Juliet England: My deafie diary part 24 – life in lockdown

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

When the landline goes, my usual response (assuming I can be bothered) is to waddle over to the phone, pick up the receiver and place it immediately back in its cradle to stop the insistent ringing. Anyone I’d actually want to speak to would know not to use it to contact me.

But the other day when the mobile went, feeling bored, I decided to answer. (I also recognised the code as being on my manor.) It was someone calling about some volunteering or other, for which I’d allegedly applied, although I had no memory of having done so. No matter; I identified the situation, and we agreed that the rest could be followed up by email.

The only challenge was getting the woman at the end of the line understand what a joyous breakthrough this was for me.

“We’re having an actual conversation! On the phone! It’s amazing!” I yelp.

“Yeah. I’ll send you that email,” she replies, really not that bovvered.

The implant seems to have become so embedded in my life now that others, if not exactly uninterested, forget that I have it, forget to appreciate the simple wonder of being able to hold a normal conversation.

I was driving back home the other evening with my constant companion when I turned to him 20 minutes into the journey.

“You haven’t even noticed,” I say. “We’re in a dark car, but I can hear what you’re saying.”

(Previous journeys like this have ended with one or both of us gnawing our own elbow off in frustration, or coming closer to being on a murder charge than would be strictly seemly.)

“It’s true,” he admits.

So it’s interesting how quickly other people have come to take the thing for granted. Anyway. Next trip back to Oxford is this week to see how things are going. Hopefully, there will also be the chance to meet my speech therapist Emma in person for the first time, and take the mick in real life about how ‘scary’ she can be when I haven’t done my homework exercises.

This month’s subtitle fail award goes to ITV’s News at 10, who had that Ryanair guy O’Leary on, talking alarmingly about ‘booking flights to amber-list countries in their graves’. They what now? Oh. Droves. Right you are, move along please. Nothing to see here.

Sticking with ITV, but moving to Cornonation Street, I’ve been interested to follow the storyline of Gemma and Chesney and young Aled, one of their improbable baby quads, as they discuss whether cochlear implants would be right for their son. But I have a question. Why the constant references to implants plural? The NHS will only pay for one implant in almost all cases (at least that’s my understanding), and I doubt very much whether Gemma and Chesney, like most people, could afford the £20K it would cost to give Aled a second implant.

It may seem a small thing, but surely you would expect the likes of Corrie to do its research properly.

As well as (probably) overdoing the old telly, I’ve been to see two actual films. In two actual cinemas. The first such visits in over a year, with a film-buff friend who loves movie-theatre trips (or perhaps just doesn’t like talking to me very much). Anyway, these were aslso the first post-implant cinema visits, and with no subtitles. The first picture, Nomadland was quite visual with minimal plot (good) but set in the US, so there were some thick American accents to deal with (more challenging). Overall, I could tell it was an excellent movie, and I caught far more of the dialogue than I would have done in the pre-implant era. But it served as a reminder, as if it were needed, that implantation is not perfect. I certainly did not hear everything. Still. It was worth watching anyway.

The second, In the Heights, I frankly probably wouldn’t have bothered with had I not happened to have had a pair of free tickets. It’s a musical, so it was harder to decipher the words. Mind you, I could tell that one song was called Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Even that was a breakthrough.

Anyway, the film, focusing on an inordinate number of unnecessarily good-looking twenty-somethings prancing and running around their ‘hood, was probably aimed at a demographic several decades younger than me and my equally middle-aged buddy. So perhaps I would have always taken more interest in my family-sized bag of Minstrels (that, come to think of it, wasn’t the size of any family I know, who writes this stuff?) and a gentle snooze than the film, hearing loss or not.

In other news, I have applied to take part in a TV show aimed at singing no-hopers. (I was banned from not one but two school choirs.) I’ve always wondered to what extent my hearing loss has contributed to my complete inability to hold a single note in tune, Apparently, this project involves being mentored by professional opera singers and everything. So far, I’ve just done an initial chat, and am waiting to hear whether I have got through to the next stage of the audition process, which would involve – gasp – a trip to London. I am already washing my socks in preparation.