Aw Diddums

Summer Agony

Another bad day… Not John McClane style exactly, but my head was so sore I sat wrapped in a rug. It got worse till the back of my neck hurt and my glands felt as though they were popping. Something came on TV about Bruce Willis in Armageddon and Die Hard; he managed to get the top two slots in the Top Disaster Movies. He’s one of my pin-ups! Or would be, if I had posters. A friend of mine is surprised at my taste, suggesting he’s more brawn than brain. Well, I can’t help it… I like his smile.

I was a little surprised that Die Hard was classed as a disaster movie… they really had me guessing. I guessed at Armageddon (which was second) but it surprised me that The Day After Tomorrow wasn’t up there (it was down at 4, I think). I couldn’t imagine what the top movie was going to be.

I think of disaster movies as being about natural disasters, but possibly the category is a bit broader than I thought. (??) Actually I’m not sure about that, as it would put an awful lot of modern movies in that bracket. I would have called Die Hard an adventure, action, thriller. Any of those three. I suppose a crashing airplane full of nice old ladies and wosname from Star Trek classes as a man-made disaster.

Mum is not fond of ‘horrible’ films and kept leaving the room on little errands, but I made her watch the flying bus in Speed. At first she didn’t want to, but I said she had to; it was good. Otherwise she would never see it. Now she can say she’s seen that bit. When she saw it landed safely, she seemed impressed despite herself… though the look on her face made me think of Moominmamma wishing she could melt into the mural of her garden and spend some time hiding behind the trees for a while.

To get back on track, I was mildly amused and distracted by Bruce Willis having such a grip on the world’s imagination, and Samson came up on one of his rare visits and gave my fingers a good washing… must have liked the salt on my skin. Cat washes are pleasantly raspy and send me to sleep. All of a sudden I realized my headache was gone, apart from a few tendrils winding round my eyeballs.

It wasn’t raining. It was midnight so it’s likely that the pollen count slowed a little and we’d shut most windows by that time. I looked on the internet and read that pollen is at its worst between 3pm and 7pm. Or between mid-morning and early evening. Cat washing was not cited as a cure, though hoovering the bedroom floor is supposed to remove any pollen that might have floated in through your wide-open window (I ran to slam mine shut).

Now I expect I’ll get a ‘lack of oxygen’ headache. Just can’t win!

Credit: The grass brushes in the picture are by Obsidian Dawn.

I’ve had sore eyes for weeks, along with an associated headache. I buy moisturizing drops (the kind I can use every day if I want… some aren’t good for that), and have also bought omega capsules (which I keep forgetting to take). I’ve tried going to bed early, turning off the computer for days on end, and have had midday siestas with a wet cloth over my eyes.

Nothing seems to work.

Mum was at the doc today, and while she was there, she said “my younger daughter is complaining she’s got bloodshot eyes and nothing seems to help.” The doc said, “it’s probably allergy… lots of people have been coming in with sore eyes just now, because of all the pollen flying about. I’ve been giving them moisturizing drops.”

Talk about being treated at a distance… it makes me think of women lying behind a curtain, only allowing the doctor to see one limp hand.

I don’t hear Mum too well, especially when I’ve had a shower (wet ears and no hearing aids), so there are conversational notes scattered all over the house. The other day I found this one:

Mum: I bought the Triffids the day I went to start midwifery training. 54 years ago exactly.
Me: I woke up with a hurrble stomach ache. Hordes of screaming bacteria rushed over the hill, waving their tomahawks and shooting fire arrows, so my body waded in with sandbags and squelched them.
Mum: Have a swig of Domestos!

Mm… thanks but no thanks… my body needs supporting troops, not corrosive poison.

I haven’t been using the computer much over the past couple of days but I have a headache anyway. It might be the sparse lampshade in the landing behind me (the bulb shines out of it too brightly). Even when I sit with my back to it, I can see my shadow cast sharply onto the wall while the light bounces off the screen. Makes me a bit sick.

I think these glasses (for myopia) make me a little light-phobic. A while ago I took them off for a few days. I’m so short-sighted I can’t see text on the computer screen when I sit at the normal distance away, even when I increase the font size. Mum said I would get a headache not wearing the glasses, but I didn’t get a single headache all the time I wasn’t wearing them… just a neckache from craning!

After five days I put the glasses back on, and all of a sudden I’m getting headaches. I expect they focus the light beams too much.

I don’t usually care about my image (I pull a shopping trolley around, wear open-toed sandals and gush on about my cats), but Mum was asking (and she asked me the same thing when I was 15) “would you wear these clip-on shades on your glasses?”
My answer was the same as it was then…. “Never! It’s so uncool.”
“Who cares about being cool??”
“Well I don’t, normally, but those things might scratch my glasses.”
“No they won’t scratch your glasses.”
Pull the other one. Ugh.

What would be cool would be prescription sunglasses.

I had no intention of writing this when I sat down to blog. I was going to complain about Mum’s cat Cheeky. She sits on top of the PC monitor (it’s one of those old ones built like a breeze block) and she dabs things moving about the screen… which is cute, till she leaves fifty pawprints and I have to wipe them off. Then she swings her tail across and I can’t see what I’m doing, so I push it aside… and she glares at me and gives me a swipe for being so cheeky.

