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The Audio Jungle

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Thursday, 19th November 2009

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“WITH THESE new hearing aids, I can now hear as well as Sox.” I tell Richard at the bookshop.

“She doesn’t hear very well these days, do you Sox?” Sox looks at him quizzically.

Joking apart, they’re a success; walking around a near empty supermarket shortly after my visit to the audiology department this morning was like experiencing a poem of sounds, some familiar, others more mysterious, all of them vivid.

Swishing in stereo
Crisp crackling
Rustles and squeaks
Allegro beats

I’m still not sure what all of them were but they included; a family looking through the bags of sweets, our supermarket trolley, footsteps, squeaky shoes and the swish of clothing.

Hmm . . .
What did
you say?

The sound character of an individual supermarket trolley might not be of vital interest (unless you’re a supermarket trolley repairer) but imagine what it will be like in spring, when I’m hoping to hear grasshoppers clearly again, the call of a goldcrest or simply have the pleasure of more precision in the rustling of leaves and the swishing of grasses.

The idea is that over the coming weeks I’ll learn to filter out some of these strange new sounds, such as the crunch as I munch a toasted ciabatta or the swish of my hair as I scratch my head, but I don’t want to filter out too much of the atmospheric audioscape around me; there’s a wealth of information there that I haven’t been able to access for at least 20 years.

Sox, the border collie

Sycamore in a hedge.