Sorry, Would you Mind Repeating That?

Auditory processing?  I'm rubbish at it. Always have been. When The Two Ronnies made a joke about fork handles: four candles, all those years ago, that was me. Or rather, a small problem of mine. Not often mentioned, but sometimes getting me into hot water such as when a friend once referred to "wide diverging views," I heard, "Wide-eyed virgin views".

It is hard to imagine this now, when song lyrics are a click away on the keyboard, but in the Seventies when I worked for BBC TV Light Entertainment, part of my job, as Assistant Floor Manager, was to write out the lyrics for guest artists on large idiot boards and stand to the side of the camera so that they could follow them. In those days getting hold of lyrics meant paying for a copy of the music and the budget of the show I happened to be working on in BBC Glasgow at the time, could not afford to do that. So I was sent into a room with a recording of the song on a tape cassette deck and told to transcribe. No matter how many times I played Saturday Night Fever I came up with the same thing:
"I got air in my pants/I get higher in my walking/And I glow in the dark/Without warning".
I played it to loads of different people and they too could only hear my lyrics and not the official,
"I've got fire in my mind/I get higher in my walking/ And I glow in the dark/I give you warning". Mine was windier, but quite close, I thought.

So hats off to Microsoft, that claims to have developed a voice recognition programme that is as good as humans at transcribing a conversation. Let's hope they've modelled it on a You Man with accurate auditory processing. Apparently, we are a long way off from computers being able to understand what is being said.
That's a relief. I thought I could hear the sound of robots marching.
Happening more often. Must get that checked.