T here's a thudding in my head this morning. It wasn't there when I woke up, so has nothing whatsoever to do with the half-bottle of red I quaffed last night.

The thudding also came upon me suddenly. At first I thought I had a headache but suddenly it went just as swiftly as it had come.

Then it was back, only this time I saw the culprit nipping past my front window. Earlier he had gone up the road. Now he was coming back down again.

The thudding came from the sound system, which got me thinking that if it was that bad outside the car, what in blazes was it like inside? And how long before those inside go deaf? They're bound to, surely.

I don't want to hear it and a pound to a penny I bet there are thousands, perhaps even millions, like me.

I know there's this macho thing about having the biggest and best but I've never before realised that having the noisiest amounts to more or less the same thing.

Listen to this, they seem to be saying.

No, thank you.

Here I am dozing in a deckchair at the seaside and some prat drives by with his windows open sharing his dubious taste in sound (I can't bring myself to call it music) with the rest of us.

Apparently it's all the rage in places like Ibiza, the sort of music designed to send you into a trance and allegedly into snorting and stripping off.

If you don't have one of these "boomers" in your car then you are obviously on the wrong side of 21.

I fully admit to being on the wrong side of 21; even my radio/cassette player doesn't work.

Ooops! I didn't mean to admit to that. Would any of the younger generation know what a cassette player is?

Gosh, I sound like a real old grumbly. I'm not really.

I'm told that I was noisy back in my youth, but seeing as I never had a car and couldn't afford to go to nightclubs I couldn't send myself steadily deaf.

Not that it was as loud as all that, well not in my opinion, anyway, though my old dad assured me that it was.

He didn't think much of the lyrics, either. I can't see the problem myself. What's wrong with Yeah, Yeah, Yeah?

Besides, not approving of the music, he also recommended that the Beatles should get a haircut – along with my sister's boyfriend, who wore his down to his shoulders.

Folks, I am trying my hardest here not to sound like a grumpy old woman. To be fair I am not the girl I once was but this isn't about looks, waistlines and the fact that what used to be pert at all points of the compass has now gone south. It's not that at all! Honest!

What I mean to say is that I am no longer that long- legged, long-haired girl who used to dream all day of the night to come. Night was exciting! Streetlamps glowed in the dark. The Rolling Stones belted out from the jukebox in the Giacanna Café. The loudest sound of all was from the motorcycles lined up outside.

Daytimes were dullsville and everything happened at night. The music was still with us the next morning, though only in our heads.

There were no ipods and you couldn't possibly get to work with a jukebox stuffed against your ear.

And transistor radios didn't get on the bus with you to help ease you into the working day.

The only alternative was to climb the stairs to the upper deck, take out a packet of Embassies and have a smoke. A cigarette was considered a great start to the morning.

Each generation has its own hang ups.