Juliet England: My deafie diary part 20 – life in lockdown

The green shoots of lockdown easing may be, if not exactly here yet, potentially visible on the horizon, glimmering distantly like a mirage.

But clearly nothing is going to happen immediately; meanwhile the unstructured Groundhog Days continue, and most forms of fun remain illegal.

My next cochlear implant rehab session online with Emma is next week. And, while I‘m looking forward to it, I’m also bracing myself for a virtual rap on the knuckles.

No, I haven’t been keeping a diary of my CI use. No, I haven’t quite managed to wear the thing every waking hour, despite having said I would. (Although it’s fitted as I type this.)

I really like Emma, and, like some loyal puppy, want to please her and make her proud. Just as I did the cooler gym instructors in those long-ago days when exercise classes were allowed. So I’m hoping she’ll be glad that I have made some headway since we last ‘met’.

Quite a few everyday things now sound louder, from fingers pecking at the keyboard to beeps on my phone to the kettle boiling. (I hereby promise to never mention anything nauseating about birdsong.) The TV and radio are also loads clearer, though I still need subtitles, and following an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 certainly isn’t possible yet. (Not least because I’m never up early enough.)

But like everyone else, I’ve been glued to Channel 4’s It’s a Sin, and it’s been good to follow the Eighties soundtrack. I’m even increasingly able to pick out different accents and tones in voices I hear on telly.

Last Sunday afternoon, I did an online audition for a digital performance with our local theatre. And while I’m pretty sure I haven’t been cast (update: I wasn’t), that’s not the surprising part – with lipreading I  barely needed to ask the director to repeat anything.

We did another online gathering among my uni friendship group (dating back 30-odd years). As with the previous ‘meeting’, it was brilliant to see everyone. And I definitely heard more this time around. But one particularly patient friend still had to tell me in the chat function what everyone was going on about.

When we were all living in college, I inadvertently created a mythical character, Auntie Bea, after I misheard one of our number. (She’d said ‘I must remember to take my anti-biotics’ – I’d heard ‘I must remember to phone my Auntie Beatrix.’) The memory of this non-existent aunt lives richly on, some three decades later, even if the gag should probably be in sheltered accommodation by now.

Infuriatingly, at one point in our Zoom call, I caught the words ‘bicarbonate of soda’ but then had no inkling why it was the subject of conversation. Someone explained. I can no longer remember why it was a topic for discussion, but, as anyone with a hearing loss knows, that’s never the point.

In slightly happier news, and in a startling triumph of hope against experience, I was asked back to the local Covid jab centre to pull a second shift as a volunteer marshal. I was given what should have been a ridiculously easy task – getting patients leaving the marquee to walk along a ramp and not go wandering off all over the car park, unless they were just walking directly to their vehicle. How hard could it be?

My increasingly hysterical instructions seemed to succeed only in miring the departing patients in deep confusion. Which part of ‘please stick to the walkway’ was so hard to comprehend? Equally, of course, I couldn’t hear them behind the masks over their poor, bewildered little faces.

I became obsessed with that sodding ramp. Eventually, I was sent up the road to marshal at a T-junction. Again it was hard to hear motorists who’d pulled down windows and required directions, but thankfully it was mostly me (trying) to tell people what to do. I did inadvertently send some off in the wrong direction. (I blame the muddled instructions I was given, and it’s not easy in a tight grid of one-way streets near a town centre.) However, in my defence, everyone made their appointment. Eventually.

I’ve written previously about a Very Well Known Department Store which shall not be named, and which owes me a £100 refund for some missold software for a laptop purchased before Christmas. My friend who recently phoned to try and sort this out for me has been in hospital and I am reluctant to ask again – last time she got through but was wrongly told that phone refunds were not possible.

Now it seems it is possible, but the person calling on my behalf will have to meet the Very Well Known Department Store’s data protection rules. Whatever that means.

My local deaf centre agreed to make the call, but failed to make the appointment, or even to respond to emails afterwards. (Thanks, guys!) I could have vouchers for the store instead. (No, ta.) I could try and make the call myself (unlikely to be anything but a fruitless and excruciatingly miserable experience for all concerned.) Or I could just wait until I can visit the store in person. Or I could continue to send more pointless emails. But they are insisting that only the blower will do. So I am stuck in a swirling, unending vortex that seems as eternal as the current lockdown.

Never mind. To cheer myself up, and for the social aspects, I went to the dentist the other afternoon. Rudaina is indeed wonderful and I wouldn’t allow anyone else to poke about inside my mouth. She gave me the bad news standing at a distance so she could remove her mask. (Even then, a kindly receptionist had to write everything down for me.) A tooth has to be removed, with the option of a denture. What fresh hell is this? What am I, 91, no longer in possession of all my own teeth?

Harrumph, harrumph. Here’s to the spring, and those green shoots hinting at better things.