Aw Diddums

Black Cat from the U.S.

I was mulling over ideas for an image contest I might enter… not having settled for anything yet, I looked through a gallery of stock images for white cats. The search term didn’t work that well and I ended up with all sorts: black cats, torties, tabbies, Siamese, Tonkinese, grey cats, tigers, cougars, women in costume…

At first I was just flipping through, stopping at this picture or that, thinking “this one would look good but I would have to paint the tail in” and so on. After a while, I got sad. My tinnitus changes to suit my mood (and reinforce it, I suspect), so I heard the pop equivalent of plaintive violins. I can’t identify it. A male voice singing kindly, as if over a guitar in the deepening summer dusk. A little bit distant, as though I looked over to the next hill slope and he’s sitting there in the honey-warm heather, warbling away on his own.

It’s a wonder I haven’t just drifted away in my sleep… stopped breathing, as the world I live in is not this one! Some of those modelling photos made me uncomfortable: they brought it home to me that I’m surrounded by a host of people living on a different planet. If we’re all on that other planet, who’s on this one?

Back to the cats. I wondered what the unwitting feline models would think if they realized people were putting them in pictures of their own, painting them, or just looking at their cute little button noses from the other side of the world. Each cat was individual… I could imagine how I would have loved each one.

I’d just finished that sentence (not wearing hearing aids as they were tiring my ears) and there was a loud bang, one of those that you feel all through you. You thought somebody was attacking and threw your arms protectively round your head, then realize something fairly major has fallen down or exploded… by ‘fairly major’ I mean not just a pile of books toppling to the floor. I whipped round, my heart hammering. Samson was chasing a moth and had knocked over a heavy tower of tape cassettes.

He wasn’t in the least bit repentant, just chased the fluttering will ‘o the wisp all the way down the stairs and back again, even with me standing on the landing shaking a fist. I looked over my shoulder just now, and he was skulking round by the foot of the tower again… doesn’t care if he knocks it down. Chased him out of the room a second time, but he’s immediately come back.

Sigh.

Where was I?

“Each cat was individual… I could imagine how I would have loved each one.” Sitting looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths… and I believe them.

Why should that make me sad? I have Samson and Delilah (otherwise known as Springy and Squishy). I’m thinking of other cats I’ve known… Sharky heads the list, followed by Thor, Fusspot, Lucky, Tarquin, Scampi, and others. Tarquin was a black moggy with a white bib; I named him after a character in a Georgette Heyer novel. (Well, I was 12 or 14 or something like that). Mum said Tarquin was the stupidest cat she’s ever known. A comfortable, friendly boy though; I miss him.

Does this mean that we can never look at something we like with without feeling pain? The only item I can look at and think “I’ll never lose this,” is my bed!

The accompanying picture is one of the cats I hovered over for ages in the stock photo gallery… he has kind eyes and a modest expression like Thor. if I could have given him a hug, I would have. The original picture can be found at One White Whisker. The cloudy sky is one of mine.

Later, when Mum came upstairs, I told her about the tower of cassettes being knocked over. She said (unsurprisingly), “yes, I heard.” Then added, “my friends tell me it must be nice to hear somebody moving about the house.”

KABOOM.
“Who did that??? Don’t DO that!!!”
(Sound of cats thundering uncaringly up and down the stairs).

Thanks to BEG with her link to A Challenge for DBC and AGB. Yes, I know the feeling… and I’m not even a ’super’ phony as I never tried that hard.

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.

It used to be possible to obtain commercial videos (such as Jurassic Park or You’ve Got Mail) which included closed captioning. A couple of times when looking at old videos on eBay, I wasn’t sure whether or not they were captioned, and wrote to the sellers to ask if they were. They were confused – they had no idea that any of their videotapes had this ability.

To start with there was a little box thingy (a decoder) which cost £100 (around the time I discovered it) and could be run with an ordinary VCR to decode the closed captioning on Jurassic Park, You’ve Got Mail and others of that ilk. Eventually they stopped making and supporting the little decoder (that’s what I was told when mine broke down). By this time it was possible to obtain VCRs with the decoders built in. Not all VCRs; just some. You had to be careful which you bought.