Even worse, she has claimed the computer chair as her own, and when I come to sit in it, she doesn’t budge. So I say “I want my chair back, please,” and touch her, and she’s ready with her slashing claws. I get more insistent that she has to leave, and she has a real hissy fit before finally leaping off in a fury. It’s no wonder my cats don’t get on with her… she’s not even getting on with me that well. Maybe she’s blaming me for bringing them here.

I like Morrison’s instant mocha – I figured I would be one of the very few who did, but when Mum was shopping with a friend, she told her I liked that drink, and the friend bought some to try. My toes curled in embarrassment as I was convinced she would hate it, but one day there was no mocha left in the house… just a box of Morrison’s instant latte, which I’m less keen on, though it’s OK.

Mum said she looked and they were out of it in the supermarket, but she got a box of latte instead. Then she said her friend was with her again and wanted more mocha, so she let her have the last box.

Ah… well I’m glad she likes it. Move over, Rolo.

I do like the so-called healthy drinks as well… there are a couple of juice bars in town and I sometimes opt for those instead of coffee (she blogged smugly, only having had two juices so far… one from each bar).

The first was a mixed fruit juice which included ginger. It was called High Flyer… very tasty indeed, but there wasn’t much I dared order from that shop. They almost all seemed to have names like ‘Hangover Remedy’ or ‘Stress Reliever’, which are hard to ask for at the counter. ‘High Flyer’ was possibly a veiled warning…

The other bar had much better names, and I chose a smoothie called Bali Hai. That was lovely too, and very cool as there was crushed ice in it. Although I asked for small drinks in both shops, they were too big for me and are very hard on the stomach. Coffee seems to slip down more easily.

I start to understand why fruit juices are sometimes described as ‘hits’. I have a juice-making book which is very fond of the word, but that doesn’t seem to me particularly desirable… don’t they say “all good things in moderation”?

I have the suspicion that other people drink more than me. Folk are always stopping for coffee, more coffee, and then tea; then there’s the crowd who have round after round of drinks at the pub. I don’t know how people get through even two drinks at one sitting… I’ve generally had enough before the end of the first. This fascination for beverages of all kinds has me completely mystified.

Mum said she used to worry I wasn’t drinking enough, and that was as recently as me coming to stay with her… then she noticed how rapidly I was knocking back the juices and the Coca-colas! That’s usually after a dog-walk, especially in hot weather – I get very thirsty then. I also make coffee almost every time I pass the kettle… it’s the routine I love; I leave so much of it to go cold.

The sheer size of mugs offered by some cafés is ridiculous – there have been ‘medium’ ones which were so big and heavy I needed both hands to lift them. It’s not just McD’s who go in for this ’supersize’ business.

I spotted a short piece in a newspaper recently… it said they don’t know where the idea came from that people need eight glasses of water a day to remain healthy; there is nothing to indicate that’s true. Some people seem perfectly healthy and happy drinking nothing but tea.

Noontime naps were due
To kittens’ early rising
Now I sleep alone

Caedes comments came
Following silence: “great pic!”
Site must have asked them

Won’t always oblige;
Sure they were happy to find
My picture pretty

Broke a toe again
By stumbling over a shoe
No one’s fault but mine

Aw diddums, earache!
Whole jaw of tooth pain would be
Much preferable…

Brought it to its knees
With efficacious drops of
T.C.P. magic

Dog ran after cat
Ancient leather collar broke
Thank goodness for walls

Took kitten for walk
Came an icy springtime wind
She trembled and cried

My stories seem dull;
Wondered if these condensed lines
Would make sense at all

No cause for concern –
Overnight this will not be
A blog of haikus

Found this on Blogs by Women: Are Bloggers Lacking Coping Skills?

The article draws our attention to recently published research on why people blog. If blogging is considered a coping skill in itself, isn’t that a bit of a contradiction? I wonder why something like that might be labelled merely a coping skill, whereas being the life and soul of the party is not? I have always said ‘how’ people communicate is never the issue.

I don’t deny that people do lack proper support and social networks; the larger the population and the more impersonal the system, the worse that whole situation becomes.

I see blogs as being educative; they open a door to a world I would never have known about if I hadn’t looked into it, even if I could have called myself one of the best balanced individuals in the world. Can one be truly balanced without having tried the various things within reach? Would someone who never read or blogged be considered better balanced because he/she loved to go out every night? Perhaps a balanced extrovert is not the same as a balanced introvert.

I feel myself on the verge of this whole ‘introverts versus extroverts’ thing again… I’m still hunting for an article on the continued survival of introverts, one that I enjoyed very much, but this one will fill the gap: Introverts of the World, Unite!

PS: I seem to have developed a nervous twitch since last night…

Something I keep wishing we had is an automatic treatment unit in every house. I probably read about something like this in Ringworld by Larry Niven. Every morning you could step inside, and it would scan for irregularities and make any adjustments necessary. Cracked tooth? Repaired without pain or extraction. Furry arteries? Sweetly cleared. A tumour just starting to form? Safely zapped in seconds.

No need to worry your family with these mundane details – they’re carrying out similar checks and changes on themselves.

Broken bone? Beautifully straightened and set without pain. Poor hearing? Tuned to perfect pitch! Failing kidneys? Repaired, as good as new!

