please empty your brain below

Sorry, what was that you were saying?

I xxxxx you're xxxxx x xxx harsh. After all, x xxxxxxx xxx down xxx it xxx your own xxxx choice xx xxxx along. xxx'x xx xxxx a xxxxxxx fucking xxxxxx all xxx xxxx.

speak up , dont be shy

I have the same problem DG. It's called middle age.

I'm not ashamed to say that I am the annoying woman who goes up to one of the bartenders and asks them to turn the music down, in those sorts of places, telling them that I cannot hear my friend's conversation. (Yes, I am actually that embarrassing to be with).

Often they will turn the sound down, no problem; occasionally they decline and say to me 'you're in a pub, there's supposed to be music', to which I have responded, 'but the only reason you have it up so loud is so that people make their throats parched by shouting at each other so much and have to buy more drinks as a result'. This usually results in a slight lowering of the volume.

But once or twice, I have actually been laughed at by the bartender and when I have asked to speak to the manager (yes, I told you I was embarrassing to be with), they have told me that 'young people expect to have music playing' and that if I 'don't like it', I should go somewhere else 'more suited' to my tastes.

ie. 'get out of here, you old woman'

Fuckers.

Needless to say, I take quite a lot of pleasing when going out on a Friday or Saturday night (which is not something that applies to me in other areas of my life).

*sigh*

Yep, I am in agreement on this one. The Spurstowe Arms near me in Hackney has recently upgraded from dingy estate pub to poncy art/media type with almost exclusively czech lager on tap. They do like their ironically cool music and dress standards. Little do they know that irony ceases to be irony when everyone is wearing a trucker hat and a new 70's style t-shirt.

Last time I was in there with my fellow mid 30's drinkers I asked them to turn it down so that we could hold a medium shouty conversation.

XXnts.

They originally started having loud music in places (in places where young people met, that's to say) so that you didn't have to speak. The idea was that verbal communication was out and music and body language were everything.
Alright. Understood.
Funny thing is that now people seem to have got used to loud music everywhere. In the city where I live I know of people who get together to have a chat -the old Spanish "tertulias"- in bars where loud music is played. Traditionally, "tertulias" -a group of people meeting regularly to talk about politics, literature or whatever they chose to talk about- were held in cafés with no music, loud or otherwise, to be heard. Now people get together to talk in places where you can't hear what the person next to you is saying. Maybe after all that's well suited to famously loud speaking Spaniards, but it kills my throat every time I meet people in one of such places!
Pepe
Madrid, Spain

absolutexxxx

i like having to hear other people these days - there all pretentious, self centered, egotistic morons who just want to show themseleves off. unlike some. *cough* not me *cough*

Well, dg, thats what happens if you spend Saturday night in Yates' in Leicester Square, no?

The flipside to this problem is the Sam Smiths brewery, who banned all music from their pubs last year. Go into one of their Fitzrovia branches off peak and its pretty eerie that the only sound is that of the barman breathing (and possibly your own tinnitus).











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