Meeting myself coming the other way........

I am now settled into my temporary home, while I wait to move again, this happens to be in the town I grew up in. It makes things a bit weird. Around every corner there seems to be a memory waiting to re-ignite; the road where I rode on the back of my mate's bicycle, legs sticking out sideways, while she peddalled hard to get us both to wherever we were going; the site of the old chip shop where another friend worked and had to wear a headscarf so she didn't smell of chip fat when she got home; the house I grew up in, looking as austere and unwelcoming as ever it did; the Indian restaurant, where as a five year old, I would order chips, Cocoa Cola and ice cream to avoid eating that funny food that made my mouth hurt.

Paradoxically things that have changed stand out, as do the things that have stayed the same.

Through all this I can feel my brain trying to rewire the hard wiring of old memories.

At times it is like I'm meeting myself coming the other way.

I am Rock Chick

Yeah baby!

My house is nearly empty.

I am rattling around.

Less people, less furniture, less stuff.

A lot less stuff.

It feels good.

Apart from my bed and piano, the only functioning equipment left set up is the stereo. By some fluke of subliminal organisation, my CDs are also still visible.

And one of the best things about this house is the very thick basement walls. They are really thick, thick like a castle.

This means you can turn the volume and bass up to deliriously high levels.

So while I was feeling a bit grim, finding out just what had fallen behind the washing machine over the last decade, I remembered that I could be doing it all to music.

Then I saw it.

Led Zeppelin.

Hadn't listened to it for years.

Yes, it was loud.

Yes it was brilliant.

It was more brilliant than I remembered it being, probably because everything since has been feeble dross in comparison.

I could fling cobweb covered wall tiles and pots of paint over my shoulder, as if they were television sets out of hotel windows.

It was harder to be so dramatic with the odd socks, but I tried anyway.

When it was all over, there was the cup of tea, and a sing along to 'Stairway to Heaven' between sips.

Proper music. Does what it says on the tin.

Mouse Traps - The Bad News

I went to my mother's house today to pick up the post and (as I convinced myself) to check the empty mousetraps.

They were meant to be empty, they really were.

It was VERY spooky to go into an empty house, and peer round the kitchen door, to see the bedraggled corpse of an adult mouse, pinned by its neck, next to the washing machine. The second trap was empty.

I'm not usually squeamish, having seen rats and other enchanting wildlife in India, but something about this poor rodent sent shivers all through me. I stood in the hall, wondering whether to drive all the way home again to fetch a son or two to help, but decided that would be daft.

I stood for a bit longer, thinking I could leave it and hope the carpet fitters coming a few days later would deal with it, but would that be fair?

Probably not.

I stood for a bit longer in the hall, feeling all creepy.

And slightly foolish.

I stood with that sensation for many minutes. Then decided I had to take charge of the situation. I was an adult, I could do this sort of thing.

Then I waited some more.

Finally, I put on my Marigolds and hesitantly took a bin liner out of my bag. I planned to cover the corpse with the bin liner, then scoop up the offending creature so the bag turned inside out round it, then I would run for the front door (left open for speed) and head for the wheelie bin.

The tactic worked, but with little electric shock sensations running up my spine, as I felt the limpness of the body through the gloves. I ran through the house with a silent scream (although I have to confess, it might not have been totally silent)and made it to the wheelie bin.

I couldn't get out of the house fast enough after that, which is sad as I am supposed to be moving in on Friday - and we all know that there is never, ever, only one mouse in a house.

Help.

Shopping - not as much fun as it used to be

Life's been rather stressful lately. I'm expecting to move house, to a very small place. This means I've been sifting through 16 years of family bits and pieces and trying to get rid of quite a lot of furniture. It's been interesting - I realised that I need to handle every single item in the house, and make a decision about each one. I've been doing well, there have been numerous trips to the dump, two local charity shops stocked almost entirely with our things, and Freecycle devotees have been coming round regularly to dismantle wardrobes and shelves. As well as all this, my mother's house, which I let on her behalf, has (for complicated reasons I won't go into here) required complete refurbishment. So I have been project managing that and doing runs to the dump and so on for her house as well. This has coincided with the busiest time of year at work. No peace for the wicked, as they say.