No need to go to hospital, sit for hours in waiting rooms and have tests… only for the doctors to say they don’t know what’s wrong with you, or they do know what’s wrong with you and can’t fix it, or they thought they knew what was wrong with you but got it wrong.

A treatment unit in the corner of your own bedroom would be lovely from an agoraphobic point of view especially – not having to go out to the GP, optician or dentist. Fewer people milling about in buses and on the roads (not having to go out to be treated). And just think – no more valuable land given over to grim hospital buildings and sprawling, expensive car parks. No more people catching superbugs they wouldn’t have caught if they hadn’t gone near those places.

I suppose it would be worrying if the technology really was that good, then one day you stepped inside your treatment unit and it said “sorry for any inconvenience, but you cannot be repaired.”

Imagine a society which has evolved beyond our current laws and adds the option of self-euthanasia. “You cannot be repaired. Your heart will self-destruct in 66 hours, unless you choose self-euthanasia.”

Panicking, you click on Y, and it says “are you sure?”

Some weeks later, it is realized that your treatment unit had a bug and wasn’t working properly. The engineers responsible are being sued to the hilt, but that’s no comfort for your grieving family and friends.

That sounds more like real life…. unfortunately.

Feeling very lethargic – not really in the mood to deal with anything or do anything. Just want to sit under a blanket and read books. I typed ‘combating lethargy’ in Scroogle, and what I got back was an entry for seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Hmm, hadn’t thought of that. When I can give it a name, it makes me think maybe it will come to an end and I’ll be pulling my socks up and getting on with things.

I’m still trying to find suitable names for the kittens. Being me, I’m not satisfied with the first names that come to mind  – Thomas, Felix, Princess or whatever. I thought of Smeagol for the Invisible Sulk, then rejected it because it’s probably Name of Choice for cats round about now, along with Gollum, Galadriel and Frodo.

I ended up looking on Baby Names Country, and at first was very happy with the site. It will show you what certain names mean in other languages as well as the one you chose. You can save all your favourites to a list (without registering), and can even search for names by meaning.

You can rate names – I started to mutter when I found that most ordinary names (ordinary to me) have 4 to 5 stars, whereas names that are just different usually have a rating of 2 stars. People are so boring – there’s no other word for it! I couldn’t understand how they could look up certain names and say “this is not my style,” then get all enthusiastic over Michael and Emily.

I got even more annoyed when the site got slower and slower to use, and eventually my list of favourites (containing 14 names) disappeared. The 15th name I added was the first of a new list. I’m not sure what happened there, but I backed up till I found the old list, took a screenshot, and left the site.

Since then I’ve been musing… there are a few names on my list I like very much, but I can’t make up my mind which I like the best. I keep staring at the kittens and asking myself “is she a Dana? Is he a Kanu? Maybe Chiana or D’Argo?” I won’t be calling them any of those as they’re not on the list, but I’m still trying to figure out what suits them the best.

Sleeping on it – that’s the thing to do. Another excuse to indulge my lethargy.

Total Sensory Deprivation – a few nights ago I recorded a Horizon documentary on the subject. It reminded me of the office I used to work in.

You would expect everyone to have a fair number of office connections and opportunities for socializing (if only by the water cooler, though we didn’t have one). Unfortunately I wasn’t really talking to anyone after my original friends and contacts left for pastures new. I tried in my quiet way to make new friends, but people had their own friends already and didn’t pay a lot of attention. I think they didn’t want to get involved with someone so deaf and so ’shy’, feeling that I was not their responsibility. They could get on with office life in their own comfortable bubbles and leave me to my colleagues in my own small department. After all, the folk in my department were the ones who chose me.

The feeling was awful, actually, and the longer it went on, the worse I felt. I wasn’t getting any of the office news or gossip, and I had no one to vent steam with or help me get a sense of proportion about things.

Some people were quite kind and friendly, but when I asked one what happened at a pension-related meeting, she forwarded my email (without checking with me first) to the Human Resources Manager. He told me people were not allowed to advise others, for legal reasons. It was now office policy.

Because of my profound hearing loss, I never knew what people were saying at meetings or amongst themselves. It made me wonder how I was ever going to inform myself if no one was allowed to discuss meetings with me… I wanted to tear my hair out!

There was an image in my mind of what I was going through, and I can still recall it. It felt to me as though I was falling down a bottomless well. I was trying to reach out and touch the sides but all I felt was air whistling past my fingertips. Not Alice in Wonderland – more like Diddums in Limbo.

That was my state of mind not so long before I crashed.

Total Sensory Deprivation? No, not quite. But the concept reminds me of that office situation – of me falling down my dark well, disassociated from everybody else.

The Horizon documentary was interesting – in an experiment, people were shut for 48 hours in small, bare cells without light, sound, human interaction or entertainment. It had quite a disturbing effect on them – some started to hallucinate, but I wondered how much that had to do with tiredness. That’s probably the point – they’d feel tired, out of touch and less sure of themselves.

One man who was kept in solitary confinement in real life talked of his experiences. When he mentioned his auditory hallucinations, I laughed out loud. The more he described them, the louder I laughed – and this was in the middle of me grieving for my cat, so I felt slightly hysterical. It wasn’t because I thought what happened to the man was funny, but because I get those… those auditory hallucinations.

