Dialogue: Cough, cough - I'd rather listen to the sound of silence

By JOE BENNET

When a friend rang to tell me that she had two tickets to see a popular local band and asked if I would like to join her, I was lost for words. But eventually I found a couple of nice ones. "No thanks," I said.

She asked me why not and I explained that music and I were not close friends. When I emerged from the womb I was perfectly formed except for the ears. They were cloth.

In the class orchestra at primary school I played second triangle of two.

Then I was moved to maracas. Then I was moved back to triangles but in a new position. There wasn't a lot for third triangle to do. I didn't mind.

When I was 7 my brother gave me a record for Christmas. It was my first record, The Sound of Silence by The Bachelors. I didn't have a record player. My brother did. His favourite song was The Sound of Silence by The Bachelors. I didn't mind.

At secondary school we graduated from whole-class orchestras to whole-class sing-songs. We had to sing a chorus that went "with a hey and a ho and hey nonny no". Mr Gardiner told me I was singing flat. I said I was sorry but I didn't know how not to.

Then I asked what a nonny was. I stood outside the room for the rest of the lesson listening to heys and nonnies. I didn't mind.

At university I was unique among students in having no means of playing music but the large man in the room next door made up for it. He played rock music very loudly. Then I bought a record player for £5. The best thing about it was the arm that held the record in place before it fell on to the turntable. If you pulled that arm back the record went into repeat.

I bought Two Little Boys by Rolf Harris, put it on the turntable, turned the volume up, pulled the arm back and went out. When I came back the lock on the door had been forced and the two little boys molested. I didn't mind.

I sold the record player to a girl for £10. It was my best musical moment.

"And so," I said to the woman who wanted me to go to the concert, "I don't want to go to the concert." She said I didn't know what I would be missing.

I said I knew exactly what I would be missing. I had been to concerts, I said, and I would be missing something I liked missing.

At the only orchestral concert I ever attended I discovered that classical music makes me want to cough. It is obviously a common allergy. Whenever the orchestra stopped playing for a bit everyone else coughed, too. I found it so hard not to cough during the music that I left at half-time. I didn't mind.

As soon as I got outside I didn't want to cough any more. Nor did I want to go back to the concert.

I do like some classical music but not much. The best CD I have is called, I think, Classical Music Without the Dull Bits. There are some nice tunes and it makes me feel highbrow. But all the same tunes can be heard on television ads. These days I can't listen to that CD without thinking of instant coffee or menstrual equipment. So I don't listen to it any more. I don't mind.

"But," said the woman, "this isn't a classical concert. It's country rock."

I said I didn't want to go to a rock concert either. I told her that I didn't dance and didn't like feral noises that I could feel through my bones. She said it wouldn't be like that and I asked her to promise and she promised, so I went.

The band were good to look at. There were two old hippies, and one young hippie. The young hippie was the son of the less bald of the old hippies.

All three hippies played guitars. There was also a drummer invisible in the gloom and a keyboard player who looked exactly like my solicitor.

Ageing hippies abounded in the crowd as well. Everyone danced but me. They flung their limbs and sweated and writhed and grinned. Even the seriously old folk in chairs swung their heads and tapped the rhythm with their hands.

And the people who had come to hear the music and the people who had come to make the music seemed to find a wordless joy, a goodness and an almost physical delight that I could understand but couldn't share in.

I didn't mind all that much.