VIBRATIONS.

One day Issa was playing with his little wooden train set, with rails set up on the carpet in the front room.

He likes to make little hills for the rail track and lots of curves, so that the train's journey is exciting.

On this particular day the train's engine didn't have enough power to go up any rises, or around any corners.

It couldn't even pull any carriages, because its battery was too flat.

Eventually all the engine was capable of was proceeding very slowly in a straight line.

At this stage Issa lost interest, and just left the train engine running slowly across the floor.

From the kitchen, I could hear a lot of noise going on outside.

In the street around the corner a house was being demolished.
A digger was crashing and banging as it knocked the structure down.

There were clatters and bangs and rumbles as it gathered up the rubble and dropped it noisily into the back of trucks.

I was washing dishes when I noticed a noise coming from the fridge.

"It must be picking up vibrations from the machinery working outside,"I thought.

Eventually I thought I should check the fridge, to make sure there was nothing wrong with it.

I could definitely hear noise coming from the fridge, and it seemed to be loudest near the top.

I opened the fridge door and listened, and the noise from inside seemed to be more of a hissing sound rather than a vibrating sound. I hoped it wasn't being caused by leaking refrigerant gases.

I'd better turn the fridge off, but where was the power point?

I couldn't see a power point on the wall in the space beside the fridge, and I couldn't see a power point on the wall above the fridge, because the space between the top of the fridge and the cupboard above it was too high and too narrow and dark.

I assumed that the power point was behind the fridge, and that the fridge would have to be moved to get at it.

I decided not to try this because of my injured shoulder.

Although I didn't want to disturb my daughter, who was working upstairs, there now seemed to be no alternative, because urgent action might be required.

When I got my daughter to come down she listened to the noises from the top and inside of the fridge.

She was tall enough to see through the crack above the fridge that the power point was on the wall just above the fridge.

She quickly got a stick and poked it in to turn off the power switch.

The vibrating noise from the fridge continued, and, without hesitation, my daughter used the stick to sweep the floor from side to side under the fridge.

In the process, she flicked something out.

It was the source of the noise and vibrations. 

It was Issa's little model train engine, which was still running, after it had proceeded slowly across the carpet, then crossed the tiles unnoticed, reaching the kitchen, and ending up under the fridge. 

Here it had been unable to proceed any further, once it reached a back leg of the fridge.  

Why couldn't I have diagnosed and solved the problem as smoothly and swiftly as my daughter had done?


Another time, at another place, I sensed another vibration. 

Steven had just switched off the light in his bedroom when I became aware of it.

"Can you hear that faint vibration?" .... I asked?

Steven listened, and said that he could.

It was a very faint "... d d d ... d d d ... d d d ...", but where was the noise coming from, and what was making it?

Steven got out of bed to listen, ... trying to locate the noise.

First he opened the door into his walk in robe leading to his en-suite. The vibration wasn't coming from in there.

Then he moved along the wall towards the bedroom door, which he opened, to listen in the next room.

The noise wasn't coming from in there, so he came back into the bedroom, shut the door, and put his ear to it.

"I've found out what's vibrating," ... he said.

"This shoe horn hanging from a hook on the back of the bedroom door is vibrating ever so slightly. "

I got up to listen too, and noticed that as the shoe horn vibrated it just managed to tap the door in a faint rhythmic pattern.

Or was the door vibrating slightly and making the shoe horn vibrate?

In the distance faint noises were coming from either the limestone mine, or the new hard rock quarry, or from both.

Were noises from the mines making the shoe horn vibrate?

Another night at Steven's place I was woken by a train blowing its whistle, before starting to move off into the distance, on the train line that services the mines

When I couldn't go back to sleep I got up for a cup of tea. 

I again heard the faint vibrating noise, and saw the shoe horn on the back of the bedroom door vibrating slightly.

Then in the dining room the back sliding door was vibrating noisily.

My daughter once told me that if vibrations go on and on they will eventually shake a house to bits.

So maybe it's just as well that someone is interested in buying Steven's property.

Outside a loud noise was coming from the direction of the nearby mines. Sometimes you can hear the mines and sometimes you can't, depending on conditions, but both mines actually continue operating 24 hours a day.


As I drank my cup of tea, I thought ...  "The vibrations must be coming from the big crusher at the hard rock quarry, or from the crusher at the limestone quarry, or from both, but how were they travelling?   ....through the ground?, ....  or through the air?"     ....  "And what was under the ground between the quarries and Steven's house?"

"Is it just more hard rock, and / or more limestone, or a mixture, or some other rocks or minerals?"

"And why had a helicopter with a sensor on it been criss- crossing Steven's property recently?  ....  and why had some sort of drilling been taking place across the road on one of the mining company's properties?"

"And why had a someone recently expressed an interest in buying Steven's property?"

"What did he know?"

"And what did the mining company know?"

Now that I had finished drinking my cup of tea I felt like going to sleep, so I went back to bed.   



When a manager from the mining company visited Steven's house one day recently Steven told him about the vibrations.

The manager suggested .... "I don't think that vibrations from machinery could travel through the ground all the way to your house." 

"The distance is too great, and there are different types of rock, none of which are continuous."

He continued  ...  "I'm inclined to think that sound waves are the cause, probably infra sound from the mines." 

Soon monitoring equipment was set up near Steven's house, and today the technician came back to pick up his equipment, so the results could be checked.

Unfortunately all hadn't gone well.

It was discovered that one of the leads to the equipment had been cut through, and Steven suspected that a rabbit was the culprit.

Once in the past a rabbit neatly cut through the phone line under Steven's house in similar fashion.



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