When all the laughter grew too loud …

The last month or so has been quite difficult at times.  Tinnitus itself is not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but like many others who suffer from it, I also now seem to have reduced sound tolerance – which has resulted in my having to walk out of a number of events recently.  If the background noise level is too high my brain seems to turn to mush.  So now I have to be very careful about places and events I go to.
 
On the plus side my TSD (tinnitus suppression device), otherwise known as my iPod Nano, has been working overtime – very successfully too :-)
 
And my knee is well enough for me to have started hiking again – and for reasons unknown tinnitus doesn’t bother me at all on the top of Shining Tor (highest point in Cheshire), in a gale with sub-zero temperatures ;-)
 
So after a month or so ‘off’, I think I’m coping well enough to return to blipping.  Today’s photo is Bramall Hall – taken whilst it was snowing.  I hope you are all coping with the snow.  I’m sure that you’ll have a lot more snow than we have here in south Manchester.
 
Oh – the title of this post.  Well, as I said, I have been listening to a lot of music recently and The Ballad of Lucy Jordan turned up in my playlist (Marianne Faithful version) .  The line “when all the laughter grew too loud” really struck accord because of my ‘reduced sound tolerance’ – it just seemed to sum up the problems I’m having with noisy restaurants and events perfectly.  Ignore the rest of the song though – life may have been less than perfect recently, but I'm not planning on climbing up on the roof to throw myself off … too much hiking to look forward too, for one thing :-)