There comes a moment in the passing of time when the days of our stay in the village feel numbered. A flight is booked. We must check-in on line and get boarding passes, jot down lists to do, things to bring back when we return.
“Jigsaw blades, sanding disks, multicutter blades, marmite”
“If I hadn’t got so much to do in England I’d cancel going back” says Lin.
We’ve been making notes for Dot’s funeral in Birmingham, for Richard to design a service sheet with photos.
DRAFT: Dorothy Reynolds was born in Little Norton on Sunday 30th March 1924, the daughter of William and Sarah Bentley, one of six children - sisters Edith, Violet and Barbara, and brothers William and Jack.
Dot went to Norton Canes school and left at age 14 to start work. She had many and varied jobs during her long life. One of these was working in a grocer’s shop. The grocer asked Dorothy if she would like to do the grocery deliveries, to which she replied that she couldn’t drive. The grocer offered to teach her. At a time when a driving test was not required, Dot was soon doing deliveries in a van with ‘three forward gears and no reverse’.
On Saturday 8 September 1945 Dorothy Bentley married Arthur Reynolds in St James Church, Norton Canes. Arthur died on 5th April 2016. They’d been married for 70 years. Their daughter, and only child, Linda, was born in 1951 in Ivy House, previously the local ‘workhouse’.
When Linda was young, Dot worked at a plaster factory belonging the Oakley family, with whom she established a life-long friendship. Later she worked in the Walsall leather trade as a leather stitcher for the Olympic Riding Saddle Company. She brought ‘out-work’ home and taught Linda to stitch to earn pocket money, making her ‘the richest kid in the class.’ Linda remembers, as a child, enjoying long Sunday walks with her mum and dad on Cannock Chase to Milford and Sherbrook Valley.
Dorothy was grandmother to Richard and Amy; and much later, great grandmother to Amy and Guy’s children, Oliver and Hannah. Dot and Arthur regularly stayed with us when Richard and Amy were young. They would, for many years, come with us to Rock Cottage up Bell Hill on the border of the Forest of Dean. Dot loved our long walks in the Forest of Dean – especially along the River Wye, around Mallard’s Pike and Cannop Ponds - and Handsworth Park. In summer she made wonderful puddings, from the hedgerow blackberries we harvested together.
For many years Dot and Arthur’s favourite summer holiday involved going by coach for a fortnight in Torquay, but at the end of the 1980s we began taking family holidays in northern France.
Starting with sunny ferry crossings of the English Channel, Dot loved our holidays in Brittany. She and Lin made up the many picnics we enjoyed, sitting on a deserted beach, on the city walls of Saint Malo, on benches in the Jardin Anglais in Dinan, overlooking the oyster harbour at Cancale, or below the heights of Mont St Michel.
Dot had a variety of interests - walking, singing, reading, doing crosswords, collecting small antiques, sewing, knitting, crochet. She took to the modern craze of adult colouring, although her choice of colours was sometimes somewhat garish. Dot loved poetry. In her last year she would still recite her favourite poems to family, and to the craft group she attended until just before she died. She read stories to her grandchildren, but they liked it best when, at bedtime, she made up stories about the adventures of ‘Johnny Brown and Jimmy Green’. She learned to swim at age 40, because for many years she got fed up watching Lin and her dad swimming in the sea while she paddled in the shallows. She went to piano lessons at age 50. She exercised with the Women’s League of Health and Beauty at Chadsmoor and went to regular exercise classes in Bridgetown.
For the last two and a half years of her life, having lost her beloved Arthur, Dot was confined to a wheelchair. She wanted, more than anything else, to join ‘my Arthur’. She died at City Hospital, Birmingham, aged 94, on the morning of Monday 3rd September 2018. Her grand-daughter, Amy, was at her bedside.
