WHEN was the last time you woke up to the sound of a milkman whistling?

Does your postie whistle when he delivers your mail? Is your workplace filled with the jolly trill of whistlers going about their day?

Whistling used to be synonymous with work and domestic life; it was the background noise in industrial communities, filling the air in streets and homes, shops and factories.

It was a sound I grew up with. My grandad always whistled the same tune whenever he was busy baking or mending something. I’ve no idea what the tune was, but it was a source of amusement in our family that he never whistled anything else.

He wasn’t the only one. Anyone who watched and loved the Good Life, as I did, will recall Tom Good’s trademark whistle. He always whistled the same few notes from Somewhere Over The Rainbow while tinkering about patching up the hen coop or building a potato-planting contraption. It was a lovely, natural touch that Richard Briers brought to the role and something I suspect he did himself while learning his lines.

A former colleague of mine used to regularly whistle, loudly and in a rather dramatic way, the theme music to Jurassic Park. He didn’t know he was doing it until someone pointed it out to him.

I’ve been known to whistle the occasional show tune, sitting at my keyboard. I interviewed someone from the cast of Oklahoma! recently and heard myself whistling the title song while I was writing it up. But mine is more of a whisper whistle, with a knowing retro twist.

Whistling seems so old-fashioned now – if you find yourself doing it the trick is to make it sound post-modern and ironic. On my own in the car I whistle wild and free, until I stop at traffic lights.

I think it’s a shame we don’t hear whistling so much in public places. There was something comforting about it; it was the sound of people going about their business with a spring in their step, the human equivalent of bees buzzing from flower to flower.

Maybe the drone of endless music radio stations has drowned whistling out, or the gizmos and gadgets with headsets that people have semi-permanently plugged into their ears. Or maybe contemporary music doesn’t really lend itself to whistling.

You’d probably struggle to whistle gangsta rap, or the tedious vocal gymnastics that pass for ballads among X-Factor contestants.

There is a plus side though. Workmen don’t tend to wolf whistle anymore, and I don’t miss that self-conscious, awkward feeling of having to brace myself walking past a building site.

Then again, at my age, chance would be a fine thing...