This decluttering of my life has been liberating. I was very surprised to find the only thing I felt slightly traumatised about getting rid of was the family collection of about a cubic metre of Lego. I started to sift through it, meaning to take only a small box of the more interesting bricks and little people to keep, but as I started to put to one side spacecraft engine parts and gears, I realised I couldn't let it go. Weird. It's not like I'm going to sit and build a spaceship or pirate island any time soon (although that might be quite soothing, thinking about it).

All this sorting and removing and clearing and decision making has meant there is no point in my buying more material possessions. Instead, yesterday on a shopping trip, I ended up in an ironmonger buying flea powder and mouse traps. Not for myself I hasten to add, but for my mother's house (the last tenants weren't the sort of people you would have back in a hurry - astonishingly, one was a student health visitor). It's not the same as the sort of shopping trip where you can do a 'show and tell' when you get home.

The bad news is that now I have to go to my mother's house and set the mousetraps and squirt the flea powder everywhere. I feel very sorry for the mice (who I am rather fond of) but as friend pointed out, I can't use a humane trap, as between visits the poor little creatures would starve slowly, which we decided would be worse. I was tempted by the sonic repelling machine, but as the house has new windows, there is no where for them to escape, so they would end up being driven mad. Life is full of difficult choices at the moment, the mode for murdering mice, and whether to keep a Lego shark and octopus.

I wonder whether the shark would like a trip into outer space?

I hope the sale goes through now, otherwise I am going to be rattling around in a large, and mainly empty, house.

Freecycle is brilliant by the way, and the people who have been coming round seem to be really good types, who I have enjoyed meeting.

Boat with a View

I had a wonderful new experience yesterday. One of those moments where everything feels calm and well placed. It was on the way back from the Skiff Club 'Santa Skiff' - a lovely day out on the Thames in traditional, wooden rowing boats. The boats were decorated with tinsel and the crews dressed to match. Our insides were warmed with mulled wine to get us going on the frosty morning. Our insides continued to be warmed as we stopped at each conveniently placed pub on the Thames, until we reached our destination for lunch. Come to think of it, there was a lot of 'warming' of insides before lunch, luckily there are no yard arms on rowing boats to complicate things.

Lunch was one of those good ones, where it gets dark before you leave. Five of us were in our boat for the return journey, and I rather envied the chap lying in the bow (pointy end) as I did some of the hard work rowing. When someone suggested a changeover, I managed to swap into the coverted horizontal position (not an officially recognised skiffing place) and found that Nirvana was waiting for me. I confess, the drink might have had something to do with it by that point.

So I'm lying on the bottom of the boat, head into the pointy bit but propped comfortably on a ruck sack. The boat is sitting lower in the water than usual due to the number of occupants. The water is rather disconcertingly close to my nose, but gives the vantage of seeing across the Thames at an angle not usually enjoyed by vertical beings. There is a full moon with occasional cloudscapes passing by. There are stars. There are the intermittent silhouettes of moorhens, or the luminous glow of a swan. The blades are dipping in and out - I hadn't noticed before the deep throated swooshing as they shove blocks of water out of the way. The boat thrumped with the movement, and well oiled boards creaked as the rowers slowly cantilevered back and forth. There was the muffled clicking of leather buttons on thole as the blades helped to feather themselves. From the other end of the boat, the soft sound of conversation drifted into the night.

All this was going on as the tops of the trees went past the stars in freeze-frame animation. I was being gently rocked to sleep in my watery bed.

It all looked and felt wonderful.

It doesn't get much better.

It really doesn't.

Another Christmas Note

You know the festive season is really here when you find yourself navigating round the pools of sick to get to work. The latest offering would have been helpful to any detective trying to find where the accused had walked. Repeated puddles, with necklaces of milky bile joining them together. You could be certain it was the same person as the contents of each contained the same 'signature' items of regurgitated food.

As Christmas is approaching, I decided to start finding presents and went for a jolly day out with a friend. We stopped for coffee in a ghastly, global conglomerate. There were long queues, screaming children waiting for Santa and somewhat strangely, 'Merry Costa' slogans adorning the walls.

