Skip to main content

The most terrifying noise in the world


I’m reasonably tough. Not wrestle-a-bear-to-save-the-damsel tough, but a bit better than burst-into-tears-at-the-sight-of-a-spider wussy. Just about, anyway.

I’d fight you to prove it, but to be honest, that sounds a bit scary, and I’d probably lose. Last Saturday I came into contact with the most terrifying noise in the world ever. More alarming than, well, an alarm – even an alarmed alarm. More horrifying than someone saying “Your round? Great, I’ll have a triple whatever that really expensive whiskey is”. Louder than 50 Barry Scott’s trying to push their Cillit Bang on you. More piercing than Concorde flying in one ear and out of the other.

I went to my nearly-nine (she is now) year old niecelet Rebecca’s birthday party. There were 20+ under 10s, largely of the female variety. If that sounds pretty scary straight off, someone had done the unthinkable, and added water. Much like those film critter Gremlins, mixing children with water, in this case a swimming pool, causes them to become whirling, screeching banshees, unable to control the ear-damaging decibel levels that emanate from themselves, nor the particularly high-pitched nature of the noise.

Bats 50 miles away probably woke up startled, thinking it was Batmageddon. Dogs for miles around will have had their owners thinking the house was haunted, as their tormented ears tried to deal with the invasion of squeals, and they barked fearfully into thin air. They were the lucky ones. This swimming pool was that nostalgic, old-school sort. No fancy viewing area, shielded by glass windows and with comfy chairs and a machine vending something that might be coffee, or possibly tea (it’s hard to tell). Oh no. This one had cold, hard, benches. You had to put bags that you’d normally see being used to collect dog poo over your shoes. Then you got to sit, with the delightful smell of chlorinated water, right at the edge of the pool, with only a plastic chain between two poles for protection.

There’s a special place in Hell for whoever designs these places. Every surface is shiny and reflective, perfectly suited to reflect and multiply the sound. And oh... the sound. It’s like some kind of hive consciousness occurs between the little ‘uns, rendering normal speech unnecessary, and resulting in them making only glass-shattering ululations, as one, until you become convinced something inside your head just exploded.

Still, nature has given the youthful some kind of mechanism that allows them to make that noise without killing themselves on the spot, so clearly this is a normal evolutionary development.

On the distinct plus side, afterwards there was party food, including that most inexplicable but excellent device of fun and jeopardy, cocktail sticks with cheese & pineapple on. There was music too (although I was restrained from dancing Gangnam Style), and goodie bags. Plus Moshi Monsters chocolate cake, which makes up entirely for the inner-ear bleeding, permanent hearing loss, and sudden onset aquaphobia.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 22md March 2013. You can view the edited version used by the paper on their website here Because you're so goddamn lovely, you've got the full, original, version here with 65 extra words! Barry Scott went missing (no bad thing) and the brief second-to-last evolution paragraph vanished too, but they're back!

If I've made it sound like I didn't enjoy myself, that couldn't be further from the truth - it was seriously good fun. Except for the screaming.

What's next week's column about? Well, someone remixed the BBC News24 theme music without asking me first... (Subject to me being able to sustain a rant about this fact for 500 words and nothing else seeming like a better idea in the meantime.)

(Proper old-skool 90s glowy-sticks, waving your hand in front of your face, Global Hypercolour T-shirt, dancey nonsense this morning emanates forth from Grumpy Towers - It's Sash!'s Greatest Hits!)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...