There is that scene in so many westerns films, of the kind forever playing on daytime TV, when all seems lost but suddenly the cavalry comes riding over the horizon.
The cavalry came to save me this week and they were wearing the uniforms of Transport for London, which runs the buses and many of the railways in the capital. TfL, as it is known, wants all who play stuff on their mobile phones without headphones to get out of town by sundown. Or at the very least to stop it. Signs are going up to that effect. Yeehaw! Go get them!
I don’t want to be grumpy Uncle Albert. The public space is just that. It’s communal: I like communal. We share the joys, the mundanity and sometimes the grind of navigating a crowded capital. I don’t use taxis. I know the crush of being sardined on an early morning tube train and exiting smelling a bit like the armpit of the bulky builder I was sandwiched next to. I have had great late nights heading home to the suburbs from central London after an evening out on a jolly, overpopulated, everyone-crushed-together tube train.
My favourite such journey, in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic – by which time the fear had subsided and relief was unconfined – was on a cheek by jowl, booze-fuelled carriage, with half of the inhabitants chanting “we’re all gonna get Covid”, the other half laughing. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the virus, we knew where the sentiment came from. It was a shared experience.
Who can say that same sentiment applies to the dead-eyed sorts riding the tube and buses while transmitting tinny sound from their mobile phones? True, they are sharing, but it’s very much their bespoke experience; it’s very much an overshare.
I long ago made my peace with the sound escaping from people’s headphones. It’s annoying, but par for the course in a public sphere. But do I want a bespoke sharing experience with the guy blaring Champions League football highlights on his iPhone from the night before? No. Do I need to know what’s huge on your screechy TikTok? No, no. What’s all the rage in Bollywood? No, no, no. A whiny clip from a soap opera? No and no, thrice no. Whether your relative in Kraków or Kingston, Jamaica or Manilla or Washington state passed his or her exams? Hell no! Good luck to them. Good luck to you – but put some headphones on.
We all have rights and in the noisy, vibrant cities of this country, there’s room for free expression, but here’s the thing: we also have a duty of care. Your decision – and yes, it is a specific decision – to share your experience with me, without any consideration of me or anyone else, was always prohibited under the bylaws of TfL. Now they will erect signs reminding you of that and asking that you be considerate.
True, signs only get you so far; they don’t act as a muffler or an off button. But in this case they set a benchmark and highlight rules that the travelling public, seeking respite, aware that many an overground railway train already has “quiet carriages”, can reasonably ask to be enforced on the buses and the capital’s tube lines.
So perhaps this is the end of “headphone dodging”, as they call it. Perhaps it is just the beginning of the end. I don’t know how an overstretched transport authority – already struggling to catch fare dodgers – can possibly have the resources to police it. But I am hoping it won’t really have to.
There are rules, often unspoken, about what seems legitimate practice in shared space. You might not like a particular busker, but many have the imprimatur of being licensed by public authority, which means your personal like or dislike takes a back seat to the view of others. As for the ones that aren’t licensed, if they are too annoying to too many people, they are silenced by society’s indifference and pointed refusal to part with any money.
The TikTok sharers, the Bollywood blarers, the football highlights transmitters, the open mic’d menaces: they break the rules both unspoken and official. Let the “headphones on” signs go up – and let the people be the cavalry.
Hugh Muir is executive editor, Opinion