This morning there was a disturbing article in the paper about how some white women inject illegal chemicals to become darker skinned, and how some darker skinned women use creams containing mercury (yes, mercury) and steroids to look paler. The article frequently referred to types of coffee to describe their skin tones.

The woman were so keen to achieve, I think it was 'golden cappuccino' that the threat to their long term well-being, or scarring, didn't alarm them at all.

It's all about excess isn't it? Drink until you vomit (seemingly not even considered an unusual pastime anymore) spend more than you can really afford, while being excessively obsessed about how you look.

Merry Costa indeed.

More on Christmas Confusion

It's still sunny, and now it's late November.

That's confusing.

It might explain what I heard when I went shopping this morning.

In a side street a busker was sawing through 'Summertime' which intermingled awkwardly, in certain parts of the high street, with 'Jingle Bells' played by a youth band. I resisted an urge to pop back for my recorder and join in with an early Easter rendition of 'There is a Green Hill'.

The nightmare teddies with encephalitis are back in the shopping mall, nodding with equal enthusiasm at everyone and no-one. The ghastly mall was festooned with over-sized Ali-Baba inspired baubles and ribbons. Harassed parents were trying to jam double buggies with screaming children past shop displays of 'Rockin' Santa'.

Something odd happened in all this chaos though - I found myself buying Christmas presents - which I wasn't planning to do until December started properly.

Just goes to show, the hard sell really does work, however much you think you can avoid it.

Christmas is coming - already?

I was horrified to see a pub down the road had put out an advert, 'Office Christmas parties, book now!'.

It's September.

It's still reasonably sunny.

Children have only just gone back to school. I so don't want to be thinking about Christmas yet.

It also made me have a 'miserable git' moment about office Christmas parties in restaurants or pubs. There seems to be a new 'tradition' that every office in the land is expected to book a Christmas dinner in a local haunt. These venues try to induce panic in us all that if we don't book the venue in September, we might be the only employees not to be able to celebrated Christmas.

In my experience, there is very little 'celebratory' in these dos. A restaurant that usually comfortably seats 50, squeezes in 100. One example of this in our local town meant that every time someone wanted to go to use the facilities, half those assembled had to rise to allow them to get past. Repeating the movement again on their return. What with all the drinking going on, this made the event start to feel more like musical bumps than a pleasant meal. The restaurants also seem to have trouble catering for several large parties at the same time, in spite of choosing what you want three months previously (which you would think would enable them to get organised). This ends up manifesting itself as one end of the table finishing their dessert, while the other end is still awaiting the starter. Any hope of conversation is quashed by the loudspeakers treating everyone to a medley (what an awful word, what an awful concept) of festive songs, usually including 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer'.

All this is then capped by trying to divide the bill 50 ways, with those that drank tap water subsidising those that drank their way through the wine cellar. And let us also not forget that all this 'fun' has to be experienced while wearing a paper hat that will, inevitably, drop into your gravy at some point.

Let's have a ban on parties that are no fun. Let's have a ban of any mention of Christmas before 1st December!

The Balaclava

From my youth, the balaclava is inextricably linked to things like The Beano, snowmen and my brother’s acne (looking all the more dramatic framed by the ribs of beige wool). Even aged about five, I knew the balaclava was the ultimate in ‘uncool’. My hatred of the garment was only matched by those thick, slightly yellow vests, which caused angst in PE lessons, where the better off children had snowy white, thin ones.

Yes, generations of children have railed against an army of mothers pulling lovingly hand-knitted balaclavas firmly down over their ears on a chilly morning with the mantra, ‘you know you’ll get poorly if you don’t wear it’.

How times have changed. I’ve just read about a youth being in danger of being arrested for the wearing of a balaclava. In fact, the very last thing a mother wants her adolescent child to be seen in is, the balaclava.

What about all those rioters who have had grommets put in their ear-drums, problems with sinuses, toothache? Are the police in danger of being taken to the European Court of Human Rights for causing outbreaks of ear, nose and throat diseases by outlawing this, almost mythical, healing item of clothing?

