Ever have one of those moments where you start listening to a song and you kind of recognise the voice but it just doesn't quite fit with the music you're hearing?

My friend Sarah introduced me to the Arctic Monkeys way back when she got their first album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" before they properly made it big. And then I kept up with them into the second album, but after that they drifted off my radar.

Coming back into listening in 2022 with "The Car" I realised I'd missed a lot. There was a whole musical journey that had gone on in the four albums in between! The voice was the same, but the rest of it left me thinking that I ain't quite where I think I am!

I was on my way to a meeting somewhere new. The sat nav suggested I could either turn left or go straight. I went left because that looked like the more fun option. As I happily drove down the road I came across a work-horse pick-up truck doing a three-point turn in the road to avoid going through the ford. I ignored the signs and kept going. It was fun, it was deeper than it could have been, and my car miraculously made it through (even managing to be cleaner!). It was a win-win really, but it could have been expensive... Especially if it had been deeper and faster flowing.

The better option would have been to have carried on straight along the other route, or to have turned around before I got there. A less dangerous option would have been a bridge, or to wait until the ford was lower.

The following is a quote from Chapter 22 of "The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness, which was part of my holiday reading material...

The story to this point is that Todd believes all women to have died out on his planet, due to a disease which also meant men could read each other's, and animals' thoughts as "noise". Nothing was private because "noise" was everywhere. Todd is due to go through his coming of age process when he discovers things might not be as they seem. The long and short of it is that he ends up running away from his home town with his dog (Manchee), and finds a girl (Viola)... a girl with no "noise".
As we join the story with this quote, Todd has witnessed destruction of newly discovered towns and truths at the hands of the army who are chasing him. He's tired, injured, hungry, and confused, and finds himself staring down at a plain of legions of unknown "creachers", in a herd as far as the eye can see.
The noise coming from this herd is different to what he's heard before: