Susan Morrison: Now hear this – not everyone loves your music choice on the bus

Health app warning - loud music is bad for your fellow passengers!

Seriously. So much gunk. No wonder Fleetwood Mac sounded underwater.

Other people clearly knew about this. They’ve seen the secret horror of the earbud. It has traumatised them so much that they’ve abandoned headphones altogether.

You can see and hear these victims of the yellow peril on just about every Lothian Bus. Headphones are a luxury they feel they can’t afford. They must enjoy their internet fix of fast moving content unplugged, as it were.

Fortunately this has the happy side effect of opening up new avenues of listening pleasure to all the other passengers. I wasn’t familiar with the song ‘WAP’, although the word ‘song’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The lyrics are best described as ‘adult themed’. Not a sure fire hit for the family singing at Hogmanay, perhaps, but there it was, being blasted out on the Number 7 by a pair of 12-year-olds.

For some, earbud phobia goes hand-in-hand with the terror of holding the phone apparatus to the actual ear. Perhaps, in a Howard Huges sort of a way, they dread possible infection from bacteria.

These victims are forced to hold their phones at arms length and shout at the screen, usually during a long conversation with someone very far away. The absence of headphones means that the volume must be maintained at ear-splitting volume.

These tragic sufferers of these hidden horrors deserve the same level of compassion we once extended to those early victims of the sound-bleeding headphone years, the sad people oblivious to the fact that the whump-whump of heavy metal was landing like a CIA interrogation technique on the folk around them. We were patient. To a point. And then we told them. We were direct, but kind. Sometimes.

So now I say, kindly, come on, people, be courageous. Brave the horror of the waxy bud. Plug in and tune in. Save us all earwigging your conversations and dodgy tunes.