Finally, the day arrives when I go to the GP surgery to get my ears cleaned out. The last couple of weeks had been difficult. They had coincided with a period of unusually heavy socialising (for me, that is; for a normal person it would have looked like slightly lenient house arrest) which meant that for much of the time my side of the conversation consisted mainly of variations of “pardon?”. I was approaching Professor Calculus-like levels of deafness: I could hear words being said, as if in the distance, but arranging them into meaningful language was beyond me.
One night I had an idea: I would use the non-business end of a fork and insert it into my ear canal in the hope of scooping some of the wax out. One should not try this at home, or anywhere, really, but I was well into the second bottle and I was getting frantic. This actually worked, but only if I pulled down on my ear lobe. Then there would be a sudden if small improvement: the treble notes, the surface noise of life would return, until I let go of my ear, and then I would re-enter the clammy, muffled world of earwax. Going to the cricket was particularly disappointing: I no longer heard the crack of leather on willow; more of a distant, muffled pop so quiet it might have been imaginary.
So off it was to the surgery. I am very fond of the one I go to. I don’t go there as often as I do to Waitrose, but it’s not exactly off the beaten track. Unlike all the others in the country, it only has one grumpy receptionist, and that might have been because she was having an off day. One of the doctors there has a shelf of Wisdens and one of the others is a lady I am tempted to ask for dinner, and another one is so far out of my league both because of her beauty and her youth that I could feel my heart rate go up as soon as I entered the consultation room. This time I was only going to see a nurse, but the nurses there are also cool.
I am getting ahead of myself. As I locked up the Hove-l, I saw the front door of the flat beneath me open up. This is unusual, for like all houses of multiple occupancy in England, we all time our exits and entries to our flats so as to avoid any kind of interaction. It would just be too awkward otherwise. But this was deliberate: the occupier wanted a word with me. Bear in mind he is German. I won’t try to transcribe the accent, you’ll just have to do it yourself in your head. Also bear in mind that, for reasons stated above, I might not have picked up everything he said.
“Excuse me, but I’m afraid your music for the last week or so has been very loud.”
“Ah yes, that’s because I’ve gone deaf. But I am going to the doctor’s right now to get it sorted out.”
“One night it was at 3.30am.”
“3.30am? Oh my God, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”
I wondered what it could have been. I must have fallen asleep to my recording of Maggie Teyte singing Debussy (Alfred Cortot on piano) which is my preferred lullaby music, and not exactly thrash metal.
The surgery experience was pretty much as pleasant as these things can go. At first the nurse, who was kind and funny throughout, was reluctant to go through with the procedure because when I filled in the consent form I ticked “Yes” to whether I’d had an ear infection in the last six weeks. Well, it had ached like buggery and seemed to have travelled internally to a tooth, which was enough to make me fear I’d have to go to a dentist, but it seemed to be on the mend.
“Please do this,” I begged. “I’m driving my downstairs neighbour mad.”
“Telly on too loud?”
“Actually it’s Maggie Teyte’s 1937 recording of Debussy, but the principle is the same.” (I didn’t really say this.)
In the end, with deep reservations, she proceeded. The sluicing of the ear canals produced a lump that seemed to impress her.
“Ooh, can I have a look?” I said. I saw a plug of earwax that will haunt me to my dying day. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s also very immature of me to ask.”
“Everyone asks,” she said, smiling. “But I must say that’s one of the biggest.”
I re-entered a world crisp with sounds, as if the treble had been turned up. I could hear my footsteps again. When I got back to the Hove-l I turned on my radio, a tiny little Roberts digital with a bent aerial that gives me a mild electric shock when the air is humid. Jesus Christ, it was loud. Experimentally, I put Dame Maggie and Alf C back on at the same volume level I had been using the other night. They might have been the Who at Knebworth. That poor neighbour. Lord knows what else he heard as I, cocooned into oblivious solipsism, assumed that what I was listening to was whisper-quiet. How do I recompense the guy? I was considering a bottle of wine, but after thinking about it, that might not be enough.
[See also: A new laptop has enhanced my life]
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This article appears in the 11 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Iron Chancellor’s gamble