Well powder my arse and call me a baby because, friends, I am addicted to stories. I can barely function without a podcast, the radio or an audiobook accompanying my actions. Not music, not silence; just talking. Temporarily misplacing my headphones this week (they turned up in a bowl of potatoes) made me realise quite how dependent I have become on the human voice for company, comfort and concentration. An account of a serial killer while you clean your hob? Why not. A condensed audio version of a literary classic while you run 5km? Sure. An intricate chat about favourite dinners while you shave your legs? Go on then. Falling asleep every night to the autobiography of Malcolm X? In my case, absolutely.
Is this hunger for recorded speech a result of our atomised, lonely little lives, in which you can go hours, perhaps days, without the tangible, audible contact of another living person? Or is my compulsion towards human chatter a hangover from a childhood spent listening to books on cassette and the ever-present gurgling of the radio beside the oven? It’s certainly true that last year, while doing my tax return, I listened to the very same Roald Dahl audiobooks I fell asleep to as a child. Somehow, the Theatre Collection performances of Matilda, The Witches and Fantastic Mr Fox got me through the anxiety-inducing hellfire of my expenses. This year, I might try The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian and see if they have the same balm-like effect.
Ironically, the very week in which I lost my headphones, I spent three days sitting in a small, soundproof booth, recording the audiobook of my first novel. For 15 happy hours, I had nothing to do but speak. And so, the addict has become the dealer. The baby has learned to talk.
• Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years, published by Bantam Press. Arwa Mahdawi is away
