{"id":12704,"date":"2026-03-06T12:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/?p=12704"},"modified":"2026-03-13T10:12:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T21:12:35","slug":"the-sound-of-silence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/06\/the-sound-of-silence-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The sound of silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember being a young teenager in the early eighties when Walkmans (Walkmen?) first arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to convey what a game changer they were. It was a time when everyone was excited about the possibilities of technology, and Japan were world leaders in everything tech related. China were a very insular country back then, it was difficult to even travel there, and instead we were all encouraged to study Japanese at school. Unsurprisingly it was one of the languages my mother studied as a hobby, and we had several mature Japanese exchange students over the years.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Not a photo of mature Japanese exchange students, instead this image relates to the paragraph below.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From memory, boom boxes* were also popular back then, with young people wandering around town carrying these huge \u201cportable\u201d stereos on their shoulders, ready to provide music for any impromptu breakdancing sessions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201dSony\u201d walkmans were the real deal, I don\u2019t remember the brand of the one I got but I expect it was some cheap knock off. It didn\u2019t matter, because it revolutionised my life. It didn\u2019t have a radio receiver, and of course there was no Spotify, so you were reliant on cassette tapes. From memory I played the debut album of The Police, Outlandos d\u2019Amour, on repeat, probably because I could only afford to buy one tape at a time. It was the soundtrack of my summer. The problem was, my brain couldn\u2019t comprehend the fact that I was the only one who could hear the music. This would lead to many amusing scenarios such as shouting in reply to any questions people asked you, so you could be heard over the music which of course they couldn\u2019t hear. Also, singing along to music only you could hear was hilarious to those around you.
\nTimes change, and now whole generations have grown up used to listening to music on their headphones. Even dinosaurs such as myself can eventually learn, and now I can listen to music through my EarPods in the office with quiet confidence that I\u2019m not going to accidentally hum along.
\nOf course, there\u2019s always a downside to everything new. There\u2019s been a fear that headphones will cause hearing damage for as long as I can remember, but recently there has been a new menace revealed in research. Apparently the plastic in modern EarPods has bisphenols in them which can leach into the body and act as hormone disruptors. Sounds very sci fi; I wonder if I can give up my HRT now?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

*someone reminded me yesterday that these used to be called \u201cghetto blasters\u201d, for some reason we didn\u2019t find that label problematic at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember being a young teenager in the early eighties when Walkmans (Walkmen?) first arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3iU","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11697,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/16\/day-2-addendum\/","url_meta":{"origin":12704,"position":0},"title":"Day 2 addendum","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 16, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I forgot to mention the Frenchman we met on our walk yesterday. He lives locally, and was putting some stuff in his rubbish bin as we walked past. How did we know he was French? Well, he told us, but we would have worked it out pretty quickly by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2837,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/11\/caption-competition\/","url_meta":{"origin":12704,"position":1},"title":"Caption competition","author":"Interloper11","date":"July 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Answers on the back of a postcard please. Prize on application.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/A694E223-CE9C-4416-8EAD-42CAD398FD19-253x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11579,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/26\/talking-japanese\/","url_meta":{"origin":12704,"position":2},"title":"Talking Japanese","author":"Interloper11","date":"March 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"My pace of acquiring my latest language has slowed somewhat. What sort of show-off country needs three different alphabets?? I made reasonable progress with hiragana, I\u2019m making a start with kanji, but I\u2019m ignoring katakana entirely. You have to have some limits when time is short. 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