I hear music – choirs, orchestras, jazz singers, country singers, opera singers. When you allow them to disturb you, they get louder. And then suddenly they stop, just like that! As though someone took a needle off a record.

It’s very strange.

I never thought of it as hallucinating, which is probably why I’ve been more fascinated than stressed; even comforted sometimes. To me it’s a form of tinnitus. Maybe it even masks the real tinnitus, which to many people is just a wasp’s scream (description courtesy of my mother).

Nor is it like having pop hits playing in your head, or (you’ll hate me for this) How Much is That Doggy in the Window? You can HEAR heavenly choirs or beautiful baritones or whatever – the sounds are in your ears.

At my old house I abandoned my bedroom, preferring to sleep on my sofa. I was never quite sure why I did that, apart from a general feeling of claustrophobia. The documentary offered me a fresh insight. Was it so different from the kind of experiences the people in the experiment were going through? With my blinds closed and lined curtains drawn, it was fairly dark in my room – and without my glasses I’m very myopic. Without my hearing aids I’m almost stone deaf. There were no other humans to talk to in that house: lack of human interaction. Then, when you’re lying there, trying to get to sleep, there is nothing to occupy yourself with. Thus I got the auditory hallucinations quite frequently, and when I was absolutely exhausted but not dropping off for any reason, I very occasionally got visual hallucinations as well. (Like Mr Guppy). Now that DID frighten me, in a way that the heavenly choirs didn’t.

It wasn’t Total Sensory Deprivation, but it wasn’t all that far off.

When I moved out to the sofa, I had two windows and a glass door – it was a lighter room. There were the cats strolling in and out: company. There was the TV… talking people and entertainment just a switch away. I feel sure now that’s why I changed rooms… and I’m not potty or anything, I’m just like any other human being. I like to be a part of life.

In the dentist’s surgery yesterday, she tugged at my molar then hurriedly clapped a wad of cotton against it, tipping my head back. They called Mum in.

I thought, “what’s wrong? Am I bleeding to death? I don’t feel as though I am.”

Slowly I realized that, though the procedure had only taken about 7 seconds, my broken tooth had been removed. After all that deliberate calming of my breathing, getting ready for another ten minutes of trapped misery, it was done with already.

I almost felt cheated.

They only called Mum because I couldn’t hear the dentist and her nurse speaking to me. I have to turn my hearing aids off when I lie down/yawn/grin/don a hat, otherwise I get a lot of nasty squealing feedback. I hate the tendency of hearing aids to do that, and you feel betrayed by them when you don’t hear the feedback but other people do. From those who lack personal experience, you get the query, “what’s that noise?”
Everybody else: “What noise?”
From someone who knows: “Oh, it’s Diddums’ hearing aids. It’s just feedback.”
Embarrassed silence.

I hate the little blighters. When I was younger I wanted to crush them out of existence. The only thing that held me back was knowing all the hassle I would have to go through to get them replaced. I’m convinced that my constant anxiety that they would squeal has made me stiff and cautious. A child’s whine in a shop is enough to make me turn the aids right off: I can’t always tell the difference. Tinkling background piano music on the TV has a similar irritating effect on me. But I digress…

It was amazing how quickly that tooth was removed. I would have done it sooner if I’d known. I was asked if I wanted to keep it, but waved it away… I’ve never had the impulse to keep ex-body parts. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

(Just this moment spat out a chunk of enamel).

I’m too old for tooth fairies, though I’m quite sure they exist…

3D Art

I was about to write this blog post when I noticed a new wallpaper come up on my desktop. I closed the browser window to get a better look. I’m glad I did as it made me sit back and smile – it’s this glorious winter mountain wallpaper from a Caedes member.

Not everybody will like it as much as I do, and I stopped to think about it. I don’t feel the need for every picture to be ‘real’. Real life is so full of soft shades of grey (along with browns, greens and unseen detail) that it seems to me too easy to get lost in it. A 3D scene like this is crisp and vibrant; everything just so, and there’s not much ‘in between’ to get lost in.

It could be that it is clarity, simplicity and a form of realized idealism I yearn, and that is why I like 3D art.

Convalescent Cat

It’s the first day that Sharky’s seemed anything like normal after his trip to some scary hidden grey unknown in the landscape out there. I was apprehensive even before I posted my last post of 2007, announcing confidently that he hadn’t been well but was getting better.

Part of me believes in the concept of gremlins – not gremlins as such, but the feeling that if you say “everything’s fine,” something will happen to make that a lie.

I knew he was still quite ill.

The day after his trip to the vet he looked even more bleary, if possible. I got a bit scared when I went up around teatime to check on him – he was tucked up very tightly, his coat open and staring. I carried him downstairs to sit with us, and gave him tuna to tempt his appetite.

Slowly he perked up.

Today he was looking a lot better but still sleeping a lot. He even popped out through the cat flap to have a look around, but within seconds he was back indoors. He must have felt that freezing edge in the air. They’re talking about snow, and the clouds had a strange pink quality. There was no ice on the ground during the day (it was rainy), but Mum saw hail coming down after it got dark.

Sharky has accepted turkey and Carnation milk, and seems to be past the worst – touch wood.

This morning I was sitting with him on my knee, staring bleakly out of the front window while he gazed bleakly out of the back. Mum chuckled suddenly and said she should take a photo of us moping together.

