My job requires an inordinate amount of time on the phone. I'm an old schooler here and have resisted handsets, preferring to cradle the receiver and scrunch my shoulder. Persevered like that for years, until it became an agony of contorted muscles and twitching, throbbing nerves, to the point where it even started to hurt when I carried something. Enough. No more.

Now I've gone the way of nearly everyone I know who spends their life oddly wedded to a phone - taken up a headset. The difference is instant: two hands free, ergo more can be done (surfing, gesturing with my hands while I'm talking); whilst shoulder discomfort is fading away quicker than my January pay packet.

Does n't every reaction, however, have an equal and opposite reaction? That's probably the only fragment I can remember from long ago physics lessons, but it's true. It really is. It's as if karmic balance is playing out. So, yes, my agility is returning and I can swivel my neck up and down without grimacing, but my hearing, oh boy.... I take the thing off and it's as if I've just freed myself from two hours being stuck in the bass drum at a Punk Rock concert. My ears hum, they whistle, they pop like hands gripping a roll of bubble wrap.

Ever resourceful though, I've found some mitigation which is to stick the headphones just below my ears. Still pick everything that's been said, but without any discomfort. It does look like I've had two electrodes fitted at either side of my head, but what do I care if it looks like I've just risen from Dr Frankenstein's operating table. It's being able to hear that matters.