UNLIKE Holyrood, Westminster is a noisy and boisterous place to work.
The Scottish Parliament’s modern walls are thick enough to block mobile phone signal, never mind noise from the outside world.
Westminster’s single-glazed windows mean that every honking horn or shouting religious zealot outside sounds as if they have emanated from the other end of the room.
Today’s aural treats included a small but noisy bunch of pro-Israel protesters telling Parliament Square that “rape is not resistance” and a woman shouting about Jesus. And endless car horns. Always car horns.
But there is one fixture of the surrounds of the Palace of Westminster for whom I reserve specific ire. He is my Moriarty, my Joker, my Voldemort. My nemesis.
He is the man who plays, with a kitschy backing track, a saxophone rendition of the 2019 Luis Fonsi smash hit Despacito.
He is really quite a poor saxophonist. That doesn’t stop him. He plays no other song. Pitching up at around 2pm every day, he will play the 2019 Luis Fonsi smash hit Despacito on a loop, barely pausing for around four hours.
Despacito man is usually gone by around 6pm. He must make a killing. Tourists love him.
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I am at war with the man. I have attempted to reason with him. I have tried to contact Westminster City Council (he is in breach of their busking regulations, which require performers to have a varied repertoire which, as I have established, he does not).
I have contacted the local councillors who represent this area. Yet he evades detection.
I had minor success for a few blissfully quiet months over the winter, after a Westminster councillor familiar with people’s tales of woe about Despacito man saw to it that a busking enforcement team (yes, they do exist) dispatched him.
But the reprieve was only temporary. By the end of last month, he was back.
He is, as George Galloway once famously described Saddam Hussein, indefatigable.
In the event of nuclear Armageddon, it will be only be him and the cockroaches left in Parliament Square, while the rest of us have been annihilated.
In short, for anyone reading this and wondering how one gets on in the big smoke, where the racket seems never to end, the answer is headphones.
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