The Panasonic VCR I have here in this room can read closed captioning. My sister took my old (very expensive) Grundig VCR along with the little decoding box (which appears to work for her).

My mother’s ancient VCR could never read closed captioning as it was too old, so she threw it out about a year ago and bought a DVD/VCR combi. We can watch subtitled DVDs on this, of course, but for some reason (we’re normally so careful when choosing new technology!) it came as a shock when I tried to watch a captioned video on it, and discovered it couldn’t decode the captions. In other words, it’s a normal bog-standard VCR.

I couldn’t understand this… one half of the machine is a DVD player with the capability of reading captions, and the other half of the machine is a VCR without. That makes it 100% useful for the hearing, and only 50% useful for the deaf. If you’re not going to build a decoder into the VCR, what’s the point of having any part of this machine decoding subtitles? That facility is probably only used by a small percentage of the hearing. You might say it’s too clever for some and not clever enough for others.

I said to Mum maybe we should get rid of that one and look for a combi I would find 100% useful… so tonight I looked in the Argos catalogue, and on Amazon, and on other sites. I drew a complete blank. It might just be that they fail to mention it in the marketing information, but as far as I can make out, none of the new VCRs (in the UK) have decoders.

I’ve seen hints that old videos don’t play well on new VCRs anyway… I saw a complaint by an Amazon customer who said old videos played badly on his new machine but beautifully on his old machine. The manufacturers told him he had no business playing old videotapes on their shiny new VCRs anyway.

We are all expected to change eventually… videos are out on their ear. But it incenses me that though hearing people still have the option of purchasing new machines to play their old videos (even if rather badly, it seems), the deaf no longer have that option at all.

Well, I finished Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, and had mixed feelings about it. Some of it I agreed with, some of it made me uneasy. Parts of it were uncomfortable reading… descriptions of the hurtful rows couples can have makes you curl up in a ball. It’s not just couples, of course; you can have these painful clashes with anybody whose good opinion you value.

I haven’t had any huge arguments lately, or ruined friendships (that I’m aware of), though the other night I didn’t understand something Mum was trying to say till she blew up and stamped about and threw things. I thought we were having a chummy evening in, so it was a shock. What did I do? Turned out she was asking me to stop playing with the cats, as it was distracting her from the TV. I thought she was saying other things, and kept right on…

It sounds both funny and stupid, but it made me feel quite ill. It reminded me of something on TV about a deaf Dalmatian dog; it couldn’t hear warning growls from other dogs and would keep right on… and got attacked. It haunted me at the time, and I couldn’t help remembering it.

I did some stamping and door-slamming myself (retreating upstairs to watch my own TV), and didn’t forgive Mum for two or three hours.

The book said you can get blazingly angry about something all in an instant, but if you stop and think about it, you realize there’s an underlying emotion such as hurt or fear. People get angry because they feel threatened in some way. I didn’t have to think about it very much, I knew about it already. It came before the anger.

The treatment meted out by other people to their friends and partners is not pleasant reading. It makes me want to reach through the pages and shake some of them till their teeth rattle.

It’s purely opinion, but I was dubious about some things in the book. I giggled when reading about a study of one particular group of patients. Some received therapy along with their treatment; others did not. The ones receiving therapy left the hospital an average of two days earlier than the rest. I said to Mum “do you suppose they were trying to escape?”
“I’m quite sure of it,” she said.

I imagine I would have been one of the schoolchildren hinted at (further along) who consider mediation and therapy at school to be an invasion of privacy. Ironic… here I write to the whole world what I’m thinking, but clam up when therapists/consultants/whoever are talking nicely to me in a quiet room. I even clammed up when the university tutors were trying to discuss my thoughts about things I’d read, which was completely missing the point of having tutors… but that’s by the way.

