Kitchen Garden Forum

We went to grandson No.2's engagement party last night which would have been lovely (pleasant, convenient venue, good company, tasty food), if the DJ's music had not made conversation almost impossible. Why do young folk have to have things so noisy? They will be deaf by he time they are thirty, I fear. We oldies felt a physical relief when we left the room.

Dear Monika, i'm afraid that's the way it seems to be these days.

I must admit, i've never been over keen on loud music.

Monika, I fear you may well be right about their hearing being affected by over loud music.

Years ago, I used to go to Rock Music concerts,night clubs and the like, in the days when there was no legislation regarding decibel levels. The night club I went to 3 times a week, was so loud, you could not hear conversation...just see folks mouths moving. When I left, my ears would be ringing and everything was muffled...they would just about be recovered when I went the next time.
The result of this being, by the time I was in my late thirties, I was having difficulty in hearing conversation when there was any sort of background noise. The hearing test revealed I was becoming hard of hearing and the damage to my ears was caused by noise damage...as I have never worked in a noisy environment, the conclusion was, my love of loud rock concerts/music and my frequent visits to the nightclub has taken it's toll on my precious hearing.

Now I'm 57, the problem has only got worse, despite my taking care not to expose my poor eardrums to further assaults. While I am by no means deaf, I struggle to hear conversations on social occasions where there is any sort of background noise, be it music or just general hubbub of voices. I have to ask folks to repeat themselves several times, whilst watching their lips and it extremely annoying to only catch half of what is being said! If someone speaks to me, whilst not looking my way, I haven't a hope of hearing what they are saying.
When meeting folks for the first time, I explain my predicament instead of trying to bluff it out.

If only I had known in my youth, the damage that my love of loud music was doing....but there again...I don't suppose I would have stopped going to concerts and nightclubs!! At least todays generations are partially protected by noise level regulations in public places. It's the ones who use their gadgets with earphones, with the volume full blast and those whose cars positively throb and you can hear it coming from way down the street, that are heading for trouble with their hearing. I don't suppose they would heed warnings, any more than I would have!
Cheers.

Monika - I do sympathise. We went to a dinner just before Christmas and sat on a table with some lovely people we don't see very often so would have loved a good old chin-wag. Yet there was a pop singer bawling away all through the meal and we had to give up any chance of conversation. Even when he was asked to turn the noise down, we still needed a loud hailer to speak to each other and in the end we just gave up. It would have been a lovely occasion apart from this but the noise completely ruined it for us.

It's one of the reasons why we gave up going to our local gym. They just had loud pop music blaring out non-stop and it was hell! . We asked if we could have some classical music instead and they looked at us as if we'd come from another planet. We cancelled our subscriptions and now exercise in the fresh air at the free outdoor gym recently installed in our local park, and the only noise is the birds singing in the trees overhead.