RANT: Cacophony From Hell

Today is the start of the month-long World Cup here in South Africa. It's football at its best. It's flags and colour and great atmosphere. It's an event that I usually look forward to every four years.

Vittorio should be happy.

Vittorio is not.

I cannot remember the last time a momentous occassion has annoyed me more or when I've wanted something so huge and so all-encompassing to just hurry up and finish. So what the hell's the matter with me? I admit a recent and ongoing bout of really bad upper bachache is not helping at all. Amazing how much pain and lack of good sleep can turn one into Irritation Central.

So, yes, I'm not in the best of moods these days. I admit that. But I had to ask myself yesterday and again today why I was so utterly irritated with this whole World Cup malarkey. Surely it couldn't just be a lousy back that is making me feel so grouchy and ready to slap everything in sight, right?

Absolutely right. Because I have figured out what to me has become synonymous with this sporting event in this country and why I am hating it so:

It's noise. And not just any old noise or a combination of noises typical of these sporting events. Oh, no - we should all be so lucky. No, this is a very specific, very distinct noise emanating from South Africa's hellish gift to the world of musical sporting paraphernalia.

This is a noise so ear-splitting, so inharmonious, so utterly revolting it is proof-positive that Lucifer does indeed exist and that this is his diabolical musical instrument of choice.

It's the vuvuzela.

This metre-long or so instrument of hell has been a fixture of South African soccer matches since the 1990s. Soccer fans blow on them for all their worth, decimating anything and everything in its aural path.

And now it is an overwhelming fixture of this World Cup. Heaven help me.

Trust me, there are many who share my hatred for this little-horn-that-should-never-have. And everyone has their own version of what it reminds them of. To me, it sounds like an amorphous cloud of gigantic mosquitoes out of some really horrific sci-fi movie. Here are some other opinions of what the wretched vuvuzela sounds like (and I quote):

- "a groaning, constipated cow in full groan";
- "a demented foghorn"
- "a very badly tuned, super loud French horn"

- "what hell would sound like"

You get the picture.

And it is loud. Oh brother, is it LOUD.

Occupational hygiene issues such as noise-induced hearing loss have been a part of my work for nearly ten years now, so I know a thing or two about how bad excessive noise can be for one's ears. Yet even I was stunned at the decibel readings of this diabolical instrument, as shown on the table below - 127 decibels - even more ear-splitting than a jumbo jet taking off - that is L-O-U-D!!!!!

For more info on just how bad vuvuzelas can be for a person's hearing, follow this link: http://allafrica.com/stories/201006071455.html

Today was hell on Earth for me. Having hardly slept most of the night, I awoke in the early morning to the nearby screeching of vuvuzelas, I take it by little children on their way to a nearby school. Fetching money at a local ATM in my lovely suburb I was accosted by some lunatic in dreadlocks giving it all his worth across the street. I nearly went over to snap his vuvuzela in two, yank on his dreadlocks and deck him. Instead I huffed away, my aching back intensified, my mood darkened.

Then, to compound my misery,  as I drove up to my physiotherapist I saw to my horror that right opposite were two breezy young lasses blowing to their hearts content on the sidewalk to passing cars. It took everything for me not to accelerate my car, mount the sidewalk at full speed and run the bitches over, vuvuzelas and all.

And all around me people honking their horns like mad, flying their South African flags or just grinning inanely, all caught up in this 'magical' moment of patriotic fervour and pride. How touching. Never have I come so close to wanting to set fire to my South African passport. Along with a heap of vuvuzelas, of course.

Much to my delight, I have now read reports online that the vuvuzela could be better at transmitting viruses than shouting or even sneezing! Where the hell is the World Health Organization when you need it?

The vuvuzela is noise personified. Never mind invading one's space - it invades one's very core, one's very soul. My only hope is that so many people from other countries, not to mention players and referees on the pitch, will complain so much about how irritating it is that it simply won't take off after this World Cup or, better still, maybe even be banned FIFA. That would be the first FIFA action I would fully support, nay, celebrate.

But for now I and others must tolerate this noise worthy of a year's supply of Prozac. Or a month-long vacation in the Antarctic, just for the quiet. Oh, the quiet.

It's going to be a very looooooooooong month.

Do you get my point?