I took off my headphones – and noticed a stranger in peril

Slumped on the pavement, she wasn’t breathing – and I wouldn’t have realised if I’d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world … For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles away from wherever I was. One damp January evening last year, I was walking home from my parents’ house, headphones dead in my bag, when I noticed a small figure slumpe...

By Ella Hopkins