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.
Content from our partners
