Juliet England: My deafie diary part 22 – life in lockdown

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

The Tesco delivery guy tells me he’s sorry when I open the door; he did call, but then texted as well. That it’s OK, he can actually come into the kitchen now. That he used to work in a cinema.

As conversations go, this one would probably win the Dullest Chat of the Year 2021 award. And yet, it is remarkable. For not only can I hear the words perfectly (well, OK, maybe not all of them …) – but the young lad in question is, of course, sporting a mask.

“Wait. Are you crying?” he asks, shocked.

“Er, no,” I reply quickly. “Just a touch of the old, um, hay fever.”

Above his mask, his eyes look startled. I can tell he’s thinking – in March, at 10pm?

That doesn’t mean that every interaction has gone swimmingly. When I showed up for a recent afternoon shift volunteering at the local jab centre, admittedly late and somewhat flustered, I was posted to work on the barrier at the entrance to the car park.

I am assigned to work with Sylvie (not her real name), a retired transport copper I’ve worked with previously without incident. But it’s fair to say that she and I do not strike up an immediate and beautiful friendship.

Sylvie refuses to remove her mask when speaking to me, so I can’t lipread – and it may well be that the rapidly escalating stress of the situation is making matters worse.

It’s also reasonable to confess that this isn’t my finest hour – I am not one for getting into unseemly spats with people I barely know and certainly won’t look back on the afternoon with undiluted pride.

But something about this situation just brings down the red mists of rage. After all, we are outside and so pulling down a mask briefly is low-risk and not, I think, actually illegal. What’s more, Sylive’s mask isn’t there to protect her, but others. I am saying I accept the minimal danger – so where is the problem, apart from a certain amount of jobsworthy officiousness?

I spend the rest of the afternoon greeting the punters politely and waving them on their way, and lifting that wretched barrier with Sylvie as required, based on her hand gestures to me. (Come to think of it, why does the car park even need a barrier at all?)

Anyway, it was all fine and everything but could have been a much more enjoyable shift all round. I slunk off to get my second jab at the end of the four hours, without, I fear, even saying goodbye. As I say, not proud.

It has not been the only fraught occasion of recent weeks. My friend Julia’s funeral was a month ago, my first and hopefully my last such event online. It was sad and strange, and with no singing, although they did play the Beatles song Julia and Life on Mars, given her committed Bowie devotion.

A mutual friend also watching was on WhatsApp with me at the same time, relaying a synopsis of proceedings, since the sound wasn’t perfect and we virtual mourners were quite far back, with a view over the tops of the physically present mourners’ heads.

It did not seem then, and does not seem now, possible that Julia could be so completely gone.

In cheerier news, I am delighted with being able to listen to the radio thanks to the old (and newly cranked up, volume-wise) implant. The Today programme, for goodness sake! It’s true that I can’t yet always follow full interviews, but even catching presenters’ names, the headlines and the like has been nothing short of revolutionary.

I can hear snatches of the Popmasters quiz with Ken Bruce on Radio 2 for my mid-morning break. And I can enjoy some late-night sounds on Radio 3, a station which was previously completely inaccessible.

Not that you actually want to hear everything. The day Prince Philip died, tiring of the wall-to-wall BBC coverage, I tuned in to an online commercial station. But it provided no escape. Every five minutes the death had to be referred to again, along with the words ‘just to recap …’. Yes, we know. Very sad for the queen etc. etc. But there is really no need to recap – you have already told me this news 17 times in the last 20 minutes.

When I can get my hearing aid fixed, I should be cooking on butane with stereo sound. I have emailed my local audiology department about this, but didn’t get a reply. I have, however, received some new tubing. There’s just one problem. I don’t have the faintest clue as to how to swap it from the old stuff. And I’m more likely to cut my  hands to ribbons than anything else. Wish me luck.