What I was thinking was that I’ve broken a molar and don’t want to have to go to the dentist to have it taken out, but there’s no alternative. Rrr.

Tooth Pain Versus Ear Pain

I’ve never been as pulverized by toothache as I am by earache. Mum said “just you wait, you’ve not had the real deal yet – a really bad toothache will send pain right up your cheek to your eye.”

I don’t think I’ve had it that bad, but last night I was getting a cold pain up the back of my jawbone to the joint, and along the side of my chin. It woke me up at half past four and I couldn’t get back to sleep. It still doesn’t hurt me like earache, which stabs me to the heart.

Anyway, I was trying to cheer Sharky up by letting him know he wasn’t the only one in misery. I rubbed my cheek and pointed at my teeth, saying ruefully “ooch, something has to be done about this,” and he smirked sympathetically. That cat knows what I’m saying.

I just know when I make an appointment to have my tooth out, that very day we’ll get snow about two feet deep.

I have friends who smoke, and my father also smoked, so I’m careful how I express myself on this subject. When it comes down to it, though, my feeling is that the smokers have had their way for long enough and now it’s our turn.

I went to a huge cat show once, and though people mustn’t smoke amongst the cats, they were allowed to smoke in the rest area at the side of the hall. Eventually the smoke drifted into the Siamese cat section. At first I didn’t pay a lot of attention, but after a while I realized I was having trouble breathing. And in the next moment I realized it was because of the drifting smoke, which always seems to affect me that way.

When I got home, I sent an email to the show manager, saying it was a good show and very well managed, but the one niggle I had was the smoke. In her response she said it wasn’t a problem as they weren’t smoking anywhere near the cats.

Ha! I was standing in the middle of the Siamese section and there was plenty of smoke drifting around. It wouldn’t have affected me otherwise, as I never sat in the rest area. The smokers, the non-smokers and the cats were trapped together in the same hall all day, and there wasn’t really anywhere else for any of us to go. Not good.

Well now there’s a smoking ban in Scotland. There are those who agree with it, and those who disagree. There are those whose horizons have broadened and whose profits have increased, and those whose scope has narrowed and whose profits have shrunk, and there is very little middle ground. Probably because you either need smoke or you can’t stand it. There IS no middle ground.

Even if there was, the smoke would drift across it and permeate everybody.

Remembering that my father was a smoker (though he never smoked in the house, and quit a short time before he died) I don’t like to throw my weight around. But the other day I was in our usual café and noticed smoke. I was puzzled. When I investigated, I realized it was someone sitting at a table outside the door. He’s allowed to smoke there, but his fumes blew right into the shop.

I couldn’t help smiling slightly when I read this article from The Scotsman: MSPs look at calls to extend smoking ban. There is all the usual anger from smokers who feel hard done by, but I understand the reasons for people wanting the smoking ban to go a little bit further yet. It’s not walking through or past the smoke that bothers me so much – it just seems futile to have a smoking ban and then sit in a smoky café anyway.

When I reached the end of my blog post, I suddenly realized I had a fascinated audience – see photo below.

Peeping out of the bookcase behind my hairy reader is a red book with a green dustjacket. There’s only one reason why I kept it – it belonged to my father, and has his name on the flyleaf, in small neat capitals. And it doesn’t smell of smoke – it smells of book.

Edit Feb 2008: Comments to this post when it was on Blogigo:

1. Iain wrote at Sep 27, 2006 at 23:55:
The inevitable question: what’s the book?

2. Diddums wrote at Sep 28, 2006 at 00:05:
‘The New Beginners Please: for those who want to invest profitably’ published by the Investors Chronicle. I don’t dip into it very much.

3. Pacian wrote at Sep 28, 2006 at 13:18:
I want one!

The sloth I mean.

Uneasy traveller

On Friday we went back to the NHS audiologist, which was not a satisfactory expedition. I get travel-sick just going to the next village, and here we were going to the next town. My stomach was lurching unhappily by the time we got there. If you want to be alert for your appointment you have to lay off the travel pills. It seems mad to have to leave the local town when all you’re doing is having hearing aids reviewed.

My sister has finished with the reviews now, but I have to go back next week as the computer went phut! More travel sickness and agoraphobic lurchings through the hospital. What a delightful plan.

No such thing as perfection

I’m realizing these hearing aids will never be crystal clear. They were worse instead of better when the audiologist adjusted them last time, and that’s what I was trying to get them to change away from today. It’s strangely hard to get it right. You’re sitting in a small booth with someone you’re not used to, who says “does that sound better? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

The answer that comes to mind is a jumble of: “yes, I hear you, but we’re two people sitting in a small booth, you’re speaking distinctly and I’m looking at your face – chances are I would hear (or guess) what you said anyway. And it has no bearing on whether I’ll hear certain sounds or tones better.”

Instead, you say rather weakly, “I hear your voice but I don’t know if it’s better.”
You really don’t. You won’t know till you get home and realize you hear something you’ve never heard before, or no longer hear something that used to be clear (like a beep).

When you’re at the optician’s, you can make a direct comparison between one lens and another. “Is this better… or this? Is this better… or this?”
At the audiologist’s, it’s not like that. It’s simply “does this sound better now – can you hear my voice?”
Well yes – but your voice sounded much the same last time. I simply can’t tell.

