The problem with summer is not the heat. It’s the music. Patio doors are thrown open and people migrate their lives to the garden. Naturally most people in the UK don’t have garden-based speakers that might deliver music to where it’s wanted at an appropriate volume, so folk just turn their indoor stereo up.

Home Working

The problem thus arises that any poor sod who works from home (who also needs to have the windows open to keep cool) becomes the involuntary recipient of <insert the name of an artist you consider awful here> and (throughout the day) every other dire musician who should have been banned from selling their dirge many years ago.

Music Wars

Obviously not everyone has the same taste in music, so it’s common round here for other neighbours to mask the incoming noise with their own music preference – highly repetitive beats and wailing crooners are especially popular. This is great for the retaliator, but it makes the problem worse for every other neighbour who has to suffer the dischordant interweaving of tracks from multiple “artists”.

As the current background song almost says: “Near, far, wherever you are; if you’re within earshot you will not be able to think straight whilst I’m howling.”

Perhaps this is one of the reasons I work so well at night!