There was a bit about timid cats catching smaller mice than their more courageous brethren; I took issue with that use of the word ‘courageous’. It’s supposed to mean you’re scared but go for it anyway; not that you weren’t particularly scared and waded joyfully in. Mum said it showed a basic misunderstanding of cat behaviour.

Finally I finished the book and handed it over to her in case she wanted to read it, and she dropped it in the bin. “You’re supposed to make up your own mind about it,” I protested, and she said “I have… I’ve had bits of it read to me!”

Finally she relented and pulled it out again, but I don’t care what she does with it. I’ve begun reading Cat on the Edge by Shirley Rousseau Murphy and it’s wonderful. I already see the hero cat (Joe Grey) as being my own Sharky, though Sharky wasn’t ugly and grey with half a tail. It reminds me how I would go off my chump when he (or any of the cats) disappeared. I could just imagine him doing some of those things… but I won’t give away any more, except to say that the pretty girl cat (Dulcie) reminds me strongly of Delilah. Nobody could be cross with her for any reason.

Am taking it to bed, along with cuddly moose, cuddly mouse etc.

Time flies, and I regret nothing.

A black-haired lad from my past. We met at a wedding.

It happened the way it did because it had to, and we still share certain memories. I wonder if he remembers the same things.

I regret if I ever said or did anything to hurt… though for a long time I didn’t know what else I could have done.

Last night I solved a mystery. I’ve blogged about tinnitus, and how it often takes the form of music, or seems to. I’ve seen it referred to as musical ear syndrome, which I quite like. It often dogs people with hearing loss.

Mine are not completely random… right now it’s a tune I’ve experienced repeatedly over the years. Not all the time, or every night; I mean ‘now and then,’ maybe once every couple of months.

I never understood where this tune came from, or why it should be one that returns frequently. I speculated that it matches noises in the house… bearing in mind that I’ve experienced this particular tune in my old house as well. It’s not specific to one building.

Last night (breakthrough!) I matched it to a song. I’ve not been playing any tapes, CDs or video clips. It wasn’t on TV. I haven’t seen the singer mentioned anywhere, or the song… but now I can almost hear him singing it in the background, and it definitely matches the MES tune I’m getting. Having seen the title of this post, you’ll already have twigged… it’s In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins.

The black-haired lad had a Phil Collins tape in his car. Once we were on a motorway at night, headlights all around. We sat in companionable silence, not talking, and In the Air Tonight came on. Of all the fleeting moments that come and go… we remember a few for the rest of our lives for their magical quality and significance.

When In the Air Tonight is playing, I think of him. He’s a ‘what if’; a fork in the path I turned away from.

Well I remember, I remember don’t worry
How could I ever forget, it’s the first time, the last time we ever met
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, no you don’t fool me
The hurt doesn’t show; but the pain still grows
It’s no stranger to you or me

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord…

Delilah makes me chuckle… she was going after a fly, and I caught her eye and said, beseechingly, “please don’t do it!” She looked guiltily back at the fly with a “waaahh!” as though to say “but I can’t help it, you know I can’t.”

Today, she was leaning close to my ear and I thought I heard a squeaky noise, so I turned and looked at her and said “did you say something?” and she immediately said “yah!” in that identical squeaky tone, so I knew it hadn’t been something going on in the house which should be investigated… set my mind at rest.

I don’t let cats go up on kitchen worktops (or try not to) so when I caught Delilah on ours, I said “get down!” and Delilah promptly jumped off. Mum laughed and said “did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“She said ‘oops’… or made a noise very like it.”

Head still hurting – sore eyes I think.

One thing the cats do… they use the tray, and a stench arises, so I rush to scoop it out, thinking the smell will go away. A short while later, it’s still hanging around – I assume it’s still settling down and ignore it, then finally get suspicious. I look again, and there’s a second lot waiting there to be scooped out. I would have cleaned it up sooner as I don’t want to sit in a cat-fug.

