Which 21st century noise annoys you the most?

I live with a ghost, or rather, I share an address with a man who’s been dead for many years. My house was his before I bought it, and such was the thoroughness with which he embedded himself in Royal Mail’s records that it’s impossible to remove him. Almost every letter I’m sent has his name on it; ‘Dr Dale Beckett?’ says each delivery man. I’ve called Royal Mail repeatedly to explain, but nothing doing. The doctor’s not for moving. And besides, I’m used to him now.

Dr Beckett gets my mail, but he also gets his own — each one a jigsaw piece of his former life. He was a psychiatrist, a gardener, a member of the society of hypnotists. On Saturday there on the doormat was another window into the doctor’s mind: a newsletter from Pipedown, the campaign for the freedom from piped music.

Pipedown has a distinguished set of patrons — Alfred Brendel, Philip Pullman, Tom Conti, Simon Rattle, Stephen Fry — and a pleasingly furtive font, so I took it to the breakfast table to read.

The assumption behind Pipedown is that throughout the 20th century and into the 21st there’s been a rising tide of background noise. Its real enemy is constant music — or Muzak as my parents called it back in the day — but any noise qualifies: sirens, planes, leaf blowers.

And if Pipedown’s to be believed, a really extraordinary amount of people find some form of everyday sound unbearable. At least 50 per cent of people would walk out of a shop with piped music, it claims, and when the train company c2c introduced screens into their carriages, passengers barricaded themselves in the toilet to escape them. Well, I would laugh — I did laugh — until it rang a bell.