Q: I like the serenity of the beach, but sometimes beachgoers plonk themselves down next
to me with a portable speaker and deafen me with their questionable taste in music. What should I do?
P.G., Haberfield, NSW

A: You have three options, depending on the type of questionable music being played: fight, flight or “relax, enjoy, it’s all right”. The beachgoers may be listening to death metal and growl-singing along to Cannibal Corpse’s Meat Hook Sodomy (“Grated genitals, dangling from the hooks”). Well, that would be fight: Cannibal Corpse were around in the 1980s, their fans would be polite middle-agers now – tell them they’re too loud and they’ll apologise profusely, switch it off, and just sit silently on their Tomb of the Mutilated concert-merch beach towels.

The beachgoers may be playing disco-polka and they’ve pumped it up loud, dancing to Polka-Boogie-Wonderland and miming air-accordion solos. Well, that would be flight: disco-polka enthusiasts are notorious beer guzzlers, you don’t want to provoke them, just get up and walk away in a jaunty 2/4 rhythm like a polka-strutting John Travolta. They’ll respect that.

The beachgoers may be into hip-hop and Megan Thee Stallion’s Body is blaring: “Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody/Ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody (mwah)!” That’s a “relax, enjoy, it’s all right”. Body is a good song, it’s quite catchy, the lyrics really grow on you after about the 50th or 70th body-ody-ody-ody.