I reckon this is one of the little drawbacks to being deaf you would never suspect… with reasonable hearing you would hear the cats scratching in the tray, and know right away. Just like you hear them start to be sick somewhere and have time to sling them outside or pose them over the basin, or you hear them howling and scrabbling in whatever cupboard they’ve got themselves shut into. When we’ve lost a cat, Mum will sometimes say “hist! I hear her… somewhere…..” and even if we don’t know yet where ’she’ is, I feel a bit better. At least she’s not run away and got shut in someone’s horrible freezing garage. Then we might find her in the loft, which is often enough the first place we looked. We can’t always trust cats to come when they’re called; they hide away and grump, and if I can’t see them…. well, I don’t know they’re there, and I’m well on my way to a serious panic.

The poop-immediately-after-poop thing is something they often do; in this nice weather you would think they would use Mother Nature’s litter tray outside. It’s a lot bigger and softer than mine. Maybe I should pop my blog on the laptop and go out there myself to get away from the fug.

This morning (in the last hour or two in fact) they did it to me three times, not just once. I have thrown all the windows open. Should have asked Mum to look for a squirt gun.

Goodness me:
Show Us What’s Happening (contest). I don’t feel inspired myself, but had been wondering if I could depict agoraphobia or even deafness; this contest isn’t a world away from it.

The other day I was brushing my teeth and pondering (don’t we all?) on the uncertainty I often feel about the day ahead. I was wondering how I would describe that if I had to. At first I thought “it’s like going to battle without your armour,” but we don’t wear armour today…

This is the nearest I can come to it: it’s like going to work in your pyjamas and bunny slippers, and everybody else speaks a different language. It’s going to rain, and you haven’t brought your umbrella or handbag, which are at home with the door unlocked. You’ve got on the bus and and realize to your horror that you either don’t have the fare or have lost your ticket, and you don’t recognize the part of town you’re in.

I hate feeling like that in the morning.

My local Spar has a short stretch of Poland in the corner. None of the goods on that rack are labelled in English, though I was able to figure out from a Spar tab that one of the items was a bottle of banana and carrot juice. Somehow they didn’t tell me about the apple.

I wanted it, and an uneasy feeling stirred in me – would I be allowed to buy it, seeing as I wasn’t Polish??

Mentally I slapped my wrist – well, of course! I worry about the silliest things. If you dig deep enough in my mind, you will probably discover a squeaky voice insisting that though they would be prepared to sell me the banan marchew jabłko sok, it would only be in exchange for foreign currency. I would stand panicking beside the till, saying “but all my money is British,” and everyone would look at me as though I had crawled out of a sock.

I deal with a constant mass of squirming worries because of the need to consider before I get to the counter what the potential problems are. Bitter experience has taught me that it’s worth calculating the various scenarios which could have arisen (sometimes in the last few minutes) which I might not have known about due to being deaf. It can be of surprising benefit to allow my imagination to run riot.

If I arrive at the counter unprepared, I’m quite likely to be stuck in a bog of befuddlement with people waving their hands and speaking gibberish (yes, I know it’s my own language), holding up the queue while I receive the ‘crawled out of a sock’ stares I mentioned earlier. Another reason why I avoid all queues (or at least long queues) if at all possible.

Forgive the wild-eyed rambling.

If I like the juice, I might try a packet of Polish biscuits next time – if they’ll let me.

Saw this in the paper yesterday: blind woman refused access to her pension.

It makes me want to stop the world and get off.

Today I was catching up on my blog-reading (slipped a bit) and found a post I enjoyed by Liz in Fate is Chance, Destiny is Choice: Inclusion.

I know exactly where she’s coming from when she speaks of the feeling of panic you get when everybody in the classroom starts a mad scramble, and you don’t know what is going on because you didn’t hear the statements that led up to that moment. Gosh, that brings it all back! I didn’t have any notetakers and wouldn’t even have thought of it. To catch up, I read books, and they were as often my family’s choice of books as the school’s, so maybe I knew things the others didn’t, and vice versa. I was always a little ‘not fond’ of school, and I’m sure uncertainty was the main reason why.

