No need to get up early today, so a nice quiet slow start, with plenty of time to say Morning Prayer before walking across Llandaff fields through snow and slightly frozen mud to attend the eleven o'clock Sung Eucharist at the Cathedral.
As I was walking along I had a disconcerting experience. I heard what I thought was the alarm signal 'peep' on my watch. I looked at my wrist. No watch. And anyway I detest the sound and it only ever gets switched in by accident. I knew I'd left both my working phones behind, but patted myself down anyway, but the 'peep' sound was irregular. Tinnitus maybe? No, wrong pitch. Then, on the near horizon, I spotted a father and son with a small dog racing up and down. The boy put his hand to his mouth and I heard the 'peep' again. He was blowing a whistle.
I was given to understand a long time ago that a dog whistle sound is outside human auditory range. This was such a tiny noise that it could easily get lost, except perhaps in a relatively quiet open Sunday morning space. On the other hand, that tiny 'peep' sound is one we've got very used to noticing in all sorts of settings over the past thirty years of digital watches and microwave ovens. Maybe it wasn't a real dog whistle. I mention this because sometimes I wonder if my hearing is deterioriating. However, it could be my concentration on what others say is in decline. Or again, it could be a plague of sloppy speech making sentences harder to decipher. Or combination of all these things. Anyway, my ears can't be as bad as I feared.
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