Róisín Ingle on . . . the no way whistle test

Me nerves. Me absolute and total nerves. I live with a whistler. Do you know what I mean? Perhaps you also share living space with a whistler? Do you hear the whistle blowing, like the sound of a far off but rapidly approaching train, and tense up in the knowledge of the aural carnage to come? Or perhaps YOU are a whistler? Are you? Well, just by the by Mister Whistler – I’ve a feeling you’re not a woman – do you have any concept at all of the kind of inner turmoil that is induced in some of us by your whistling? Or are you just blithely (some might say SELFISHLY) whistling through life with no thought for those you leave suffering in your wake?

A wise man, a bloke called Guy Browning, clearly a committed non-whistler, once wrote: “It’s very difficult to be depressed while whistling, but it’s very easy to depress other people.” And I swear if anything more true has ever been written I don’t know what it is. But how and why a person can be brought down so low by a seemingly innocuous, some might say happy, noise is also one of the biggest mysteries of life. Why is whistling so aggravating? Even the kind of whistling that is perfectly in tune. Even when it is someone you love that’s doing the whistling.

Oh, me nerves. I will probably never know why the sound of someone whistling Maybe by Oasis, while doing the washing up makes me feel capable of rampaging around the house smashing every piece of crockery we own including the cute vintage stuff I picked up in East 73rd in Ballybunion that one time. All I am certain of is that I need to get out of the kitchen and fast. I know. I'll invent some urgent reason to go to the shops. We've run out of Brillo pads. That'll do.

“We’ve run out of Brillo pads,” I say. The whistler continues whistling, unawares. I mean totally unawares. He is not only unaware that he is whistling, he is also unaware that the whistling is causing me deep emotional pain.

He has no clue – even though I made it clear very early on in our relationship that whistling was a deal breaker, that whistling was my kryptonite. My ‘nails scraping a chalkboard’. My ‘elevator muzak’ and my ‘car alarm that never ends’ all rolled into one. I go out to “get Brillo pads”.

I don’t actually get Brillo pads. Instead I divert to our local restaurant and order some pasta. And a glass of red wine. And I think about whether I am the only one with this aversion. I’ve mentioned the whistling in work before. “My Dad whistles,” is what some of my female colleagues said. “Maybe,” said one, “it’s something that happens to men when they get to a certain age.” A male colleague reckons people who whistle are trying to drown out their inner voices.

“Whistling is almost aggressively nonchalant,” says another woman. Then another female colleague mentioned the man she sits beside who does this thing where every so often he sings a line from a song. He might do this over the course of three hours. One song. The same line. It drives her bananas. All of this makes me feel less alone.

I sip my wine and think back to the early days of our relationship. I’m sure there was a time when I loved his whistling. You know in those heady days when you love every single thing about someone and you don’t want to change them at all except for a few details like the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the friends they hang around with and the way they spend their leisure time? I bet I used to think: “I love the way he radiates a relaxed, happy ease with his life and with his lot, something that manifests in an almost constant need to whistle.” It’s just I can’t remember that time or even believe it ever existed.

I am twirling pasta on my fork when I hear it. Faint at the beginning but rising to a crescendo. The train is rattling down the tracks. There is no stopping it. I know this from bitter experience. I put down my fork. I listen. The chef in this tiny restaurant is quite literally whistling while he works.

And I know from the sound he is making that he is never going to stop. The sun is beating down outside, children are passing by with giant ice-cream cones, dogs are trying to find the shadiest spots on the street. And this man is whistling, it can't be, but yes it is: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

I am telling you. Me nerves.

roisin@irishtimes.com