Malfunctioning subtitling equipment, gosh, yes. I haven’t tried the ones in cinemas, but the ones in TV are malfunctioning all the time; or the TVs and receivers garble the subtitles/captions for whatever reason. Someone like me isn’t able to pinpoint why, and even if the experts knew why, they won’t be in a hurry to explain it to their customers – they don’t want us interfering or making ‘unreasonable’ demands. That sounds paranoid, I know, but that comes from general life experience and observation! There is so little out there that’s subtitled… for reasons of cost and hassle, apparently. I like to think folk are doing their best to change this situation, and I’m sure some are, but I can’t help suspecting that other people don’t care, and yet others are more interested in an easy life and profits.

I’ve always felt that film editors should consider this a little more (if allowed by the management)… you know how some pictures are very fast moving… take a look at Disney’s Hercules as an example. It’s almost impossible to watch the film AND read the subtitles. In extreme examples I have resorted to rewinding DVDs and videos in an effort to catch something that whipped past. I’m a fast reader; I have learned to absorb chunks of subtitling in the blink of an eye, as in the next instant it could be gone… but sometimes I’m just not fast enough. I’m pretty sure speedy filming makes life harder for the subtitler as well as for the subtitle-reader. The subtitler’s mission is to place as much meaning as possible in a small space and increasingly small amounts of time. My point is that film editing could be more inclusive but isn’t much considered, if at all. Does film need to zip past quite as fast? Why? Quite often the commercials are slower and better subtitled than the movie we have just barged through.

That’s all I want to say for the time being; I think I’ll get a soothing mug of coffee now!

Life is Like Wading Through Treacle

My cr£dit card company have begun the annoying practice of putting the following sticker on my replacement card: “please call this number to confirm that you have received this.”

I’m deaf – I can’t call that number.

I asked my sister if she was getting that sticker on her cards as well, and she said she was in such a mood about hers that she marched into her bank branch and asked a member of staff there to do the ringing up. I thought that was a good idea, which was why I was waiting in a bank queue yesterday. I asked if I really had to ring that number, or if I could safely ignore it, but she said “do you want me to ring for you?” and I said “yes please.”

It took a bit longer than we expected… she managed to get through when she rang the number, but the people at the other end wouldn’t believe her, and refused the request to confirm my card. Fortunately she had an ace up her sleeve in the form of a private number, so she rang that, and this time it was accepted. Presumably they knew who she was on that phone.

The bank clerk agreed it was all terribly difficult, and when we were talking about it later, Mum said, “it’s so unnecessary.” I said if they didn’t believe she was who she said she was, how would they have believed me? Presumably they’re not allowed to ask me my pin. How would they know who I was?

All these questions. What I really wanted, I suppose, was some indication that calling was optional. (Ha). Or a little slip to fill in and send off. I thought they used to do that. What happened to that plan?

The thought of having to go through this every time a replacement card arrives makes me tired. I wonder if switching to another cr£dit card would be a smart move… or do they all pull that trick?

I woke too early again, and Delilah licked my face. This always makes me cringe, for a reason. For years I’ve had to push away any cat who wanted to lick my face and it makes me feel terrible, like pushing away a child who tries to kiss your cheek. At least you could explain to old-enough children why you were doing that, but you can never explain to a cat.

You wish they would curl up comfortably in the crook of your neck and not try to do the lick. If you let them snuggle up again after blocking them, they try to lick again. If you’ve put up a hand, sometimes they sneak their nose under and lick you anyway.

When Delilah licked my face, I rubbed the area energetically, but after about 30 seconds, my skin started to itch and prickle. I had to get up and slap some TCP on – that’s the only thing (that I’ve tried) that stops the itching and prevents spots from forming. Rinsing your face with plain water doesn’t help, even with vigorous towelling afterwards.

