Friday open thread: favourite and/or least favourite sounds

[dolorosa_12]

Just a straightforward one this week: talk to me about your favourite sounds, or your least favourite sounds, or both.

My favourites are, I suspect, pretty basic:

The movement of water (waves breaking, rivers flowing, water tumbling over rocks, etc)

The wind moving through leaves, or bare branches

Onions frying

Fire crackling

The crunch of dry leaves, twigs, or snow underfoot

Lots of sounds related to paper — pages turning, paper being cut with scissors or folded precisely, the sound of a fountain pen moving across the page

Babies laughing, or babbling, or small toddlers learning to talk

The song of Australian magpies

My least favourite sounds (other than obvious stuff like sudden unexpected loud noises) are audible chewing, or anything that sounds like lips smacking wetly — even just thinking of those sounds makes me grimace involuntarily.

What about you?

Comments

[raven]

I love this question. Like you, I love all sounds to do with the movement of water. I also like the sound of wind howling and rain battering glass. And I like regular, familiarly meaningful announcements: the Shipping Forecast, the "Mind the Gap" message, the radio closedown.

Sounds I don't like: most noises made by babies and small children, and the scrape of cutlery on plates.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh yes, the howling wind, and the battering rain are also good sounds. I also love the sound of heavy rain on a tin roof (this is very Australian).

The scrape of cutlery on plates is indeed an awful sound. I also dislike the sound of cutlery touching (like forks being scraped by knives, etc).