Getting older has turned me into a mass of grumbles and grunts!

It’s a strange fact that the older I get the noisier I get while the world around me seems to get quieter.

I blame Isaac Newton. He decided that every action has to have an opposite and equal reaction, which for me seems to mean that whenever I do something be it standing up, sitting down, walking, opening a tin of tuna my body reacts with a grunt, squeak or rumble, in apparent protest at having to do this stuff again, as if the first 50 years of doing it weren’t enough.

And yet, as I type this nonsense, my breathing might be a bit heavy but the device itself is almost silent.

Even if I thump the keys as I am wont to do they respond with little more than a plasticky click. And for one who learned his trade using a typewriter the size of an elderly turtle with keys like a test-your-strength machine, this is very unsatisfying.

In those far-off papery days, the combined finger-fury of a team of reporters all typing at the same time could make almost as much noise as the presses. It was exciting and gave the distinct impression that work was being done.

No doubt it was unhealthy for the ears, but since everyone was also shrouded in thick clouds of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, noise was the least of our worries.

Then again, when you stared at sheets of paper in a typewriter all day you didn’t risk frying your brain with electronic rays, the way you do when you stare at a computer.

And are we really meant for a quieter world? These new electric cars apparently don’t make any noise worth mentioning so they have to give them pretend engine sounds so that people feel they’re actually driving a car and not sitting in a kettle.

A friend just back from Amsterdam complained bitterly about the “silent assassins” the hordes of cyclists who come upon you soundlessly, ruining your laundry schedule, all for the want of a playing card between the spokes.

Perhaps the same thinking should be applied to laptops, giving the keys an artificial metallic clunk just to remind us that we’re alive.

Although I suspect that in a couple of years, whenever I hit a key, I’ll make a clunk myself.