Endlessly.