I have decided to share a grumpy senior women vent about a lack of volume control in public places, and I am not just referring to ‘ambient’ music.

Before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I freely admit that I shamelessly get some of my writing ideas by earwigging into other people’s conversations – some might say that I am a little too nosey for my own good. I justify this trait under the headings of curiosity and empathy since hearing a writer declare that she whets her creative juices by sitting on park benches and tuning into the half-heard conversations of passers by. It is a gift for an over-thinking insomniac like myself to hear a random comment and then spend the Midnight hour weaving a whole back story to fill in the gaps.

However, lately I have found myself tuning into the conversations of others when I have absolutely no desire to do so. I have come to the conclusion that ‘people‘ are now speaking much too loudly in public places. My unscientific conclusion is that ‘people‘ are becoming so accustomed to wearing headphones/AirPods/cans/headsets (just trying to cover all possibilities here) that they now speak to the people who are right next to them as if they still have background noise hard-lining into their cochlea. It all seems to be becoming very shouty.

I said, it all seems to be becoming very SHOUTY.

When I say ‘people‘ are wearing headphones all the time, I distance myself from the collective, because, having oddly shaped ear canals, I have never found a set of ‘buds’ that sit comfortably with me. This is probably the reason that I run sans headphones, although plenty of my friends eulogise about the benefits of having a running coach screaming in your ear to pick up the pace. I just wish that I had been earlier to land on my non-scientific opinion that headphones are making people talk too loudly for I feel that my mother could have benefited if I had ‘dialled it up a notch’; she often said that I mumbled and that she had to lip read to understand me.

While I can appreciate the benefits of speaking clearly and audibly, this week’s blog gripe comes from some recent social forays which have left me knowing far too much about a total stranger’s personal life. If I had been sitting on a park bench on my own I might have appreciated these over shares – flipped open a note pad and jotted down some notes even – but on these occasions I was with people I actually knew and was intent on tuning into their conversations rather than being distracted by some random narrative from across the room.

My first example involves the discovery of the most perfect cafe above a tiny bookshop in a Cornish seaside resort. (Note that I am not revealing where this cafe is, because I hope to return there for a QUIET lunch one day and I do not want it overcrowded). Himself and I have chosen a corner nook from which to enjoy a holiday lunch and to flick – in a companionable silence – through some adjacent books as we wait for our order to arrive. There is a lady inaudibly knitting in a window seat overlooking the High Street and a couple of purple-rinsed ladies are chuckling quietly over photos of their respective grandchildren (I am guessing at this bit; for once I am not earwigging and I am just filling in a narrative around the photos they appear to be perusing. It now occurs to me that there could be a much darker narrative here if I change the subject matter of the photos – thinking about it, these ladies were chuckling rather mischievously and conspiratorially, but they were doing so in a pianissimo fashion so we will let this go.).

From across the far side of the cafe, a young couple sitting at opposite sides of a tiny coffee table then start discussing the intricacies of the female’s convoluted love life. It as if she feels that the whole cafe must be on tenterhooks to discover whether she will ever get to meet the hapless chap who has apparently been messaging her online (she is very liberal in her discussion about swiping left and right, so all of us in the cafe presume this is where they must have met and I believe that we are all silently and collectively willing this poor man to run in the opposite direction rather than risk the prospect of discovering in person how loudly she speaks). The male friend sitting very closely to this screeching Harridan seems to think that he is appearing in an episode of Made in Chelsea (I hear this is how the show works…) and matches Madam Amplify decibel for decibel, fuelling both her story and her inflated ego.

Sadly, even my well-honed teacher look – guaranteed to silence a whole assembly in one glance – cannot cut across this charming tea room to silence old gobby chops, and we cut an otherwise perfect lunch abruptly short.

Then I give you the example of a recent pre-theatre dinner (living our best life) and find that Himself is far from amuse bouche to note that I am clearly distracted from our conversation by the couple sitting on the table next to us. I cannot help myself; it is as if I am dialled off our chat frequency into their’s and although I just want to lean over and ask them if they can stop shouting at each other about their imminent house sale, instead I find myself deeply concerned that they may be out-bid on the des res they have just been to view. I also find myself desperately hoping that they are not sitting next to us in the theatre after this meal. Himself starts shooting me disgruntled glances but against their all-consuming noise he cannot hear me subtly trying to whisper why I am unable to tune into his much more interesting discourse.

I run my theory about lack of audio awareness past a medical chum. She does not pretend to have any specific specialism here but agrees that the older she gets she too pines for a bit of hush and a good old fashioned-library ambience in public places. She also tells me a story about her outdoor swimming club; she had been excited to hear that a sauna had just been erected in response to a request from her cold-water nutter friends to warm themselves up either before or after a swim. My friend had been excited to test out the sauna until a lady in the changing room warned her against it, ‘I wouldn’t risk it myself, apparently there is too much ‘sauna rage’ going on in there – the swimming club committee will be asking members to vote for a Silent Sauna at the next meeting in response to complaints about too much amplified over-sharing’. My friend tells me that she thinks it is all just hot air that will blow over but she might just use her vote to join in the silent protest.

We decide to go for a quiet walk across the Downs and wonder if we are just getting older and more grumpy. We walk on in companionable silence. She asks me what tune I am quietly humming and I tell her that after our sauna talk I now have an irrational and annoying ear worm of Don Estelle and Windsor Davies from ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ singing ‘Whispering Grass’. ‘It is proof that I am now old and therefore can be grumpy,’ I say. You remember ?’ ‘Oh yes’, she responds and then joins me in a quietly hushed chorus of : ‘Whispering grass don’t tell the trees, for the trees don’t need to know’.

I might just download the sound track… and then pump up the volume.