Sounds of the Day
My alarm used to be the soothing sounds of BBC Radio 3. But frankly, it was too frickin’ soothing, so now it’s a wailing beep.
I am addicted to podcasts. To get the day rolling, I usually start with something from Stuff You Should Know, or it’s gender-based sister podcast, Stuff Mom Never Told You. There’s something about a high-speed American voice being thrilled and surprised by New Things on areas that it never even occurred to you to research, let alone pay attention to, that drags the brain kicking and screaming towards consciousness.
While writing emails I’ll have some music on in the background; often jazz, sometimes classical, occasionally rock, but I find it harder to concentrate on what I’m writing if the music is too catchy. Catchy stuff – Nina Simone, Muse, Foo Fighters or the songs of Tim Minchin and Tom Lehrer – are saved for when I’m out walking.
When the time comes to cook, I put on stuff I can sing along to. I am a terrible singer; that knowledge, however, doesn’t stop me. The gentleman in my life prefers to put on the radio – mostly a station called Resonance FM which seems to consist of everything you didn’t expect ever. I’m getting used to walking into the kitchen to conversation in French, Arabic verse, Peruvian flute playing, Israeli boy bands, African folk-rock, discussions on censorship or pulsing techno hits being played out from the little radio by the toaster. If I am even briefly confused, I take a moment to consider and then remember – ah yes. It must be Resonance. In the good old days I used to listen to XFM while cooking, until I became so exasperated with the DJs that I switched stations. On a sluggish Saturday morning, I might risk BBC Radio 4, but there’s always that moment of terror when you switch on, not sure if you’re going to get the comedy programs (which are perhaps the only things I’ll tune in for regularly regardless of what I’m doing) or, god help us, the Archers or Thought for the Day. In my old home, there was a radio in the bathroom, and I was a master of the soaking-wet four-foot lung to switch over at even the first hint of the sound effect of wet sheep or shrill self-importance coming from the BBC…
BBC radio dramas are an equal hit-and-miss in my life. On the one hand, when they’re good, they’re brilliant. I loved the dramatisations of endless Le Carre books last year, and will often give their science fiction and thrillers a punt. The danger, of course, is that you turn on to discover that what you’re listening to is an exercise in thrilling regionalism. It’s depressingly easy to make a guess as to what genre of play you’re listening to, just based on the first few words spoken and where the accent is from.
Thus: accents from Manchester and the North are almost invariably going to be dragged into plays about poverty and the breakdown of family life. Hit Glasgow, and you’ll find either gangsterism or triste tragi-comedies about lost dreams and missing cats. Head to Wales and odds are, it’s going to be history, national pride and possibly close-harmony singing. Ireland seems to be about abortion and alcoholism. Visit East London and it’s not-actually Cockney youth doing drugs and getting crushed by da system, man; while the West Country is all about the cows, sheep and church halls. How relieved, how grateful the BBC drama programmers must be, therefore, when finally their schedule lets them do Nice Dramas about people with southern English accents who live perhaps in Hampshire. Dramas about, frankly, People Like Us.
I’m perhaps being a bit cruel… but listen for long enough and the tendency is there, frustrating as tinnitus.
Anyhow, moving away from dramas, I personally think the BBC really excels in factual broadcasting. When not writing or singing in the kitchen, my generic fare are Witness (because who doesn’t like primary historical documentation?) and From Our Own Correspondent, for the simple reason that the world seems so much closer when it’s full of humans, rather than statistics.
When the business comes of writing books, I tend to start – oddly – with the sound of rain. (This may explain why so many of my characters are so wet so much of the time.) It’s a funny thing, but I find that the sound of falling rain in real life, always triggers in me the urge to get writing. It is just possible that I associate the sound with typing; certainly the pattering sound against my window and the sound of fingers on the keyboard, while different pitches, do have a certain similarity in terms of rhythm and form. Anyhow, once the sound of rain has been running for a while and I’m what we loosely term ‘in the zone’, I can put on unoffensive, very quiet music, and get scribbling properly.
In the evening, I listen to documentaries to chill out, and when sleep finally comes, it’s often to the dulcet soothing voice of Alistair Cooke, whose gentle ‘good night’ at the end of every episode is as much a command in my mind, as it is a farewell.
By night, with the window open, I can hear a few sounds of the city. There’s sometimes very distant traffic noise, and the occasional passing siren, but I’ve always liked the sounds of sirens and, without voices or music to distract me, I find that the background urban hum is no more or less soothing than any musical drone, sending me straight off to sleep.
