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Tinnitus, the despot and the cloak of silence
There is a visitor to my quiet little neighbourhood who is either an errant husband whose wife lives on our street or a laid-back Lothario who drops in on his expectant lover from time to time. It's not any kind of nosiness or bored suburban voyeurism that has drawn my attention to this. In fact, I'd literally have to wear earplugs, earmuffs, beanie and bury my head under the pillow not to notice his nocturnal visits – and even then I still might get tinnitus.
So loud is the music he plays in his luxury late-80s Mercedes that I can't help but feel that my tinnitus fears are not entirely without substance. For example, I was woken at about three in the morning last night by what clearly must have been the end of the world.
The house shook, the furniture bounced, ornaments fell from mantelpieces and several of the windows threatened to vault from their frames. I rose from bed and walked to the window pressing hard against the G-force created by the rippling sound waves emanating from outside. Half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud in the sky or a scene reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, all I saw was a dark shadowy figure wearing sunglasses stepping with deliberate slowness from his driver's door – him again. Then he stood there for a seeming eternity, drawing slowly from his lit cigarette, base still thumping, reflecting on his own inimitable coolness.
I am no do-gooder, instead preferring a philosophy of live-and-let-live. But I think that, were it not for this fellow's considerable swagger and near pathological unconcern for us mere night sleepers, I would confront him and politely ask him if we would mind turning his music down.
Okay, yes, I'm a coward, but I'm not the only one on my street, for, as far as I know, no-one else has yet had the courage to confront him. I was talking to another neighbour about this this morning. He came here as a political refugee escaping a military dictatorship in Ghana, so he knows a thing or too about despots, which is why I find his nickname for our tinnitus-inducing friend, The Deafening Despot, to be so authoritative.
Yes, it is an inescapable comparison; the gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, the immaculately pressed clothes, the long tinted-windowed white Mercedes and the air of divine entitlement.
Anyway, since my fear of recrimination prevents me from confronting the Deafening Despot over his flagrant disregard for common decency, I have been forced to devise, and imagine, other measures to protect both my sleep and hearing.
Were I to suffer permanent injury, I know that I'd have little hope of making a tinnitus compensation claim against him, so, counting out that possibility, I have to take my search for personal protective equipment pretty seriously.
This is why I was so excited to read this morning about the latest technological advances in the field of soundproofing.
The New Journal of Physics report that scientists have created something called a "cloak of silence". Although it might sound like it belongs to the realms of science fiction or be the signature clothing accessory of some enigmatic and stealthy superhero, it is, in fact, a method of utilising "sonic crystals" which make objects impervious to noise by channelling sound waves around them.
And Dr Sanchez-Dehesa, one of the minds behind the radical development, is saying some very encouraging things about the practical possibilities of the cloak. He commented, "It's not an unrealistic blueprint - it doesn't demand that we do extraordinary things."
"This is something that can easily be manufactured."
I'll just have to find a way of explaining to my wife that money we've put aside for the conservatory is about to go on something else. Part one of my strategy: get her a tinnitus factsheet. Anyway, we'd need a conservatory made out of bombproof glass for it to survive The Despot's visits.