Perhaps we can end the cycle of violence in our society by once again getting mums knitting with that thick, itchy wool and insisting their wayward teenager can’t go out without keeping their ears warm. This will quickly render the balaclava once again the item of dread, and our streets will be safe.

Working Lunch

Walking out of the office for lunch today, I regretted my decision to wear shoes with no socks as my feet were hurting with every step. ‘Another reason to complain about the sunshine’, I thought grumpily. I fancied a lasagne for lunch. First I thought I would buy a paper. It was too depressing in the newsagent with the front pages emblazoned with invitations to ‘shop a moron’. Yet another reason for it to start raining soon, it might stop all this rioting and looting.

With a more upmarket magazine, I winced my way to the café a bit further down the high street, where I had once enjoyed an excellent Italian lasagne. My heart sank when I saw an anaemic specimen plonked at the back of the counter, that looked like it had been languishing at the bottom of a vast deep freeze for millennia. My heart sank further when I heard the depressing beep as a microwave was pressed into action.

What I expected arrived on my plate, pale and soggy, sitting in a puddle of tepid fat.

I was so hungry, I’m ashamed to say I ate it anyway.

Leaving the café, I realised I needed something to wash the taste of gristle out of my mouth. I decided that the stall offering curried goat wasn’t likely to help, so hobbled into my local Superdrug for a Bounty. For once, I was pleased there was a queue that would give my sore feet a rest, and the opportunity to ponder the merchandise on the shelves. I spotted the perfect couple with perfect bodies, in perfectly white swimming costumes and perfect bronze skin with a backdrop of perfectly blue water on the advert for San Tropez suncream. She looked like she never had to hobble down high streets in badly fitting shoes for badly cooked café fare. Mind you, Coleen Rooney was looking a bit faded on her gift box of toiletries designed to help me marry a footballer. The box was torn and dusty, the plastic window to the designer life beyond sagged like the sales in JD Sports.

Back at my desk, I took my shoes off. I might not be about to marry a footballer or shop a moron, but I’ve got a cup of tea and a Bounty, so all is right with the world again.

Unwanted Guests for Dinner

I went for a meal in an upmarket restaurant last night. We decided to sit on the terrace to enjoy pre-dinner drinks.

I have to say my enjoyment was considerably lessened by seeing a rat scuttle happily along the edge of the terrace and bounce down the steps into the distance. The staff were very nice about it, said they were coming up the drains due to building work. If we saw another one, to let them know and they would help chase it away.

The menu seemed less tempting after that, I wasn't too sure about veal escalope, being rat coloured and the diameter of a well fed rat, but enjoyed it in the end. It does take quite a lot to put me off my food.

The ladies lavatory was situated very close to the terrace. It brought to mind something that happened to a friend's neighbour when the water board were digging up the road outside her house. She heard a strange knocking noise in the bathroom, went in and noticed the toilet seat rattling. On lifting the lid, saw, horror of horrors, a rat leaping around in the toilet bowl. It was difficult to use the facilities on offer before leaving the restaurant, but needs must as they say. On a scale of scary toilet visits, it did only come second to checking the bathroom for cobra, as I had to do in India.

I'm not going to name the establishment in question, because I hear they do good work for charity, but I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon.

Coming back from holiday....

....is hard isn't it?

If I want to go for a swim, I have to brave the scummy, over-chlorinated local pools full of screaming toddlers and people who walk backwards into you. Not at all like swimming in the crystal-clear water off Jura or Iona, where you have a complete bay to yourself and the fish dart out of your way and the soft sand squishes up between your toes. Oh for the long, white beaches with rounded lumps of granite and marram grass framing them.

No more walks through ancient, enchanted woods. No more red deer melting into the shadows. No more taking drinking water from the spring behind the moss covered rocks, or sitting for ages just watching the evening light changing over the mountains.

Ho hum..............

The Corrywreckan Whirlpool

There is a distant place, where the devil stands just beneath the surface of the sea.

He keeps the water mirror-smooth, inviting you to cross.

Don't be fooled.

Not for one minute.

For when a boat tries to pass, wild with anger and unable to contain his frustration, he starts frantically leaping about.

He flings his tail in furious loops with one hand and spirals his pitchfork with the other.

