Intelligence by Osmosis

In an effort to be more intelligent, or perhaps at least seem more intelligent by using complicated words that I don't quite understand the meaning of appropriately rather than wherever I think they sound at their most elegant (or, more probably, have simply plucked them at random from the ramshackle dictionary that I have compiled in my brain which has assembled itself over time in no particular order of alphabet or subject, having mistook them from some other word I may or may not have committed to memory and which will probably, in turn, be discovered in yet another misuse), I have started listening to Radio 4.

I don't work well in silence unless I am writing.

As a web designer rarely gets the opportunity to write unless they are writing their blog (which I readily exploited work time to do before leaving London and now, where no-one can accidentally see the tell tale browser window or, on my more cunning of occasions, an innocent looking text file which can be mistaken for overly complicated lines of badly written PHP by an innocent passer by, if they are particularly slow of mind or swift of legs, and which I feel so insanely guilty about the mere thought of doing in the same work time now I work alone and no eyes apart from rather aging and mostly agitated cats will glance at) I spend most of my time searching for noises that are less irritating than the clicking of keyboards.

Considering I loathe silence so much when I am creating rollovers and the like, it may seem slightly peculiar that I choose to work alone in Cornwall where the only background noises are made by grumpy felines or the milk/postman (who may be one and the same, I've never seen to be able to tell).

But what I hate even more than silence is office background noise. Noise of keyboards, of one-half of phone conversations, of munching, chewing, coughing, the inhaling and exhaling of cold ridden employees who sound like they're not so much at death's door but are in his living room having a nice cup of tea (death is, of course, a man. A woman would not turn up at such inappropriate occasions and would at least have the decency to ask whether it was a good time to interrupt).

I am the same when I attempt to sleep. I don't know if I have hyper sensitive hearing or perhaps my ears are just incredibly highly strung, but I find it incredibly difficult to sleep with anything more distracting than the sound of myself breathing (and trust me even that can cause me to lose my temper). This can be incredibly impractical and frustrating and I regularly have to sleep with earplugs (much to the annoyance of my boyfriend who regularly finds them under pillows, in bedding and generally in most places that aren't in my ears). Festivals are fun. At Glastonbury I practiced becoming so exhausted that my ears gave up their persistent perkiness and that seemed to work, until someone started up the usual round of yelling something along the line of 'Bollocks' or fell into my tent or perhaps both.

My problem, in my defence, is that something within me loves listening. I want to know what people are talking about, what lyrics are referring to (regardless of the fact that I am singing completely different ones than the songwriter), what the sounds are being omitted by. My ears are nosey. They want to know things that are none of their bloody business.

So most of the time my iTunes works in overdrive to satisfy my fastidious requirements. I want sounds, yes, but I want the right sounds that will hover over the silence or irritating background noises but not actually penetrate too far into the part of my brain that I believe is associated with creating websites (we don't talk much: I make the tea, it chooses accessible fonts and occasionally a colour that may even be web-safe).

I have experimented with the radio before, with varying results.

First there was XFM. Until I realised that they had approximately 10 songs assigned to their playlist for any given day/week/month. And then I persevered with it for about another year and a half, just to make sure. By then I had exhausted any love that hadn't been there in the first place.

Then, when I moved home to Cornwall, before I went to New Zealand, I thought I'd dabble in a bit of Radio One. Not only do they suffer from the same problems as XFM, they have larger budgets to be able to create incredibly irritating jingles and fund Sara Cox. In fact I have just checked Radio 1's online playlist and, in the 60 songs that they select most of their songs from (as they openly admit to) one of them is Evanescence and another is The Magic Numbers. That I have a chance of hearing one of them in my day is enough to reduce me almost to tears or violent rage. The possibility of two, and the website clearly gives me the impression that it is a very real possibility, is terrifying.

