I’ve got these fancy headphones my dad handed down (to Ed, he thought, but they never got that far) and they block out the world. They almost give me a headache, so great is their commitment to one set of sounds, that is, the noise from the Ipod. I wear them to fold laundry or to knit in bed except that after a while, I grow nervous. What could be happening in the house that I would not hear? Murderers could enter wearing tap shoes, gazelles could drop in for coffee, Random House could be banging on the door, demanding that they publish my as-yet-unwritten novels, my children could be whining for a glass of water Mummy, the neighbors could be doing the nasty with bells tied to their heads and I’d only hear Neil Gaiman’s lovely voice as he reads Neverwhere to me. (Yes, to me and me alone, such is the power of these headphones and my love for Neil Gaiman.) It’s both strange and unsettling. We locate ourselves in the world through sound. The heat coming up (or more likely, going off). Ed’s footsteps as he makes tea. The dryer humming. The children breathing. These are the sounds that let me know where and who I am.How our senses locate us in space, in the world, in our lives is increasingly interesting to me — not least because we’ve discovered that Daniel can’t locate where in space sound comes from, which accounts for much of his anxiety. (I’ll let you know more about that as we learn more.) What it has meant for me is that I am suddenly grateful every time I turn my head towards a sound, confident that I know I’m looking the right way. Grateful for the sounds around me.