Noises Past And Present

Some of us can remember the noisy rhythm of the old Deerness Valley; pit hooters, clashing milk bottles and singers with their poss tubs in an aerobic melody; not forgetting pit boots on pavement  before and after a  manly shift and perhaps later  the beery, cheery, farewell following a  seven pint stint.

A noisy youth's blethering back in 1968 has etched itself on the memory of this semi-reformed  journeyman. Just after pub closing  I was chatting to our opening bowler under a street light:

'' Wishart's blooming fast Dave. Do you agree?'

'Yep' said Dave.

Occasionally the beery conversation would bring a rise in decibels and then came a voice from a nearby house.

''There is a dead man in our house  so please go away''.

I replied with 'for goodness sake we are just chatting mister''

The point is we should have honoured the memory of the deceased and quietly drifted away. During that conversation I displayed the emotional maturity of a confused  insect and using beer as an excuse will not cut it.

Which brings me on to supermarkets. Noisy over stimulated children are familiar to all of us but a new trend has emerged: the super stimulated high decibel kid that values his or her decibel rating and displays  vocal power on the basis of ' use it or lose it' . It's not the child's  fault. It's not the parents fault. Its not even the supermarkets fault. Blame it on progress and enjoy the six varieties of banana and seven brands of coffee.

WB