You feel worried (having already experienced a bad decision) that one setting is better than the other and you will plump for the wrong one. You hesitate and the audiologist shuffles impatiently. She has other patients and is running late. But you face another queasy trip to the hospital if you get it wrong.

Before I even got there, I decided to have the aids set back to the way they were originally; I was hearing worse at home after she changed them. Unfortunately that didn’t get done, and I have to go back next week because of her wretched computer breaking down.

Summer time, and the living is easy…

As it’s summer and there are lots of people swarming all over, my agoraphobia has taken a slight hold again. The holidays ironically mean that I have extra pet minding to do. I’ve been looking after up to three pet households every day for the past three weeks. I have one more day to go (a dog walk) and then I’ll get two days off.

At the hospital it was one of those days with the same people stuck in the same waiting room chairs every time you glanced round. Wearisome. I was happy to escape, and as I buckled myself into the passenger seat of my sister’s car, I thought “now it’s straight sailing – she’ll drop me off at home and I can have lunch and a rest, surrounded by lacy pink curtains, loving cats and soft bears. Thus comforted and refreshed, I’ll head out to walk dog and feed guinea pigs, taking my wheelie bag with me for company. It will be a doddle.”

When I feel jittery about going out, I pull the wheelie thing around – it makes me feel better. Don’t laugh! It’s funny but also a dratted nuisance. I left it behind when we went to the hospital, as I had no intention of sitting in the corridor watching people falling over it.

Unfortunately, E stopped at Mum’s saying she had something to pick up. She would have taken me home after that, as it was still on her way, but I was now very close to both the dog and the guinea pigs. I knew I should stay and sort them out first – much more energy-efficient. No rest, lunch or bears for Diddums yet.

Stranded without my wheels

E waved goodbye and drove off. I walked and fed the animals and by that time Mum had come home. We had tea and lemon cake and watched shows about presenters making people auction family heirlooms from their attics that they didn’t want to auction just so they could blow the cash on holidays to mega cities in America. It made me cringe.

To my relief, Mum offered to drive me back. “You have some stuff to take home,” she said.
“Yes, please,” I said. “E stranded me here without my wheelie thing.”
Mum gave me a beady-eyed look but I just chuckled.

Again I buckled myself into a passenger seat, sighing with relief and thinking, “now it’s straight sailing. Home for a very late lunch, TV, purring cats and snuggly bears. I can’t wait!”
Backing the car out, Mum said “I’m going to Morrisons supermarket on the way. Anything you need?”
My shoulders drooped, and I groaned internally. Supermarkets are the bane of any self-respecting agoraphobic’s existence – especially on Friday afternoons in the summer.
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly, “I need a few things.”

So we trotted around the heaving supermarket (myself firmly attached to a nice big wheelie trolley). There was one awkward moment when I had to take the empty trolley away and leave it in a trolley park, then cross the road back to the car.

Home!

Having arrived safely home, I put everything away, fed the cats, got my late lunch, and snuggled down with a huge pink bear to watch TV. After a while we had supper and continued to watch the TV. Normally I’m reading blogs and checking my emails every chance I get, but I felt I’d had enough of the rest of the world in any shape or form, and fell asleep.

When I woke up again it was 9pm and there was a cat sleeping on top of me, paws trailing. Big Brother was just starting. I haven’t been watching it but they mentioned evictions, so I stayed and watched. Maybe I wanted to see someone else squirming instead of me… just for a change. I didn’t know any of them from Adam, but looked the candidates over and said “I predict the two being evicted today are Mikey first and Susie second, in that order.” I was right.

But then I got cross over the Big Brother attitude that Susie should have joined the others in horsing around and getting drunk. They evicted her because she didn’t. I say, more power to her! She’s well out of it. Last but not least, one of the guys in the Diary Room said a very odd thing. “I feel cocooned in here – safe. I don’t really want to go home to the world out there.”

Wow. But I think so many of us must feel that way. Having just watched Grumpy Old Holidays where they agreed that the worst thing about holidays is other people, I just know we are not remotely alone…

Edit Feb 2008: Comments to this post when it was on Blogigo:

kateblogs wrote at Aug 6, 2006 at 14:27:
Yuk, Big Brother. The contestants really are a bunch of twits, and they are encouraged to demonstrate this at every opportunity. I suppose it boosts the viewing figures, but it would be nice to see a programme that applauded mature behaviour.

Those series that get people to sell their stuff, I wonder if the participants feel any regret when they get back from the holiday. Some of the things they sell obviously have sentimental value, I don’t think I could flog something like that for such a trivial reason.

Oh, and you have my sympathies. I suffer from travel sickness too. Some days I can get into the nearest town without feeling ill, but others, well, suffice it to say I’m feeling pretty green around the gills by the time I arrive LOL

Diddums wrote at Aug 7, 2006 at 01:27 o\clock:
I know I would regret the sale of family heirlooms and such – I would want at least to think hard about what I was doing, and reinvest the capital or something… I know I say some rude things about banks, but I do sound like my father’s daughter sometimes!

Ah ha, another bad traveller – it’s funny how it comes in waves. I wonder if you also find that if you feel ill on the outward journey, you’ll probably feel as right as rain when you return, even if there is a lapse of a couple of weeks? I’m not sure if there are lingering effects from the travel pills, or if it has nothing to do with that.

