Juliet England: My deafie diary part 9 – life in lockdown

Continuing Juliet’s experiences of daily life with a hearing loss – now in lockdown.

And so. Life in lockdown continues, the days merging into one very long one indeed, erasing all ability to recall what happened during any particular 24-hour period, never mind what I had for lunch an hour ago.

The new normal of hand washing , and only emerging for a quick daily ‘run’ by the river, where I can tut at the blatant stay-home refuseniks sunning themselves on the grass and benches, of supermarket dashes and strange dreams, has already become what feels like a well-established routine.

The last time I had a proper face-to-face conversation of any length seems so long ago I genuinely think I may have forgotten how to talk.

I’ve tried some other forms of communication. Zoom, it turns out, isn’t that bad if you can use the instant-message, written chat feature alongside the video call.

Last night, I had a crack at online Trivial Pursuit with a friend from the theatre I belong to, and Maria, who runs the place one day a week. We tried Facebook at first, but couldn’t get any captions or chat going, and I was feeling minded to just give up, but Maria, in the gentlest possible way, wouldn’t let me.

Thanks to her calm, kind and determined persistence, we got set up on Zoom. She not only gave a running commentary of the conversation on instant chat, but typed out every single question for me, not just the ones I had to (try to) answer.

Which all led to a very jolly couple of hours, and not just because a glass of wine may have been involved. The session made me realise how much I have been missing company and contact, and, perhaps, that although people aren’t always prepared to go that extra mile to help with accessibility, what a huge difference it makes when they do.

Skype remains an oxygen supply for day-to-day contact. I’ve done one call involving three people, and, again with captions, communication is possible, if not absolutely ideal.

A recent essential trip to the local pharmacy made for a more depressing experience, with a queue, as they used to say in Spain when I lived there, ‘from here to Gibraltar’. What really struck me, standing in the spring sunshine in the surgery car park, was the silence. Of course, the 2m distance thing is hardly conducive to a good old natter, and I’m not the best person to have picked up on sound for obvious reasons, but it did seem eerie.

A man in a face mask came out to try and speed things up by asking patients what they needed. Panic washed over me, since there was clearly zero chance of any lipreading. He had to write down his question for me. Then, when I finally got my coveted spot inside the shop (one person at a time) the pharmacist had to do the same thing, placing his question on the counter and stepping back before I stepped forward to read it and then stepped back again myself to reply, an awkward dance. As it turned out, I couldn’t pick up my meds that day, and so had to go through the whole joyless procedure again the following day. (Which was, of course, no reflection on the amazing staff, doing an outstanding job in the most miserable of circumstances.)

Still, at least I have some hearing aid batteries now, although only because my friend Kate called the surgery and asked them to send me some. I know, I know, other priorities and all that, but I am still bemused at my GP‘s ‘phone the surgery for hearing aid batteries’ request.

In truth, I seem to barely need the things these days, but good to have them anyway.

Even with my aids, I can’t hear the TV, so am entirely dependent on the subtitles, which, as all us cloth-ears know, never fail to deliver comedy gold.

“Kingston hospital says it will run out of guns by the weekend,” read the alarming captions for on recent news bulletin. Oh, right, gowns. As you were.

Another subtitle had someone like Michael Gove (I can’t remember exactly) discussing the need for ‘stronger Texans’ to flatten the Covid-19 curve. Did he have George W Bush or Willie Nelson in mind, maybe? Ah. Stronger restrictions. Right you are.

When not snorting at the TV, I’ve been reading Sound by Bella Bathurst, as I’ve been meaning to do for ages. Full disclosure, she and I were at university together back in the early Middle Ages, and worked on the student paper at the same time, she in a more senior capacity, although we weren’t particular friends. Anyway, her book covers acoustics, her own hearing loss, deafness through work … and I’ve not finished reading it yet. All great stuff.

One may as well read. Who knows if or when any kind of normality will return?

What I do know is that for now, at least, there’s no let-up on the lockdown front. When I had an office job, one year on the last day before the Christmas break, we were all allowed to leave and go down the pub come lunchtime.

But we’d got so used to being at our desks that for a while no one seemed willing to go, least of all to make the first move.

“Look. We’re like animals, caged so long we can’t leave, even when the door has been opened,” I joked to the chief executive. “It’s like in Shawshank Redemption, where the prisoner says you get to needing the bars that keep you in.”

I wonder if the end of lockdown, when it happens, will be the same.