Over these past years since becoming ‘vocally challenged’, I have become acutely aware of noise …background noise of all kinds. There is just so much of it when you stop and actually ‘tune into it’…. the noise of life, you can’t escape it and I know that I just need to suck it up and live with it….
BUT then there is the annoying, unnecessary, unintelligible sound of public address systems.
You know, the announcements at the train station, in the shopping malls or airports…when someone feels they have important news to impart and it’s lost somewhere between the ridiculously loud volume, their need to speak quickly (god knows why) and the running of one announcement right into the next ….until no-one listens any more and the words are lost in the chaos of the environment. No wonder the world is stressed.
This afternoon trying to return from our few days away, we had boarded the plane, only to be told that there was an ‘issue’ and we needed to disembark until the engineers had it sorted… (clearly a better option than finding out mid-flight). For the next 2 hours we were at the mercy of the PA system, instructions that could barely be deciphered were barked at us periodically adding to the anxiety of weary travellers who just wanted to get home… changes of time, changes of departure gate, missing passengers … it just went on and on and on.
All’s well that ends well … but surely with a little thought and attention there is a better way . I’m not pretending to have the solution, but there’s got to be one….. hasn’t there ???
Wonder Years 