Venomous bubbles vent from his twisted mouth and boil to the surface. Gimlet eyes cast spikes of foam to jump into the air. Waves crash into each other in their confusion.

The devil wants that boat, and all who sail in her.

And he wants them now.

NOW!

Submarines - vote now!

I’ve become addicted to Submarine School (on Channel 5), where trainee nuclear submarine commanders have to take charge and cope with all sorts of alarming scenarios. I was a big fan of Das Boot (1981 German U boat film and series – claustrophobia, filth and boredom from WWII), and this is the nearest thing to it for years.

I do think the Royal Navy have missed an opportunity though. What with all the cuts to the services, they should have made this a Simon Cowell-esque talent show to raise money. We, the viewers could vote off who we thought was the least promising commander-to-be. Of course, confusion would reign if one trainee stopped paying enough attention to his periscope(?) to garner voter support by playing to the cameras instead, or flinging bitchy comments to his colleagues. Chaos would also reign if a terrorist organisation realised they could weaken the British navy by getting as many people as possible to vote for the most useless commander-to-be. We would end up with a fleet of submarines run by men who were good at tap-dancing or wore their uniforms with ‘must have’ sequinned accessories, but who didn’t know they needed to hide the sub behind a rock when a warship approached.

However, seeing as I’ve never understood the point of having a sub somewhere nobody knows (so we don’t even know if they are really there) I think all these chaps should give up and enjoy playing ‘Battleships and Cruisers’ on strangely satifying squared paper instead.

I've Got Me a Bad Case of the Sunshiny Blues

28 - 32 degrees!

Yuck.

I think hot is over-rated.

When it's this hot, everything smells worse, you can't move without breaking into a sweat and you can't sleep without over-heating. Being cloistered in an office where fans can only move the stale air around is pretty grim. It's hard to be bothered to do anything, let alone think.

At night, with the windows open, you get to hear all the people around having more fun than you.

You can't wear thick woollies and pretend it's the jumper's fault you look like this.

All your food goes off quicker, even though it's in the fridge (I've never understood that).

The car feels like an oven when you get stuck in a traffic jam, and the cold air blowers feel more like your hair dryer.

I know this is an odd confession, but overall, hot is bad.

Bad unless you are lying on a beach, sitting in a shady garden, or eating strawberries at Wimbledon of course.

My best weather is a gentle, ethereal mist, with just a slight chill that hits the back of your throat when you breathe in. An autumn morning, a Scottish mist, ground mist swirling round open water. Cool and refreshing, making you feel bright and alert. Cosy scarves, open fires, jacket potatoes, warming stews and the smell of bonfires.

Today at lunchtime, I even found myself wishing I had a camping chair to put up at the end of the aisle in the most wonderfully air-conditioned supermarket. I wanted to throw myself into the ice cream freezer and drown in raspberry ripple.

Bring on the shorter days! Bring back the snow! Bring back a wonderful winter!

Oh woe is me!

The Sun, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I arrived home at 4.30pm today (I start early), looked at the settee and thought I might have a moment or two to relax. I woke up two and three quarter hours later wondering what happened.

Just how tiring can sitting at a computer all day be? It's my favourite day of the year too, the longest, although I've now missed most of it.

Strangely, I found myself yearning to join the druid king at Stonehenge next year, and working out whether being there for sunrise would still give time to make it back to Prefab Towers in time for work. I'm not sure whether the combination of hippy vibe and end of the Northern line otherworldliness would work well, but it would be fun to try.

I also found myself yearning to join the world's largest skinny dip. All that joyful celebration of skin and surf, and no-one seeming to mind who's naughty bits were floppier than anyone else's.

All in all, midsummer madness seems to have arrived. I will stand in front of my wardrobe this evening and try to decide between dusting down my cloak and magic wand (C S Lewis has nothing on my wardrobe), or frolicking naked to check the floppiness ratios.

What's that I hear you cry?

'The cloak!'

No need to shout!

Plumbing - not my strongest hand.....

There had been an odd smell in the kitchen for a while and I finally decided the culprit must be the long defunct dishwasher that sat, patiently watching each time I did the dishes. I thought there might be stagnant water in the tubes. I also wanted to get rid of the deep freeze, that had ice trying to escape out from under the lid, but alarmingly, no sign of ice at the bottom. It was always a bit touch and go as to whether anything actually froze before it went off (you will be reassured to know I hadn't used it for a while).

