Singing mice and politics.

32,000 feet aboard one of earths many thousand atmospheric fan heaters. Disregarding the fact a19th century espaduro (we’re over Spain) would consider me an alien in a space craft and worship me for ever my mp3 player is barely audible. Normally max volume is perfectly capable of giving me tinnitus but now it’s no louder than a mouse squeak. In fact I’m beginning to see a little mouse family scampering over hi hats and synths, little mouse mother stretched on a mouse rack squealing, sorry singing like a trapped er, mouse. Der silly, it’s the jet engines drowning out the music. Well no actually. Yes there is lots of noise and yes that’s the cause but it’s not drowning the music out, I can hear it fine. The cause is that my brain having adjusted to the high level of noise ‘thinks’ the music is quiet by comparison. I have in effect turned the volume down in my head. All our senses do this. A drink may appear refreshingly cool on a hot day and hot if we’ve just walked in from the frozen north. In fact none of our perceptions are absolute, they’re just reactions to whatever ambient we happen to have adjusted to. So don’t be mean to politicians that talk rubbish and think they’re important, they’ve just adjusted to the ambience of politics. They can’t help it.