I like to think of myself as a music lover after having spent many years earning my living by music.

My house almost always has music of one sort or another to sustain me as I toil over a hot qwerty board to bring you my deathless prose and my car radio is permanently tuned to Classic FM.

Why, then, do I go berserk when I am confronted (I was going to say assaulted) by 'music' in shops, pubs and restaurants?

Last week some friends of mine took me out to lunch at a hostelry not a millions miles from where I live. The place we chose has recently had a serious amount of money spent on it and was full of little nooks and crannies designed, presumably, to make it look a cosy and inviting place.

What it actually did was ensure that extreme care had to be taken to avoid eating your neighbour's soup, but that is another story. As we settled in our seats our ears were battered by what I was reliably informed was 'disco/rock/pop' from a speaker situated just above our heads.

A request to turn it down was met with a cheerful "certainly" from our waiter but absolutely no action. We looked around for the possibility of another table without wall-to-wall assault and battery but the little black boxes were everywhere.

We tried to carry on a conversation across the table but merely managed to put up our blood pressure by several notches and arouse the interest of our nearest (very nearest) fellow diners. This was on a weekday and many of the customers were older people for whom such music was totally inappropriate.

At a guess, most of us were there to meet and talk with our friends and relatives. The food was good value and the staff pleasant, but the ambience was ruined by the sheer noise. I imagine quite a few will not choose it again for social encounters. I got the feeling I wasn't alone in objecting to the situation.

But it is not just pubs where this unending noise seems to be the order of the day. Almost every shop has its endless tapes and there are those whose noise actually spills out on to the street, though they are becoming less common, thank goodness.

Muzak is just about bearable if it is used sensibly as musical wallpaper and ordinary life can go on around it without being battered into submission. But oh, the inestimable joy of being able to browse in a shop without feeling one has to remove one's hearing aid!

Speaking of which brings me to another moan about musical intrusion into my life. I enjoy a good play on TV but these days it seems that music has taken over the TV channels.

Behind all the dialogue is a continual ground bass of music, making it quite difficult for people with hearing loss to catch what is being said. The best-paid people on TV these days must be the composers of background music!

There, I've had a good moan. Music I love but noise I hate, especially when I have no choice in the matter.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.