Steve Canavan: Idyllic silence broken by plodding hirsute youths

Loud music in the fells... is Alfred Wainwright turning in his grave, or is Steve getting cantankerous in his middle age?
Why spoil this with pounding dance music?  PictureWhy spoil this with pounding dance music?  Picture
Why spoil this with pounding dance music? Picture

I was out walking again in the hills – I’m off work and desperately trying to make the most of it – and found the most lovely secluded spot to sit and eat my tuna and cheese sandwich on crusty brown bread (disappointingly it didn’t taste as good as I’d anticipated while studiously making it the night before and was only enlivened by the addition of some cheese and onion crisps … not a thrilling sentence I concede, but I wanted you to know).

The grass was a tad damp so I perched on my Berghaus waterproof jacket (a detail I’ve included because I’ve heard if you mention a company they sometimes send you loads of free stuff in the post; note to Berghaus, I’m really in need of some good gloves), overlooking a lovely view of a lake surrounded by mountains.

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There was total silence. I couldn’t hear a thing. It was heaven. I felt completely relaxed and able to forget all my every day worries, like mortgage repayments, social inequality, and whether the nasty-looking rash on my upper right thigh is simply a harmless reaction to something or a terminal disease.

I poured myself a cup of coffee from my flask – I don’t know why but nothing on planet earth is as satisfying as a brew from a flask halfway through a lengthy walk – when I began to hear the faint sound of what I thought was music.

I paused and straightened my neck, like a fox trying to catch the scent of a rabbit he wants to gobble down, and, yes, there it was again.

Thud, thud, thud, slowly getting closer.

I couldn’t believe it. It was definitely music – well, either that or someone with incredible heavy and rhythmic footsteps that sounded uncannily like a snare drum.

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The music got progressively louder until a lad and his girlfriend came into view, marching towards me.

Now I don’t want to be dismissive of others but this man – in his late 20s - clearly liked himself. He had a trendy immaculately kept beard (I wouldn’t be surprised if he measured the length of every individual whisker with a ruler each morning to ensure they were all the same) and the hair on his head was slicked back, shaved at the sides, and in a ponytail at the back. In short he looked like a man I really wouldn’t want to have a pint with (yes, I know it’s wrong to judge someone by their appearance but when someone has hair like that, it’s difficult not to).

His girlfriend was incredibly sullen-looking, as if she’d last smiled three years ago and only then by mistake, and in her backpack was a radio blaring out music at a volume so loud it was as if they wanted a friend based several miles away to hear it too.

They didn’t look at me as they passed, which is clearly against the Lake District law (each walker, as every rambler knows, must at the very least give a cursory nod to a passer-by and make some bland generic comment like ‘weather’s turned out okay hasn’t it?’).

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As they plodded past, all I could hear was pounding thudding dance music with some woman vocalist wailing repetitively over the top, ‘I wanna see your body, yeah, I wanna see it now’.

Alfred Wainwright would have turned in his grave.

I shot them my best withering look that was meant to convey great disapproval and disappointment, but not in too aggressive way as he was much bigger than me and would’ve easily beat me in a fight.

However, the effort I put into my look was in vain for they didn’t even give me a first glance, never mind a second one.

I found myself getting more annoyed at this little episode than any sane grown man should and it made me realise once again that I’ve reached an age where the miniature of life increasingly annoys me.

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I must get it from my dad because he started to get a little more cantankerous too the older he got.

My favourite memory of this was when he was in a hospital waiting room, sat opposite a teenage boy wearing headphones.

All my dad could hear was this loud music and it began getting on his nerves. How could a young lad sit there with his music turned up so loud that everyone else could hear it, and worse still why was his mum not doing anything about it?

In the end my infuriated father began gesticulating at the boy, angrily pointing at his ears, and indicating in no uncertain terms that he should turn the volume of his music down.

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The lad stared wide-eyed at my dad in worried fashion, before becoming visibly upset and being ushered from the waiting room by his mother.

It was only after they’d departed that my father realised the music was still playing. It was coming from the waiting room speakers.

He raced after the lad and his mum to apologise but couldn’t find them and felt mortified about it for weeks afterwards.

It was a number of funny stories my dad told us from his time in hospital (that was the great thing about my father; no matter how ill he got, he always kept his sense of humour), my absolute favourite being about a man who was wheeled into the ward and put in a bed opposite while his wife fussed round him.

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As the porter left, a nurse approached and asked: “Have you come from triage?”

The wife replied: “No, Chapel-le-Frith”.

Right, I must dash now – I’m off to put my hair into a ponytail, buy a pair of large headphones, and go walking in the hills.

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em…

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