Nobody whistles any more, have you noticed?

My late dad was a whistler and he drove the family crazy. From the moment he got up, while he was washing and shaving, he'd be whistling while the rest of us moped about in a dopey daze. He'd whistle while he was taking me out on the crossbar of his bike on a country ride. He'd whistle along - to our cringeing embarrassment - in the cinema to the film's theme tune and normally to a chorus of "shush" from the other customers; and he'd whistle with the Black And White Minstrels (am I allowed to call them that these days?).

And all the time, me mum would be digging him in the ribs demanding "Bill, will you stop that bloody racket!"

The only creatures who whistle these days seem to be the birds, and even they can't get it right. Because of global warming light pollution in our cities, towns and even villages, the dawn chorus usually chirps up at around 1am.

Rowdy lads used to whistle to call their friends when they were beyond shouting distance. But the only people you see nowadays with two fingers in the mouth to get your full attention are dentists.

Even wolf whistles from building sites have suffered the same fate as girlie calendars. Any randy brickie who dared a wolf whistle as a pretty girl walks past these days would risk being handcuffed, gagged and thrown into jail for sexual harassment. Okay, in this topsy-turvy world, you might hear a pretty girl wolf whistle as she passes a building site.

The police seem to have given up their whistles in favour of fast cars and walkie-talkies, but there are a few anachronistic die-hards still using their whistles. Even in an age of electronic score boards and video replays, referees still use whistles to bring offenders to heel.

Sometimes you even hear the odd train being whistled off from the station.

I don't know whether dog whistles are still used because you can't hear a thing.

But I've got a whistle, a souvenir from my days on the railways (I wonder if I should have handed it in when I left).

No, I was not the thin controller, but a press officer and my shiny, silver whistle had one careful owner, so not much spit in the barrel. It was blown once by the lady mayor of Cleethorpes in a PR stunt to launch a new train service in and out of the resort. I don't remember what happened to the new green flag she also used to wave off the train.

So this whistle is now a handy communication tool in our house.

When my wife is down the bottom of our rambling garden and disappears in the rose bushes with her vicious secateurs, I can never find her and she cannot hear me from the house. So the whistle comes out. One long blast means there's someone on the phone. Two short chirps means tea-up, while three sharp, angry blasts mean stop chatting up the bloke next door and get on with trimming the hedge.

With so few whistles in use, how do the manufacturers make a living? And what do they use to make the "peas"?

I suppose, in this newish millennium, there's just no need to whistle. Once upon a time - before transistor radios - people would whistle to make their own music. Now you can buy a contraption the size of a cigarette packet (a packet of ten) which contains a thousand songs and the sound through headphones makes it feel as if a full orchestra is inside your brain.

That's a lonely life, though. Whole families used to gather round the piano to sing, or whistle if you didn't have the voice for it.

Now it is individuals cocooned in their own world of personal music machines.

Or has whistling simply gone out of favour because no one is cheerful enough these days?

Updated: 09:13 Tuesday, April 25, 2006