I’ve a feeling I mentioned this before, saying that I was taking my bottle of TCP so much for granted that one day when I reached for it and tried to splash a little into the palm of my hand, all that came out one one solitary drip. I thought that bottle would go on forever and was almost in mourning.

When I got back into bed I was so wide awake I considered heading straight for the computer to type in a Google search: “skin reaction to cat licks.” Fortunately common sense prevailed and I aimed for more sleep instead. There’s something not quite right if you’re Googling for every little thing at all hours of the day and night.

I dreamed that a crime was being committed, to do with someone’s missing daughter. In my dream I contacted the police anonymously, as they hadn’t been aware of the crime up till then, and later on they came to the school (where we were all sitting in assembly) and put out a message (which somehow I was reading as a gigantic printed email hung over the top of the stage) about how everybody had to be very wary and alert, and if there was anybody there called Diddums, would she please get in touch. Informants had told them Diddums pronounced her name with a stress on the DID… that might be a small clue as to her identity.

I knew they hoped I might have more to tell them, but I DIDn’t. I wasn’t very worried, and while everybody else was looking at each other, saying “who’s Diddums?” I was wondering fretfully who it was who had been telling the police how I spoke, and how did they know that without knowing who I was, and what was wrong with pronouncing Diddums that way anyway?? Was it wrong? Did everybody else say, for example, “Little DidDUMS was acting up this morning?”

I’m constantly being tripped up by words I only know from reading them… for instance, today I was watching The Weakest Link. Anne Robinson asked “what kind of hat has a name that means ‘bell’?”
“Cloche!” I said, smugly – pronouncing it ‘closhay’.
The girl being asked the question said “cap?”
Anne said “no, cloche!” (pronouncing it ‘closh’).
Oh. Sometimes I wonder how I would do in a quiz show if I gave the right answer but pronounced it wrong.
But I’m rambling…

I had got about that far in my dream, wondering why the police considered my pronunciation was so offbeat, then my nose twitched and I smelled bacon frying. “Very nice,” I thought, “but she shouldn’t have started it so early… I’m too tired to get up, even for bacon and eggs.” Then Mum was trying to wake me up. I felt so sleepy I couldn’t move, and could only blink my eyes at her. Gradually it occurred to me that nobody was frying bacon… it was just that some kitten had been visiting the tray.

I probably wouldn’t have moved for some time, but Delilah came and slurped my cheek despite the smell of TCP.

After leaping up precipitately and rushing for my TCP bottle, I discovered a crime scene in the bathroom… plant soil everywhere. Some unknown individual or individuals had thrown the plant bodily off the bathroom shelf. The prime suspect is one Miss Delilah, along with her usual partner in crime, Master Samson. We had a bit of cleaning up to do before we could go out anywhere. Mum wanted to go right after, but I said I was hollow with cleaning up everywhere and hadn’t even had breakfast, so she said “hurry up.” As nobody had been frying any bacon, it had to be cereal.

It was not till the evening I made that Google search for ’skin reaction to cat licks’ and…. ha ha! It seems I’m allergic to cats.

I don’t know why I was so surprised. I was allergic to my grandmother’s Siamese cat when I came home after my first term at university. It was so bad I couldn’t lie down to sleep – too congested. It eased with time…

Obviously it’s a very mild allergy now. Cat scratches go red and white, and itch. I sneeze and wheeze, and my throat catches on nothing. Only today I was lining up in the bank, and all of a sudden my throat stung, my eyes watered, and I was concerned that it would be my turn to talk to the bank clerk and I would be too busy choking. Fortunately I calmed down before I got to the counter… bank queues are never that quick.

When your throat catches in that manner, the worst thing you can do is cough. You want to cough, but if you cough, it stings more. I must have breathed in a particle of musty bank dust or something, and my throat was already oversensitive. Maybe the musty mote of dust flew off another cat owner, waiting ahead of me in the queue.