Since my return, I have exhausted my iTunes (or at least the 10% that I actually ever listen to, and the tunes that accidentally come on after the songs that I have chosen to play, Ben Harper to Bentley Rhythm Ace being a mix that I had never intended but am getting increasingly used to) and have exercised the wonder that is Pandora where my radio stations include 'Wailing Women', a particularly miserable compilation of some of the very best of the world's distraught ladies.

But I was longing to hear people talking, people arguing, people debating.

Yes I am aware that if I had stayed in an office in London I would have been welcomed with all that on a daily basis. But I wanted to be able to turn it off as and when I felt like it, and choose which argument I intentionally overheard.

My sister came over at the weekend and told me she'd been 'getting into' Women's Hour on Radio 4 now she was doing a lot of driving in her new job. I made some unflattering noises about Radio 4 but she insisted that it was really interesting.

I am a bit of a late starter when it comes to awareness of general knowledge, literature, culture and generally what is going on in the rest of the world. I only started reading the paper on a daily basis in London, and that was only because the Metro was free and it was preferable to staring to an embarrassing degree at the person opposite me (a problematic habit of mine is in order to overhear conversations correctly, and try as I might its the only thing my ears want to do, is that I have to look at the person talking). It was the same with books. While my sister has been absorbing literature since she was in nappies, my bedtime reading until I was in my teens was Asterix. And I still have the annuals in my room, just in case I can't sleep. As I got older, I chose Dilbert as an alternative, but it wasn't exactly Thomas Hardy. Textbooks on a new media degree course were rarely acknowledged unless it was to pad out a bibliography with something other than several possibly less than reputable URLs (author unknown). Only when I moved to London did I manage to begin to absorb books a little more like an old dog than litmus but it was a definite improvement.

But my sister had struck a chord. And so yesterday, when I couldn't find any tunes that quite calmed the beast that was my agitated restless web designer, I investigated the Radio 4 website.

Usually when I have to download something in order for something else to function on a website, I navigate away within seconds, not wanting to spend any longer on the internet than physically possible. But even with the discouraging command to download Real Player, I pursued, to my surprise.

So I started, still a little sceptically, with a documentary on JM Barrie. That passed amiably, so I tried Just A Minute and at one time laughed so hard tea nearly came out of my nose (I am not a total Radio 4 virgin, this had broken that years ago). And then a satire of some sort.

None of which I could recall to any significant degree today. But I tried again, wondering what wonders I could uncover in the exciting depths of the Listen Again category.
Today I have listened to harrowing personal accounts and devastating scientific reports. I couldn't tell you who by or what on, but perhaps, just perhaps, in time I will start to absorb the odd fact here and there in order to keep me with just mildly wet-wrinkled toes during dinner party conversations.

This is not to say that I frequent dinner parties very often. In fact, I can't remember the last time I did attend one. But I'd like to at least not be laughed at by my family when I try and pronounce the name of the Liberal Democrat leader (aha! I remember! There was a whole interview with him on Radio 4 this morning! I can't remember his name but I remember distinctly that it sounded a bit like an ailment. That's it. Sir Menzies Campbell (I've just looked it up). Would it be ignorant to admit here that I actually thought Sir Menzies wasn't Sir Menzies at all but in fact was some sort of exotic name in the area of SeMenzes? Yes, I think it probably would. This is why I am a web designer and not a political journalist. But perhaps he's missing out on a market of the less intelligent 20 somethings. Or perhaps that's why he's chosen the not particularly flattering nickname of Ming. I should at least be able to remember that).

So I've learnt something today at least. And that was alongside trying to make my ActionScript not read like it had been written by someone on copious amounts of hallucinogens (I am beginning to wonder whether soya has the same effects).

So I'm not exactly oozing intelligence just yet, but as they say Rome wasn't built in a day and I've an awful lot of house keeping to do in order to Spring-clean away the knowledge that I really don't have any use for any longer in order to make room for the onset of such general knowledge, however heart breaking it may be to discard (but no I'm not ready to give my intimate knowledge of specialist Lego bricks up just yet).