A sound investment?

You get to a certain stage of life (of which I am living proof) where one of the great joys is shouting at the telly. Or, in my case, the radio, which shows you just how much of an old fart I have become. I have even been known to call it the wireless.

This week, in between all this heady hedonism and to underline my rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, I have been getting my tax sorted out. I’m just waiting for HMRC to send me the final reckoning and off it will go, into the ether, never to be seen again as it flies unerringly to bolster the bonus pot of a public/private finance executive.

The shouting at the radio bit comes into this sad state of financial affairs because I have taken grave exception to the incredibly patronising advert, featuring a smug-voiced actress and, no doubt, various poorly-paid drama school graduates impersonating ducks, that is reminding me to do so.

I grant you that a gentle jog to the increasingly-fading memory is no bad thing. And nobody really wants to pay taxes, although there are those of us naïve enough to believe that it is right to do so and part of our role as good citizens to cough up.

It’s just the bit at the end where the voice tells us: “And don’t forget to pay what you owe.” Why are you telling ME that? I and most other people are not allowed to forget what we owe because eagle-eyed government agencies are pretty quick off the mark in telling (and fining) us little people if we miss a due date. How about playing this irritating recording in the boardrooms of this great nation and beyond, where, somehow, individuals and corporate bodies seem to be suffering from a long-standing dose of semi-permanent fiscal amnesia?

Then we have the Treasury minister coming out with gems like: “The alternative to private sector involvement would mean the taxpayer taking on huge liabilities.” Excuse me? What just happened with Carillion? As for Theresa May’s promise that tough new rules will be introduced to tackle the behaviour of “executives who try to line their own pockets by putting their workers’ pensions at risk,” I have two words to say.

Robert Maxwell. And that was in 1991. Too cruel, perhaps, to assume that the strong and stable door is being closed just a little bit too late…

Time for a gong bath

Maybe the answer to my rage is a gong bath. Having in recent weeks plumbed the depths with Gwyneth Paltrow’s coffee attacks on the blameless bahoukies of the world, I have discovered that this is another fad claimed to do you good. Gong bath may sound like a rather camp fashion commentator but is, in fact, part of some wellness activities; it appears to involve lying on a floor relaxing (gissa job – I can do that) while someone strikes a gong in a fashion intended to bathe you in therapeutic soundwaves.

It imparts, so it is said: “An intense sense of letting go”; partly, I surmise, because you can’t hear what the hell else is going on for all the racket, if my experience of being kept awake by the sound of my mother’s neighbours’ pigging wind-chimes is anything to go by.

Sound, historically, is an integral part of the healing practices of many cultures and it should be said that gong bath practitioners underline that they play very softly, building up layers of vibration to change brain wave frequencies for calming and healing purposes. Personally speaking, it would take a bit more than that, I fear, if my erratic brainwave patterns are anything to go by.

I have been known, I will admit, to find myself wide awake and simultaneously completely knackered in the still watches of the night, while, ironically, managing to drop off to sleep in the most uncomfortable places with all kinds of sonic mayhem going on in the background.

Now, there’s no doubt that lack of sleep and insomnia are a terrible trial so, hey, if it works for you, go for it, I say; whatever gets you through the night. Certain sounds soothe, there is no doubt about it but I’m afraid that gongs, however euphonious, followed, as some practitioners aver, by the use of bells and rattles, do not strike me as particularly relaxing. Especially if you go for the group, rather than the oneto-one, session.

There’s a reason that whatever companies are currently running our railway services (I, like them, have lost track) are doing away with shared sleeper compartments. It’s bad enough having to deal with the emanations, sonic or otherwise, of someone you know, let alone those of a complete stranger.

In the immortal words of T-rex: “Get it on, bang a gong.” Or as Noel Coward once wrote, very politically incorrectly, in his play Private Lives: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.” Somehow, I don’t think this was quite what he had in mind.

Inthe immortal words of T-rex: ‘Get it on ,banga gong’

Picture: Allstar. Gongs in the key of life: T-rex frontman Marc Bolan delivers his own version of sonic therapy.