So, a trip to the dump was in order.

The freezer was easy, unplug it and wrestle it upstairs with helpful son, into the Skip. The dishwasher was slightly more complicated. I unhooked the waste pipe, which I noticed left an alarming hole in the kitchen's drainage system. I then cleverly (or so I thought) turned off the cold water feed. As I couldn't unscrew the pipe from the feed, I decided I could saw through the pipe with a kitchen knife. I took my place under the kitchen unit, sat in a puddle of fetid water that had indeed drained out of the dishwaher, and sawed through. The story of the boy who put his finger in the hole in the dyke came to mind very quickly, as water, at what seemed like mains pressure (I recalled a plumber once warning me that all the water in the house was direct from the mains) started squirting all over my cave. I managed to hold the ends clamped together, and sat feeling a) uncomfortable, my knees were very wet and b) foolish. There was also a feeling of mild panic rising from somewhere inside me. I started screaming for helpful son, but sadly, as he was two floors up, wearing headphones and I was shouting into the kitchen wall, nothing happened. Rather than sit there for twenty minutes or more, I had to let go of the pipe, and dash to the feed switch as my kitchen floor was watered as if from a fireman's hose. Luckily I managed to switch off the supply, and paddled back to the dishwasher as yet more stinking water flowed out across the floor. As helpful son and I struggled up the stairs with the white goods, I felt something go 'twang' in my back, which didn't help my general mood.

Many hours and many mop buckets later, my kitchen is back to something resembling clean. I have gaffa-taped up the offending holes in the pipework, and even risked putting the washing machine on, half expecting Niagra Falls to re-appear in the basement. All seems well, for now anyway.

One interesting thing that I discovered while clearing out the space where the deep freeze had been was that some of my plastic carrier bags had reached their half-life. They broke into tiny fragments as I tried to move them. Strangely fascinating, but also reminding me to have a cupboard clear-out more than once a decade.

Me and My iPod

I've invested in a new iPod. 'What fun!' I thought, remembering one I had before which gave me hours of happiness. Sadly, this one hasn't been a great experience so far. Apart from the fact it took several hours of grating frustration to even get a reasonable proportion of the tracks I had paid for onto my computer (and my son having to buy me an extra hard drive to help) it still hasn't really come together as hoped. Since the Skip had a new starter motor put in ('engine out job' the bloke behind the counter said, looking suitably depressed) the radio/cassette player(yes, you read right, cassette player) hasn't worked. So I was very pleased to plug myself into my new ipod for a long journey. Sadly, as the tracks changed, I received what seemed to be a mild electric shock.

I think it might be something to do with my ear-rings short circuiting and then something odd happening to my brain. I never was any good at the electric bit of physics at school, so it's all a bit of a mystery.

Having exerted so much effort getting the little device to work, I'm eschewing any safety concerns and ploughing on regardless. It might even be beneficial to have a little bit of electro-convulsive therpay to jolly up some of the more depressing tracks. Just to be on the safe side, I might return the solid platinum and diamond ear-rings to the shop next to the tube station too, and definitely not wear them in electric storms.

Empathy not Sympathy

I'm going deaf, at least I think I'm going deaf. It's hard to tell - I have tinnitus.

I realised for once and for all that this was becoming quite extreme while having my most recent hearing test. I was really struggling to differentiate the electronic bleeps from the cacophony in my head. The results were bleak, quite a drop from the last test only months previously. As a result, I am still not clear whether my actual hearing is affected, or whether it is the wall of sound I am trying to hear through that is causing the problem.

When I tell people this, in the hope they will understand why I sometimes either apparently ignore them, or give an answer to a question they hadn't asked, they quite often say, 'oh, I have that too'. While I don't deny loads of people have some level of background noise in their ears, I question their understanding of the severity of symptoms in some cases. Being an 'invisible' problem, some folk are highly sceptical and give me a wayward look that tells me they think I am exaggerating, or making a fuss. I tend not to go into detail as it can sound whinging and attention seeking. These people will start to realise after they have been around me for a while anyway.

