Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents…
My morning did not start well.
As I opened a new jar of my favourite brand of chutney, I noticed the label boasted ‘Now with improved taste’. It made me mistrust my tastebuds and wonder what slop they’d been selling this gullible sandwich-gobbler for all these years.
This coincided with my much-delayed hearing-aid appointment at the hospital.
The appointment had been delayed by an audiology nurse. She refused to see me, owing to my continual mistake of referring to the rubber dome part of the hearing aid that fits in your ear as the ‘nipple’. It offended her delicate sensibilities, although she didn’t look delicate, or sensible.
Imagine my surprise when, upon arrival, the self-same audiologist stood lurking in her hearing cupboard, moustache thickened by the two years since we last met, glowering at me, mumbling, ‘You going to behave today?’
I had to ask her to repeat herself.
She shouted, ‘Are you not wearing your hearing aid?’
‘No. I didn’t think you’d want me to. The lady at Specsavers was furious when I went to my eye test wearing my contact lenses.’
‘Well, the NHS is not part of Specsavers,’ she said.
‘Not yet,’ the futurologist in me smirked.
‘You’re young for this level of hearing loss,’ she observed.
I explained that I was born at the wrong time and became a teenager just as the Sony Walkman craze hit. I spent most of my teens listening to Hall & Oates and Billy Joel on headphones.
The GP three before the current one – (pretends he doesn’t know me if he sees me in the Toby Inn carvery queue) – suggested it was selective deafness, caused by close living arrangements with my mother.
She said, ‘Well, I’d move out sharpish. Your other ear’s buggered now.’
I left the hospital with two brand-new robotic ears (well, hearing aids). These 21st-century NHS offerings are a long way from those worn by the child we all bullied at school. Slick, tarnished-silver and pairable with a smartphone, these audio angels can be effortlessly switched between listening to my mother and listening to Nicky Campbell.
I strolled along the seafront and gave my new ears a test drive. It was a joy to hear snatches of outdoor conversations.
The first thing my new ears heard was an angry restaurateur kicking his own sandwich board as he attacked some supplier on his phone. The supplier must have been one of his own countrymen as I did not recognise the language. It sounded a beautiful language to be angry in.
The second was a peeved, demi-permed pram-pusher. Her phone was perfectly poised in her one free hand at the right screen tilt either for using it as a mobile make-up mirror or for yelling at a partner. She chose the latter option, bollocking her beau, with her vocal delivery perfectly parallel with the rhythm of her rickety pram wheels:
‘You said you’d pump that parrot up for River’s school dress-up book day. School phoned me to collect him early ’cos he was in bits. Without the Long John Silver parrot, they all thought he’d come as Nick Knowles, and that marker pen you so swore wasn’t permanent IS permanent.
‘His pirate beard won’t come off. He doesn’t like showers and he’s just had to have seven of them. Your six-year-old son looks like he’s going through puberty and you’re on the piss!’
After a decade in the valley of the deaf-ish, the world strikes me as a lot angrier and more likely to over-share their business.
When I arrived home, my mother harrumphed, ‘Oh, look at Jack, come back to his mother from the market with his new shiny beans. How come they can’t afford to give your father DVT stockings when his legs are living time bombs, but they can accessorise you in flash colours? You’ve been living quite the high life while I’ve been waiting for a washer-up, and―’
With the subtlest flick of a finger, she faded out.
From now on, I will be parented by Five Live drivetime.
The Oldie January 2024
