Monday:
I return to the audiology clinic for my new hearing aids. I find this mildly depressing as if I might be going to get a Zimmer frame or incontinence pads. However, I’m seen by a very cheery young lady, Charlotte, who seems genuinely interested to be looking after a musician. She wires me up to a computer and puts electrodes in my ears which can apparently determine what I can and can’t hear without me confirming it.
Because this is the NHS, I was expecting the actual aids to be made from Bakelite and look like bananas. However, they are very small and hardly detectable behind one’s ears. Once inserted, the moment arrives for them to be switched on and calibrated. I don’t know why, but I feel very nervous. Charlotte warns me that I might find her voice too loud and that other extraneous sounds, hitherto lost to me, might intrude.
She switches them on and the effect is immediate. It’s like surfacing after swimming under water. They are too loud to begin with and she makes some fine adjustments and explains how I can increase or decrease the volume myself. She advises me that I might want to try them at home first and gradually acclimatise myself and my brain to new sounds. But I’m so amazed at the transformation that I keep them in.
As I walk through the hospital on my way out, the sounds are a bit overwhelming. I can hear the hiss of a coffee machine, the squeaky wheels on a patient trolley, doctors being paged and most disconcertingly, a medley of different conversations as I pass through waiting areas.
‘’Ad it all taken away she ‘as - Blood everywhere – Three months to live – Come ‘ere Jason – Two sugars - Congested intestines – He’s riddled with it….’
Once outside in the open air, it’s all too much for me. Car engines, ambulance sirens, birdsong, people shouting at each other, children whining, my own footsteps, the chimes of a distant ice cream van and the previously unheard hum and thrum of the universe. Sensory overload. I had no idea that the world is such a bloody noisy place. I remove the aids and drive home. As usual, the Micra engine is a muffled rumble and I can’t hear the indicators clicking.
Tuesday:
I remove some frozen beef mince from the freezer and plan to make a cottage pie when it’s defrosted. This is a sign that I’m having one of my together; get sensible days, when I feel that a little forward planning won’t go amiss. I do some laundry and as it’s quite sunny put it out on the collection of bungee straps that passes for a washing line on my balcony. I smooth out my T-shirts, bed linen and undies as best I can, because I don’t possess an iron. Since becoming single nearly a decade ago and bearing in mind my ineptitude with technology, or machinery of any kind, I’ve felt that it’s yet another potentially dangerous implement that I can’t be trusted with.
After hanging out the washing, I start to sneeze and wheeze. It’s the dreaded hay fever. The strange thing is that I’ve only suffered with this in the past few years. Most people grow out of things, whereas I seem to be growing into them. Any day soon I might start sucking my thumb and speaking gibberish.
So, I make the cottage pie and pop it in the oven which I have never cleaned. I check on the pie occasionally as it bubbles away and begins to develop a promising crust. As I do so, I notice little glowing embers in the depths of the oven, like the campfires of a besieging army. These are obviously the remnants of long-forgotten and countless roasts. The flickering souls of lambs, pigs, cows and chickens.
I have a shower and return to the kitchen in my bathrobe to get the pie from the oven. I can’t find my Homer Simpson oven gloves, so I use a tea towel instead. The pie dish is very hot and halfway between the oven and the work surface I drop it. It smashes to the kitchen floor marinating my bare feet with volcanic minced beef, gravy, carrots, swede and mashed potato. I hot foot it from the kitchen to the lounge, hopping from one leg to the other in a macabre highland fling. It takes me an hour to clean up the mess and my feet look like cooked lobsters and throb like hell. Why am I so inept?
I have a cheese sandwich and an early night, during which I dream that I’m a fire walker.
Wednesday:
I put the hearing aids in and take a trip in the Micra to the minimarket. As I approach the checkout, Satan’s Sister is on duty, looking ghoulish as ever. My feet are still smarting from the cottage pie incident and I’m limping a little.
‘You alright dearie?’ she asks. ‘You seem a bit unsteady on your pins.’
‘It’s an old war wound,’ I tell her. ‘Building the bridge on the river Kwai was a bugger and Alec Guinness wasn’t much help.’
I’ve begun to realise that she doesn’t really react to any response to her statements or questions. I could have said that I have rickets, or advanced syphilis.
Now at the checkout, my hearing aids give out a low and menacing hum, like a doodlebug before the engine cuts out. I turn around, putting my back to Satan’s Sister and the hum ceases. Spooky.
Thursday:
I’m still finding bits of the doomed cottage pie in various nooks and crannies of the kitchen and trodden into the lounge carpet. Most surprising of all is a dollop of congealed mashed potato hanging like a stalactite from the kitchen ceiling. I attempt to hook it down with a squeegee mop and a piece breaks off and hits me in the eye. It’s too early in my dotage to be thinking about residential care, but I could certainly do with someone sensible to keep an eye on me from time to time.
A rehearsal with my favourite band and the first time I’ve played the sax with the hearing aids in place. I can actually hear the high hat on the drums. I also find that I don’t have to blow so hard to be able to hear what I’m playing. This can only be good news for my sinuses and the paying public.
Friday:
Apropos of nothing, I decide to clear out some cupboards. I get on quite well finding old computer modems, disk drives, yellowing press cuttings of my very minor fame in the past, theatre programmes, old essays from my university days, discarded and long-forgotten manuscripts of compositions and all the detritus of a misspent and largely butterfly life. I’m quite ruthless with all this stuff and I soon have a couple of bin bags full. Then I’m stopped in my tracks by a box of old photographs. There are my children’s first faltering steps, school photos, holidays in Alderney and around the world, picnics in parks, birthday parties, coming of age parties, graduations, weddings and christenings. There’s our beloved old dog, Bonnie, the cleverest and most eccentric canine who ever lived. Layer upon layer of pictures going way back into the dim and distant past. Me playing the clarinet, my first gig with a skiffle band, tugging on a tea chest bass, old school photos of me looking slightly bewildered, even in those days.
Pinhole cameos marking the passing of the years. With a heavy heart I put the box back into the cupboard. Nostalgia overload.
Saturday:
The sand dancers, Eugene and Sandy, have returned from their tour. I see them unpacking their car as I go out to get my newspaper.
‘How did the tour go?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it wasn’t a tour darling,’ says Sandy. ‘It was a cruise around the British Isles.’
‘More like a cruise around the stewards for you,’ says Eugene sniffily.
Sandy ignores this remark and continues.
‘Can you imagine how utterly boring it was?’ He goes into a cod American voice. ‘Marvel at the exciting Essex coastline, the wonders of the Western Isles and the vibrant city of Cork. Watch seals in Northumbria and enjoy the colourful nightlife of Glasgow. It pissed with rain most of the time. Eugene got mugged in Glasgow, the seals had some sort of virus and didn’t appear and the rest is shrouded in mist. Talk about a rough crowd of cheapskates. Even the ship’s doctor wore a stab vest. I was having a stroll on the deck one day and some old lady comes up and asks me how often people die on cruises. Only once, I told her. After a minute or two, the penny dropped and she waved her umbrella at me and told me to fuck off.’
‘Doesn’t sound like a bundle of laughs,’ I say.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Sandy with an exaggerated wink, ‘it had its compensations.’
Eugene gives him a death stare that would make The Obelisk envious.
Sunday:
The mashed potato stalactite dropped to the kitchen floor during the night. I skid on it as I go to put some bread in the toaster for my breakfast and nearly brain myself on the gas boiler. The only consolation is that prior to the hearing aids, I would hardly have heard the resounding gong as my head connected with it. Hurrah for the NHS.
© David Sherrington 2013
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