Shortly after the kittens arrived to live with us, I noticed my nose was getting very red and itchy – almost sore. I said “maybe it’s because Samson insists on standing right under my nose to be stroked, and all the dust flies off him,” but I wasn’t being serious. I thought it was more likely to be pollen beginning its mad Spring whirl, or dust from hoovering the house or changing the cat litter tray. But some of these websites point out that you can be desensitized to your old cat, and when it dies and you bring a new one in, suddenly you’re sneezing and wheezing.

The throat thing was something I didn’t realize might have anything to do with cats. Ah… (light bulb switches on over head).

I would never have kept cats this long if any of these reactions had been extreme, so I don’t see my lifestyle changing in a hurry. One thing that did shock me when I was reading up on cat allergies was that some people are allergic to cat owners and not just cats. Someone described swelling up when sitting next to some oblivious pet owner on the bus. I don’t sit on buses these days, but it makes me feel terrible that I could have that effect on anyone. Oy.

My dream last night was one of the few that touched on my hearing problems. It was also one of my university dreams, which I do seem to get periodically!

I dreamed that I went back to university, and went straight to the halls of residence. I didn’t know any of the other girls except for one – my best friend Honey.

I was apparently the first to arrive, and the lady showing me where to go asked me something I didn’t quite catch… but it seemed to be about my name. “Diddums McDiddums,” I said. The lady wrote it down in a hard-backed black journal with a black ballpoint pen.

The other women arrived one by one -– I didn’t see Honey arrive as she went straight to her room. I was walking around the kitchen, looking to see where everything was. I wondered how to work the dishwasher, and started looking for instructions. There was a pile of instructions in one of the drawers – they were in a folder with black words printed on it: “DIDDUMS McDIDDUMS – Instructions”.

I was a bit thrown by this. Now that I came to think of it, my name was everywhere, on all the folders, drawers, cereal boxes and ring binders. I couldn’t imagine why. Wasn’t everything in the kitchen for all the girls, not just for me?

Suddenly I realized what had happened… when the staff member asked for a name, it wasn’t my name she wanted – she was asking me to give a name to the student house so that it could be identified. In my confusion, I had asked her to name the entire house after me.

Horrors! The other girls wouldn’t understand in the least, and would probably consider me arrogant.

I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, but more was in store… the instructions for the dishwasher weren’t in the folder of instructions. I kept looking through the drawers, and finally spotted it in a second folder, but one of the girls spoke to me and I shut the drawer and turned away. Afterwards, I went back to get it, and there was no folder in the drawer! I went through all the drawers again, thinking I must have looked in the wrong one, but there was still no second folder – just the first one.

I decided to give up… it was time to go to my room to unpack.

I headed up the main flight of stairs, passing all the rooms, knowing my room was on the very top floor. I ended up on the floor below it… that was where the stairs came to an end. My room was still up there – I could see my door, and the door of the room opposite, but the stairs didn’t reach that far. I looked round helplessly. I was standing outside two bedrooms – one belonged to a girl I didn’t know, and the other belonged to my friend Honey.

I could see Honey, talking to the other girl – she pretended she didn’t know I was there. I considered going over to speak to her anyway, but decided I didn’t want to force her into doing something she didn’t want to do. I was so distraught I wanted to sit on the landing and bawl. I wanted someone to show me some friendliness and understanding.

Suddenly I remembered I could get to my bedroom, but only by a narrow stair round the back. For some reason it was very difficult for me to return down the main stairs – I couldn’t walk on any of the steps, but had to inch my way down the railings. I was afraid of falling, but one of my penpals appeared from nowhere and helped me. He was laughing slightly – “Diddums, you do get in the most awful pickle!” – but he looked concerned as well.

There was an odd thing about this dream – I’ve had it before! It didn’t have the same events, but I’m sure I dreamed about this same university residence hall, with the main stairs going up the middle and stopping on the floor below mine. I always forgot that I couldn’t reach my private room the same way everybody else could… and always had to go back down to the ground floor and round to the smaller stairs at the back.

I’m sure I dreamed that before. And Honey is always turning a cold shoulder on me. Depressing.