There is another side to that coin that I will offer. Where I live, I am surrounded by a cocoon of green, grass, hedges, and trees. The only proper road is about half a mile away.All aroud are farms, the neaest shop is 8 miles away. About 98% of the time, if I exclude song, tghere is silence, broken only by the noise of a distant tractor, though occasionally it gets quite noisy, if its in a fierld next door.

So I have lived in this world of silence for some years. Its very rare ideed there is even the sound of wind, I’ve never seen a place with so little wind. Though I love music a great deal, I have grown to prefer silence. Problem is if there is noise I quickly feel irritated. I put up with the noise of society and my car when I go shopping, usually once a week.

If I am obliged to go where there is a lot of perople, such as a hospital or a train station, I find the noise seems physically painfull, even if the noise is not that load, though a train passing through is almost agony. My face screws up and my hands are over my ears.

In short, once you get really used to the silence both within and without, you don’t really want to venture into the outside world, because both will disappear. One result is I do not have a social life. Not that I’m anti-soical, I’m prepared to exchange with anybody, but the result is as if I was. Thus I have a virtual social life on the web. From one point of view its obviously not good to be like that. None the less, I suppose I could say that I have become a prisonner of silence!