If the stiff upper lip really is starting to slacken, the sang froid warm up, the icy British reserve thaw out, I think I know why - iPods.

And before them, Walkmans. And with both of them - earphones. Music is among the most affecting things out there, and 30 years of having it drilled directly into our heads is turning us into drama queens.

My theory is that many of us are in, to put it at its mildest, a sonically induced state of heightened sensitivity (otherwise why listen to music in the first place?) and, at the extreme end of the spectrum, depending obviously on one's character and choice of listening, we are total emotional wrecks. Thus does melody make us prey to whatever triumph or tragedy passes our way, personal or public - the victory of a sports team, the loss of a paratrooper, something cuddly in peril, the death of a princess.

I formed this idea having cycled in to work listening to Galveston Bay, the penultimate track on Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad. I must have heard Galveston Bay 30 times or more, but never on an iPod. I didn't think of it previously as an especially moving song (although it is the best examination of racial tensions in the shrimp fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico that I've come across) and yet by the time I reached Wapping I was close to tears. And Galveston Bay has a happy ending. Who knows what Danny Boy does to a man? The Passion of the Messiah? Seasons in the Sun?

Thirty years ago, when I had just become a teenager, Apple was a mere two years old, the Sony Walkman still a year in the future and most cars didn't have a tape deck. Music came from the radio, or a crackly cassette or turntable, rarely free from distraction. Now, you can carry an orchestra in your brain wherever you go. What's more, you don't have the usual three or four killer tracks adulterated by dross - you bin the fillers and keep the thrillers. Every track is a favourite, chosen precisely for its ability to influence your mood. Little wonder that all over the country, previously sober, stable citizens are walking around in bits.

Two for the road

Or, of course, it could be that we're all drunk. Excessive drinking is always discussed in terms of violence, yet getting a bit lairy is merely one effect of too much alcohol, a minority effect at that. For most of us, having a few drinks doesn't mean starting a fight, it means becoming maudlin, sentimental, lachrymose, inappropriately matey and doing the hokey-cokey with someone you know only slightly.

Going back again to 1978, I reckon that the sort of people, although not exactly the same people, because they're probably dead, who were having five drinks a night then are having ten now, but just as importantly, the formerly sober respectable working and middle classes who were having no drinks or only the occasional drink three decades ago are having two or three or four now. We're not fighting as a result, but we are getting choked up on a regular basis.

Brass neck

More tears, of remorse this time, as I conclude the ring cycle begun last week. You'll recall the facts: in Paris, a stranger collars mug English columnist and says that she's found a gold ring, but it doesn't fit her, so hey, give me €10 and you can have it. Mug columnist pays up, describes incident in newspaper, subsequently receives dozens of e-mails, some sympathetic, some frankly triumphalist, from readers telling him that he's been had and the rings are mass-produced complete with fake hallmark in a factory in Kosovo. To confirm, columnist then takes ring to a pawnbroker's, the branch of H&T on Roman Road, one of the main arteries of the East End of London.

The verdict? “Fake.”

Any idea of its value? “How abaht nuffink?”

What it's made of? “Darlin', it ain't even brass.”

Only a pawn in their game

Never having been inside a pawnbroker's before, and thus with only a foggy Dickensian caricature to go on, I was pleasantly surprised by how unseedy the place was - no worse than the average failing building society, better than most post offices. With other lines of credit so squeezed, perhaps the three gold balls are due a comeback.

The super-rich apparently think so, with upmarket pawnbrokers reporting a 25 per cent increase in turnover, diamond rings (not, presumably, the ones that come from a factory in Kosovo) proving especially popular pledges.

I was listening to Leonard Cohen as I read about this phenomenon and yet, with the report headlined “Parents pawn Rolexes and Aston Martins to pay school fees”, even though I had the old groaner on full volume, somehow, strangely, on this occasion the tears refused to come.

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