Yesterday it was time for my root canal therapy. My broken tooth ‘Bearfang’ (thus named in a dream) was to go under the drill. I’m usually completely relaxed at dentists (once I get away from the receptionist) but something put me on edge yesterday and I wasn’t completely sure what it was. Going through it in my mind, I think there were a lot of little things (little messages that it was a big deal), but the main thing was Mum saying loudly “if you feel funny afterwards, get the receptionist to call you a taxi.” And then she went away.

Lying in The Chair, I was handed two squidgy balls (no rude comments please) to knead nervously during the process. I had already crossed my arms and tucked my hands under my elbows, and was quite happy like that, but I took the squidgy things just to be polite.

As the words “in case you feel funny” were still ringing in my ears, I was a little unsettled when I first got in The Chair. My heart rate shot up, I breathed quickly, jammed my nails in one of the squidgy things, and worried about the ‘panic disorder’ which I was diagnosed with some years ago. If I panic it won’t be because anything’s hurting, but because I feel trapped – unable to just get up and leave. I sometimes get a little panicky in the Hairdresser’s Chair, but so far I’ve managed to ignore it! The panic, that is, not the Chair.

To overcome the same thing at the dentist, I thought about other things – gradually my breathing eased and I was relaxed again, like a dreaming cat. The two thoughts that work best are “oh, poor dentist, rather her than me,” and reciting the poems of Pam Ayres. The girl who sometimes walks Thundercloud when I can’t is having four teeth out – she had a bad extraction and is not looking forward to the next three. I told her about Pam Ayres, and she said she has recently learned some sonnets, so she’ll try reciting those. I’m not sure they’ll work as well, but they will be better than a head full of “gotta get out of here…”

It took about 40 minutes, and when I sat up, the dentist said “thank you for being such a GOOD patient!” and smiled. I grinned back like a happy toddler. I told my sister later, and she said “she didn’t say anything like that to me.”

Wriggles toes and smirks.

I didn’t feel funny either, and walked back home on my own two feet.
Bearfang is doing OK.

Escapism, for me, is reading books. A good book makes everything whole again. I find fantasy is the most evocative genre, the one that takes me furthest away from the things I hope to escape. Good triumphs, magic exists and loose ends are rare. People enjoy their work, value their way of life and possess depth of character, understanding, and a low tolerance of injustice.

I miss the characters and their worlds when the last pages have been reached. I feel as though they still exist somewhere out there, and it won’t matter what happens to me here because I’ll always be able to go home to them. Maybe I will stay for a while in Bag End with the Bagginses and Gandalf, or with Badger, Mole or Ratty in their comfortable burrows. I won’t go anywhere near Toad – he makes me tired. I would rather hobnob with the weasels, especially those friendly with Badger. I could go wombling on Wimbledon Common with Tomsk and Wellington, looking in particular for sweetie papers to wallpaper their home. Better still, I could hibernate for the winter in Moominvalley – I always fancied the idea of a nourishing bowl of pine needles just before curling up to dream away the ice and the snow.

Do I prefer the sleepy stories to the adventures? It’s possible. Maybe I like the contrast; the sense of giving respite to characters who have been out in the cold for weeks on end. Or maybe it’s something deeper.

I’ve always been a sleepy kind of person, and have never been able to understand where people get the energy to do the things that they do. Where did Napoleon get his energy, for instance – or Alexander the Great? Too often I’ve lain in bed in the morning (instead of beginning the day’s chores) wondering about such people. Is there something wrong with me that I have never desired to leap up at cock’s crow to add to my little empire? Why do I never feel the impulse to go travelling, exploring, or to conquer Mount Everest? Why would I rather read about volcanoes than stare down into their smoking craters? Why are my favourite passages about people having rabbit stew for supper before turning in for a nice long snooze?

I’m sure there are various reasons. For instance, I sometimes wonder how The Lord of the Rings and other fantasy classics would have turned out if Frodo (or other fantasy figures) had been deaf? How about Gollum? “Sssorry, master, you’ll have to repeat that as poor old Smeagol don’t hear so good these daysss, gollum.” The thought of all the communication difficulties with innkeepers, magicians, trolls and the like, met while hiking along the road to defeat evil, makes me want to curl up in a ball and close my eyes.

Even more depressingly, I still wonder if Mum is right when she suggests I have an underactive thyroid. Maybe that’s always been part of the problem. That’s also why I don’t entirely believe in the concept of laziness – if you dig deep down, deeper than you expect, you may well find all kinds of unavoidable reasons why someone drags along and refuses to get involved with whatever’s going on.

Or perhaps my sleepiness kicks in because ‘modern civilization’ is so intensely regimented and boring that all the fun has gone out of it. Strange things happen but they make me more tired rather than less – people are criticized if they so much as put the words “Oh, shut up!” into the mouth of an Angry Beaver. It doesn’t matter what you do in this climate – either it’s something you’ve been kindly allowed to do (repeatedly) for limited amounts of money or it’s something someone somewhere will hate and despise you for, such as wearing white ankle socks or keeping cats.

