Walk down the street. Cock your ear. Do you hear it? No, chances are that you don't. Because what you're listening for is the cheery ting-a-ling of a bicycle bell, once the sing-song background music of the urban stroll, the warning of a child on a tricycle around the corner, the telltale sign in Carry On films of the imminent arrival on screen of a bumbling bicycle-riding bobby with as much chance of solving the crime as Woody Allen has of winning Mr Universe.

What happened to it? When did it vanish? The cheery tinkle of the bicycle bell - now replaced, as a warning to pedestrians, by a shrill umpire's whistle, or just a barked expletive - is one of many once familiar British sounds now lost. It joins other refrains which, too, have disappeared from everyday life, such as: “Any more fares, please?” and “Come on England, you can win this match!” and “Yes, you can have a mortgage of 120 per cent of the property's value, even though that equates to seven times the salary you hope to earn if you ever actually land a job.”

Gone, too, is the sound, on arrival at Heathrow from New York, of your suitcase tumbling down on to the luggage carousel at Terminal 4, rather than on to the luggage carousel in São Paulo airport, to which it has been misdirected.

What happened to the sound of: “There is a good service on all London Underground lines”, and of the head teacher saying: “Of course your child can have a place at our school, if that's where she would like to study!” and of shoppers asking: “You mean there isn't a Tesco within six miles of here?”, and of the petrol pump attendant who said: “I'll wash your windscreen while you fill your tank with 62p-a-gallon petrol”, and signs reading: “NHS dentist. New patients welcome”?

Do you recall people saying: “That Alistair Darling's a safe pair of hands,” and: “Barack Who?”, and: “Heather Mills is doubtless a cracking girl once you get to know her.” And to think there really was a time when you could hear people remarking: “Isn't it strange that we know absolutely nothing about Jeremy Paxman's underwear?”