Noise Pollution

Having already mentioned how much louder you have to speak to be understood hear, of late, i've had the joys of being exposed to large numbers of people in the same room. Suffice to say, it's noisy - except the strange thing is that, these days, it seems to be a lot more so than before. Maybe the good weather here is cheering everyone up. Now, far be it from me to be either racist or sexist but their is a definite trend as to the who the usual suspects are. In a crowded coffee house, it's nearly always the women who can be heard above the rest; as you'd probably imagine, it's the younger women over the older, although not always - last week, i was sat at one end of the local coffee shop and could hear the exact details of a conversation going on about 5 tables away between two 40-something women. Suffice to say, I wasn't the ONLY one who could hear.

There is also a definite trend towards coloured people being generally louder and more heard - over caucasians. Quite why there is the need for such increased decibels is beyond me, particularly when the large group of people who are listening are usually within a two metre radius - and when the laughter starts, well you may as well just stuff a load of cotton wool in your ears cause it's frankly deafening - and that goes for both white, blacks, male and female (although the females are the one that tend to have that oh-so-grating high pitched he-he-he laugh that goes through you like fingernails on a chalkboard). The upshot of this all is that, if i return to the UK and seem to be hard of hearing, or talking rather too loudly for my own good, please feel free to tell me to shut up.