At 32, I still have a great many unfulfilled ambitions. Learning to play Nilsson’s Saying Goodbye To Myself on the piano. Seeing dawn in Venice. Finding a hat with wax cherries on it that doesn’t make me look demented. This week, I discovered yet another ambition for the list: having a £1 million three-year research project.

There are times when it seems that everyone out there has a £1 million three-year research project, except me. I can’t tell you how many press releases I get about £1 million three-year research projects. People are researching pretty much anything you care to think of. They’re analysing people’s emotions through their choice of shoe. They’re studying how dogs interpret complex patterns. They’re boning up on the difference between the way “winners” and “losers” walk. These all take three years and they all cost £1 million. I guess how it breaks down is: you + four mates from uni on £60,000pa x 3, + £99,990 for drinks, taxis and pencils = £1 million.

Frankly, even though I haven’t got a dandy research project, I approve of all of them. We’ve got to come to some conclusive findings on all these things at some point, and we might as well crack on with it now, while mankind is still relatively young, and we can incorporate these findings into our future lives.

This week’s best £1 million three-year research project is a case in point. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council — those guys — have funded “Positive Soundscapes”, an attempt to analyse urban noise. So far, researchers have been surprised to discover that we actually like the sounds of the city. Skateboarders practising in carparks, the rumble of trains, the thud of a heavy bass outside a nightclub — these are apparently as relaxing as birdsong or whale noise. While previous city planners had presumed that all city noises were vile, and should be eliminated, Positive Soundscapes is suggesting that city noises, when used correctly, can be energising or relaxing, and that we should build cities that funnel these noises “correctly”.

Of course, anyone who had listened to the Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls could have told them this back in 1986. West End Girls’ intro is the sound of cars on wet city streets, and it’s one of the most atmospheric beginnings of a pop song. You can see the broken neon on the wet asphalt — the girls clacking towards the clubs — before Neil Tennant has sung a single note. Of course we love city sounds. Although humans are endearingly dim and easily distractible, we do, by and large, do what makes us happy, and there’s a reason why 89 per cent of us live in urban areas. And a good part of it is that the low swish of the A10 is far more soothing than country sounds, where animals spend all night murdering each other, or having sex so violent and loud they might as well be murdering each other.

While the sounds of the countryside are all very well for a couple of hours — during a picnic or a brisk walk — as a constant background companion, they would be terrifying. Subliminally, what the sound of the wind across the moor, or the rustle of a forest, tells you is: it will take an ambulance at least an hour to get here. However hungry you get, there is no stall vending soup in this locale. And as for a lockable lavatory with soft toilet paper, forget about it.

If you think about it, it’s clear that the researchers have been mucking about. They have overlooked approximately a million other classic urban sounds. Liverpudlian transvestites saying cutting things in a chip shop. Black-cab door slamming. White people trying to pronounce the dishes on a Vietnamese menu. Diners whispering “Oh God, look at that!” when a badly-dressed celebrity walks into a restaurant. High heels on pavements. The hiss of espresso machines. The sudden thrum of a bus on a bus-stand starting up, at dawn, in winter. Champagne corks hitting banquette. Lawnmowers in the parks. Municipal fountains echoing in big squares. Bicycle bells ringing in Bloomsbury. A really spoilt child on the Diana Memorial Pirate Ship in Kensington Gardens, screaming what I thought was “I want Mummy!”, but actually it turned out to be “I want edamame!”

City sounds are stimulating and/or comforting because they are the sounds of human beings doing things, and we are most at home with the sound of our own species. The city is the exclusive club we’ve made for human beings, where we’ve eliminated things like mud, wolves, mosquitoes, quicksand, loneliness and inbreeding. And ratty Barbour jackets, held together with twine. They’re the only places in the world made specifically for humans, so of course we feel relaxed. We were just busking in the rainforests and on the plains. We were just desperately trying to “make do” with mud and termites.

In the city, however, we become superhuman. Cities have facilities — noticeably lacking in meadows. A city’s a bit like that bit in Alien where Ripley climbs into the huge robot, and is suddenly able to smash the alien. With our computers and our public transport, our pavements, our pubs and our specialist electrical outlets, the city allows us to make almost anything happen within 24 hours, if we make enough phonecalls, and abuse our overdrafts sufficiently.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re old, or a woman, or disabled, or “foreign”, or very camp and wearing impractical shoes — you almost lose your physicality in the city. You become a Mekon-brain, with lovely accessories. Your importance isn’t ranked on your ability to skin a boar, climb a tree or kill another man by punching him in the eye. You just become a series of thoughts. A series of easily-actionable decisions. A series of sounds.

Really, it’s all just a figure of speeches

Much has been made of similarities between Gordon Brown’s conference speech, and speeches made by Al Gore and Bill Clinton — both of whom used the same scriptwriter, Bob Shrum. Phrases include, “This is my pledge — I will never let you down”, “Our country cannot afford to waste the talents of anyone/We don’t have a person to waste,” and then an anecdote recalling things that all the politicians’ mothers had taught them. Well that’s fair enough, really. I mean, these are all pretty good things to say, and there are only so many ways you can rephrase them. Particularly if you wish to avoid sounding like one of those impenetrable Clive James TV links from the 1980s. Personally I hope, next conference, Gordon rehashes more classic speeches. I hope he tells us that he has a dream, and the body of a weak and feeble woman, and then weeps “I’m. Mrs. Norman. Maine!” to a standing ovation.

Monster munch

Here’s something that Tony Parsons can’t do, alongside “write a decent novel” and “grow a fringe”: appeal to the cleverness of his readers to solve a mystery. I was pruning my alchemilla last week when something bit, or stung, my finger — but I have no idea what, and it’s driving me nuts. The bite was tiny, bled a little and made a hard, round, beige mark with a dark brown centre. It was pretty painful — like an electric wasp-sting. My arm swelled up to the elbow for three days, which was quite exciting — I could play “fat hand, thin hand!” with the kids. So far, it’s been suggested that it could be a millipede, an English garden spider or a red ant. Personally, I think it might be a demon, but I know there’s someone out there with a tank full of bugs and expert knowledge who can enlighten me.

Bear in mind that I don’t want to know if it was small and harmless, like a bad worm. I want drama here.

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