Juliet England: My deafie diary – part 6

Continuing Juliet’s experiences of daily life with a hearing loss.

Wednesday 22 January

A letter about my next CI appointments, and it’s good to feel that things are moving. But I need to confirm a couple of arrangements for February for initial scans, or risk losing them altogether. There is initially no email address, only a phone number I (obviously) can’t use. I email another contact at the hospital and it’s sorted. But I can’t help feeling a simple admin task has ended up taking far longer than it could and should have done.

What is it with this insistence on phoning only all the time, and not offering alternative means of contact? I recently had the same problem with my housing association, with whom I have the misery of being in an unhappy half-buy/half-rent arrangement for my gaff. They know I can’t hear. I’m currently locking horns over a monstrous 40% service charge hike, and received a voicemail message even though they knew it was worse than useless to me. I never heard it (well, obviously)but it no doubt asked me to ‘give them a call back’.

Wednesday 22 January

Lunch with one of my favourite local friends in one of my fave local joints. As I have to be gluten-free as well I state this clearly to girl behind the bar, who looks about eight. She asks me something I can’t hear, and it confirms what I already knew. That once I’ve not caught something after two or three attempts, all hope is lost. We carry on for a good half-hour with increasing desperation and a continued lack of comprehension. Eventually, I get the young lady to write her query down.

“Oh, right!” I say after more time has passed, governments have fallen, empires crumbled and Brexit deals come and gone. “Do I have an allergy or an intolerance? You should have said.” The young lady doesn’t laugh.

Thursday 23 January

I know Question Time is no good for my blood pressure, but I can’t seem to stop myself. At least there is a laugh from the subtitles. There’s some discussion about cocaine being readily available at parties. Not the ones I go to, remarks presenter Fiona Bruce. (Nor the few I attend, admittedly.) But maybe I’m just eating the wrong people. Fiona Bruce as cannibal. Now there’s an image that, once envisioned, can’t be unseen.

Saturday 25 January

I am talking to a friend about their elderly mother, whose hearing, I have noticed, is starting to go. I urge them to encourage her to go to her GP, and get the response that it’s ‘not an easy conversation to have’. Just do it, before things get I any worse, I sigh.

Monday 27 January

Not being able to hear the doorbell can be, in the words of the late Terry Pratchett, a right old embuggerance. I am turning my flat upside down post-gym class, realising, with a rising sense of panic, that I have lost my wallet. I open the door, ready to head out to the supermarket I visited on the way home and the last known point of contact with my wallet. I actually scream to see a young couple from the flat down the corridor standing in the doorframe, clutching my purse.

“We tried ringing!” they trill, handing the thing over.

The same thing happens at the weekend, when someone knocks to give me a much-needed lift somewhere. Annoying. And, talking of bells, if anyone can recommend a really good alarm clock, that’d be splendid.

Wednesday 29 January

My policy for dealing with most problems is that they will go away if ignored for long enough with enough firm commitment. Sadly, this approach doesn’t really work with HMRC and the pesky tax return can be left alone no longer.

In fact, the thing has been mostly completed, mainly because I got a grown-up to help me. But I still need to submit the wretched document. Somehow this is never less than a terrifying prospect. Happily, the Royal Association for Deaf People has a service that holds your hand virtually by Skype – and this gave me the strength to hit Submit. One day I may be adult enough to do it unaided.

I reward myself with a trip to the cinema to see The Personal History of David Copperfield. I am never sure why I persist with these movie visits. This one is particularly hard and I think I catch a grand total of three and a half words. It looks like a really good film as well. I embarrass my friend by putting my hearing aid in while we wait for the interminable trailers to start – it shrieks so loudly that I’m sure for a few rows back they think the fire alarm has gone off. Staying in. So woefully underrated.

Thursday 30 January

Don’t judge me, but I enjoy a bit of Doctors on BBC1 of a lunchtime. (When you work at home, you’ll take whatever you can get to get you through to teatime.) Anyway, seems they’re joining Corrie in having a bit of a deaf-related them. Midwife Ruhma Hanif is learning BSL. Good on her and everything, but not sure why the characters talk about ‘translating’ sign language when surely everyone knows it’s interpreting? Poor show, BBC.