On the other hand, some people are magnificent in their understanding and patience. I have found this with my colleagues at work, who have become used to repeating phrases several times and letting me know which phone is ringing. I have been given leave to attend lipreading classes and audiology appointments, and have been given a headset to enable me to hear better when answering the phone. In our most recent office move, I was able to select a seat the reduced the amount noise behind me, which even after an hour, made a considerable difference. I have also taken ownership of a hearing aid, but sadly this doesn't seem to have helped as much as I hoped - if at all, if I'm honest.

The whole experience has been an insight into how life changes when you lose one of your abilities. Gradually, almost without realising, I found myself reluctant to go for meals in groups. In a noisy restaurant I can just about follow the person sitting opposite me, using some lipreading as a backup, but stand no chance of joining in anything further along the table. After a couple of incidences where a well meaning person has tried speaking more loudly across the others, and me ending up feeling embarrassed, I started to withdraw into my shell. I am a very sociable person and it is odd to start to notice behavioural changes like this.

It can be difficult chatting on the phone too, especially if the caller is speaking quickly. Mobile phone conversations can be next to hopeless if I am out and about, due to all the background noise. I now rely much more on texts and e-mail than previously, but how lucky I am that this technology is available.

Stress aggravates the tinnitus, which can quickly trigger a downward spiral. As I become increasingly anxious on missing words, the tinnitus gets more obstructive and I miss yet more. However, it has been really illuminating to learn how my brain works with all this. I particularly remember one conversation around a dinner table. I was only hearing about one word in three, and I became aware of a process happening in my head that can best be described as being like an elongated fruit machine. The words I heard fell into place, but with wheels of other options spinning around in the gaps between. My brain was busily spinning the wheels around looking for a combination that made sense. I could almost hear a clunk, clunk, clunk as the 'cherries' fell into place then, hooray, a sentence emerged. I answered the question and everyone around the table fell about laughing - it wasn't the right one. Humiliating yes, but fascinating too. When you have problems hearing it slows down your thought processes while you work out what makes sense. Even when you do hear, you have lost so much confidence in being able to compute the information, that you still take an extra beat or so to respond. The extra time, even though relatively short in real terms, can make you look or feel 'slow' and compound any lack of confidence. It's also exhausting, the additional concentration you have to put into every exchange to just keep up is quite considerable.

The lipreading classes I recently attended were run by a gifted teacher. It felt very reassuring to be surrounded by people who understood hearing problems and learning common-sense strategies for dealing with day to day problems. Other teachers weren't so gifted, and I was saddened by a couple of others who came into the class and made me (and probably the others) feel a bit 'dim' by the manner of approach. One teacher from another class came to speak to me, putting her face very close to mine and mouthing the words in a greatly exaggerated manner, which had the effect of making me feel very small indeed. I do understand that she was trying to be helpful, but sometimes even the best intentions can be 'cloying'.

We were told in the lipreading class that 'lipreading' is really the wrong term, it should be considered 'facereading' as you use subtle changes in expressions as well as the lip movement to help decypher words. Not surprisingly, I had already become adept at spotting the gentle expression of faint confusion coupled with mute graciousness when I do answer a question that hasn't been asked. My heart sinks when I see that one.

I have been moved by some other people's reactions though, I have already mentioned my colleagues, but I went into a local coffee shop recently, and the chap behind the counter was making polite conversation. I have no hope whatsoever of hearing anything with coffee machines hissing away, and we were in a stressful stalemate of me saying 'sorry, sorry, I can't hear' and him patiently repeating again and again. He then, very thoughtfully, came out from behind the counter, thought for a moment, and chose different words to use. I finally got the message and almost wanted to cry with relief that someone had insight into how to defuse the situation.

The very worst thing someone can say is 'oh, don't worry' and then to shut off. It makes you feel completely worthless and depressed. It is also a mystery to me how no reasonable person would ever make fun of someone who can't see, but still think it is funny to poke fun at those of us with a hearing problem. If I hear one more person go 'pardon?' with a cheeky smile after I have explained about my difficulties, I won't be responsible for my actions.