POOR old Kendal Town Hall clock. Its bells have been clanking away since time immemorial and now somebody wants to shut it up on the grounds that it disturbs their sleep.

If the complaint had been about its rhythmic shortcomings - just listen to that annoying delay in the strike right in the middle of All Through The Night or the incomprehensible tunes like the slightly dubiously titled When The King Enjoys His Own Again - I might have had some sympathy, but I have none for the notion that the clock is a disturbance.

After all it has been bashing out its tunes for around 200 years and is one of Kendal's best-known features, so anyone living within earshot has only themselves to blame for moving there in the first place.

The same thing happened in Ulverston a few years ago when a woman from London bought a flat in the town centre and had hardly taken up residence before she was complaining to the council that the town clock there was keeping her awake.

Foolishly, in my view, South Lakeland District Council took the complaint seriously as they were afraid she would take them to court and there were endless discussions as to the best way of silencing the clock.

I think it all came to nothing in the end as she decided she didn't like Ulverston and moved back down south, but at the time I remember wondering what would have happened if the boot was on the other foot.

If I had decided to move to London and had bought a nice little flat on the edge of Parliament Square then complained to the authorities that the big clock on the end of the Houses of Parliament was keeping me awake I wonder what the reaction would have been? Probably it would have been an instruction to get lost' or words to that effect.

Sadly, it is not just man-made noise which offends newcomers to the countryside there have been several stories in South Lakeland in recent years of people taking houses next to allotments then complaining bitterly that crowing cockerels were giving them a rude, and early, awakening.

In at least one case allotment holders were ordered to lower the ceiling height of their chicken coops as, apparently, cockerels cannot crow unless they can throw their heads back.

I felt sorry for the poor birds and I hope that by now they have learned the trick of lying on their sides so they can still fulfil their natural function even if it does upset the neighbours.