This is fine in the rain forest but not in central Birmingham.
Light hurts, colours are painful, sounds hurt and the taste of petrol from passing cars makes me want to vomit.
On the bus a pop song jangles from a tinny radio, school children chatter like small birds, anank-anak, nakal-nakal, nigglenaggle, nagglenaglenigglenigglenaggle.
A woman in front of me says loudly, 'She's Stage Four. There's no hope if you're Stage Four. The cancer's in her lymph nodes and now they're all over her body. I don't know why they bother.'
A tall woman says something incomprehensible to her young son, 'Oh Sam! You know I have to run up to the top of the roof now they have put a tag on the pangolin.'
Off the bus I pass a crocodile of children. A very small Chinese girl cries out in a stentorian voice
( I can't be bothered to look up stentor. But who or whatever they were they must have been really loud.)
'OY! BOY! STOP LOOKING AT THE FLOWERS AND COME ON!!!!'
Both my eardrums explode.
I am in some hellish Radio 4 Afternoon play or some secret circle of Dante's Inferno.
I need calm and silence among green stuff until the feeling wears off.
I can't write any more so here is a question for Alec Smart (Didn't Beachcomber have a Dr Smart-Alick? That's not the question.) This is.
Explain this to the readers. If you want a Mars Bar I expect at least 200 words and links.
I have been told a French buffoon one threw baguettes over his shoulder in a cafe, or bakery, in the hope that he might hit a pie.
I know it's not literally a question but here is a ? anyway. Put it where you will.
PS. What is a stentor?