Er, excuse me. Hello? I’m sorry, but would you mind taking your … I SAID, WOULD YOU MIND TAKING THOSE EARPHONES OUT FOR A SECOND, PLEASE?

I try, in the main, to be a live-and-let-live kind of person. Patient. Considerate. But this patience is being tested to breaking point by the proliferation, the epidemic, of almost-ubiquitous earphones.

The world must be shut out, apparently. The wearer has nothing to learn or gain by listening to anybody else in their vicinity. They would rather be elsewhere, plunged into music or a novel or maybe a noisy pavement phone call, which will remain, sadly for the accidental eavesdropper, a slightly odd one-way exchange only.

The hill I will die on is that there is a fascinating and beautiful world out there, filled with conversation and laughter and the possibility of making new........

© The Guardian