There are so many parts of the world (even locally) that we never get to see in our lifetimes because they are the grounds of some reclusive ogre in his castle. Every so often they throw everything together into museums, trusts, collections, gardens or national parks and let everyone in (for a fee) to sigh ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’. They tell us with satisfaction it all belongs to us now and we can come and stare at trees, canyons, animals, old ships, musty houses or junk in glass cases for as long as we like, just so long as we get out before closing time, and provided we don’t get too close, feed the exhibits or touch things with our grubby fingers.

Doesn’t that seem a mite sanitized? You can’t say “hey, I visited the Grand Canyon” or “we went on safari and bothered a group of elephants” or “I found a marvellous whale skeleton that’s bigger than my house”… everybody else has visited/done/seen everything too, and will just look at you as though you’ve presented them with a hot and sticky bunch of daisies.

I don’t even like ‘discovering’ a wonderful blog post only to find the writer has already drawn an admiring crowd of other readers. They got there before me – how dare they! And if I can’t run shouting to everybody “look what I found”, then what’s the use? I can discard that unworthy feeling after a while, but it still leaps on me unawares every so often.

Have you ever noticed that the world has shrunk, and nothing and nobody is beyond your reach? We can dredge the Titanic off the sea bed without killing ourselves in the attempt, and nobody falls off the edge of the world any more. It used to be that you would send someone a carefully worded letter and if you haven’t heard from them after a couple of years, you start to wonder if maybe they died and nobody told you. Now, if you dash off an impulsive email and the recipient has not responded in the next five minutes, you get very angry and think “what did I do to offend the old blackguard? I sent a friendly ‘howdy doody’ across hundreds of miles of land and sea and this is all the thanks I get!” It doesn’t do much to lower your blood pressure.

Finally you discover that everything you do, whether it’s leaving your TV on standby, allowing your tap to drip, or cooking Scottish cod on your gas hob, is a threat to the entire planet. It gets so that they ask you to vote for a cast iron cooking pot on the grounds that it marked the start of the Industrial Revolution, which is a good thing, isn’t it? But then you think “that’s when people lost their jobs and their skills, and that’s also when we began to destroy the world”… and that squat black cauldron suddenly becomes the linchpin of evil. Not so suddenly, perhaps – there could be an underlying psychological reason why it was associated with witches and black magic.

Having embarked on all this industry and technology (how I love my emails and my blog) it becomes very difficult to quit without making enormous sacrifices, including (probably) our own lives. As slaves to the machines, computers and other systems that have been put in place for us and which only seem to fully benefit a select few, what is there to live for? Oh, right – books! Books that make everything fresh, whole, and exciting again. Especially books that allow you to put your head under the blanket and hide for a little while – not just from Sauron, the Weasels of the Wild Wood, the Groke’s frozen loneliness and the rising dark, but also from factories and other places of brain-deadening occupations, politicians, committees, intolerance, inequality, injustice – and pollution.

Where do people get the energy to maintain this way of life? I’m not just talking nuclear, solar or wind power here, I’m talking people power. I have always wondered.

Edit Feb 2008: Some comments I received to this post on Blogigo:

1. drifting wrote at May 18, 2006 at 10:38:
What a wonderful post. I love the way you wrote it coming around in a circle. I share your love of books as escapes from reality. I much prefer to live in the world of fantasy where there is justice and true love and honour, etc, etc. And you (or your mother) may be right about an underactive thyroid. I’ve never had the energy that everyone else seems to have – just watching them or thinking about what they do exhausts me. I did have an underactive thyroid (may still do) and with treatment it apparently ‘returned’ to normal levels but that was some time ago before I got fed up with doctors and checkups, and now continue my slow life. I believe in relaxation and activity in small doses.

2. Diddums wrote at May 18, 2006 at 20:52:
I don’t like the sound of checkups and pills forever more either. I can imagine myself making the same choice you did. I suppose I should go in for some tests, though, and see if the suspicion is correct… sigh.

3. Pacian wrote at May 18, 2006 at 22:28:
I can sympathise with preferring the nice scenes in a fantasy sanctuary to the brash adventuring, albeit perhaps for different reasons. It’s always scenes like that that make it feel real to me. If I was in some weird alternate world, I imagine I could take great pleasure in little things like having a home and a window to look out of.

I read something, on a blog not too long ago, that stuck with me. Someone wrote that when you find out more and more about people, you discover that everyone feels that they’re hanging on by their fingertips to a life that moves too fast and is too hard. All our media and stories tell us that happiness is doing loads of stuff and exerting yourself in certain ways, but I don’t actually think that this is true for everybody, or even most people.

4. Diddums wrote at May 19, 2006 at 00:53:
That’s a good point – they do add depth to the book; a little perspective and a chance to study the surroundings. People can sit around and talk to each other a bit more, too – and usually they meet somebody new, or hear something in the way of stray gossip…

I go off some characters if they turn out to be somebody really important – royal personage or such. They get trapped in their new roles and responsibilities at the end of the book, and that never feels quite right to me. Maybe it’s that lack of energy getting in the way again!

5. kateblogs wrote at May 20, 2006 at 16:03:
What a wonderful post, you sum up the modern world so well. There are a lot of great things about the 21st century, ease of communication for example. Oh, and of course electicity and medical treatment. However, sometimes I do envy people in the past. They did have new places to discover and explore, new theories to prove or disprove, and their lives don’t seem to have been as regimented as ours. Certainty is good, but I think we all need a little adventure too.