I will speak her eulogy as I did for Arthur in 2016 and my mum in 2012. I’ll probably wake up knowing what to say, but for the moment my mind’s blank; how to encompass Dot in a way that helps engrave our memories of her life. In the crematorium there’ll be two neighbours, John and Les, and our family – me, Linda, Richard, Amy and Guy; Dot’s sister, Barbara and niece, Janice and great niece, Michaela with Dean and our best friend, Liz. The undertakers are Hadleys, Melanie and Angie attending. Lin’s wish is to circumvent the potlatch that insinuates into funerals where attention to cost is unsubtly treated as unseemly, even a sign of disrespect. She’s making arrangements as for buying a seat on Ryanair, alert for craftily hidden extras. Dot would approve. After the ceremony’s over we’ll go to Toby’s Carvery in Sutton and have a meal together.
Linda, Arthur, Dot, Hannah and Oliver in our kitchen
*** *** *** Network on Air have just announced the arrival, on 12th November 2018, of an 8-disk DVD box-set of all sixty episodes of Jack Hargreaves' Old Country series on Channel 4 in the mid-1980s, sleeve design by Richard Baddeley - product of a joint work negotiating my rights in the programme, with help from Dave Knowles, Simon Winters, Ian Wegg, Simon Coward, Phil Wade and Network's Steve Rogers and Juan Veloza. Tim Beddows began thinking about this publication at the start of the year.
No sane Greek would have built a balcony out of wood. This structure has been giving us problems for years, but before we left Ano Korakiana this November we'd made an arrangement to have the present decking removed, all dozen support beams lowered and cleared of rot, the whole re-assembled with eleven additional tantalised beams and new hardwood decking.
The internet makes overseeing building at a distance much easier. Mark, working on our balcony off Democracy Street has uncovered and communicated an unexpected problem.
Part of the support beam that runs the width of the house is badly rotted (photo: Mark Jacks)
The front to back cross beams were all in place - the old ones ground and sanded to remove rot and the new ones tantalised; the lot treated with preservative, then Mark emailed:
Hi Simon and Lin. As you can see from the photo's from today most of the old beams are now back up along with all the new 7x7 ones. It's been a long slow process getting the beams in order as I first had to get all the rotten wood out (ground out) then sanded out with an orbital using a very course grade p40, then 3 coats of the universal wood preserver which kills all manner of grubs and beetles apparently, then I gave all of the old beams the 2 coats of Resolcoat which seems to have gone off nice and hard so sealing all the preservative in and keeping the bad weather out hopefully.
Before and after (photo: Mark Jacks)
A couple of problems have arisen - one being the old beams are 14.5 cm x 7 cm (not all are this by the way) and the new ones are 7x7cm with the extra piece under the end being added to make them 14x7cm, which leaves half a cm out from the tops of the new 7x7 cm to the tops of the 14.5 cm beams, meaning along with other inconsistencies with the old beams not running true we have the decking touching the tops of some of the beams and others not...
'...touching the tops of some of the beams and others not' (photo: Mark Jacks)
...at its worse out by 1 cm and its least ½ a cm, so I am going to have to pack in places to get the levels as right as I can.
- two you will see on the photo's the beam which is attached to the house (2 actually), the one that is directly under your balcony french windows. In the very left hand corner the wood is rotten far worse than I thought, this beam holds the house side of I think the last 5 beams.
(photo: Mark Jacks)
I saw a bit of rot on the top of it so got a wire brush and started to scrub away and it just fell apart on the back side up against the wall up until about half way along to the centre of your balcony door. You can even see one of the coach screws now from one of the brackets.
(photo: Mark Jacks)
'That's how far gone it was in one place'
I have cleaned it out the best I can and given it some of the wood preserver and hardener, but I am not sure if it doesn't need to be replaced totally, which means I have to take half of the beams down again and get another length of timber and replace it
Maybe it will hold for many years after treatment. I don't know, so you can decide on what I should do with that one.
I am behind schedule as I have yet to remove the last middle beam and 2 end beams after having to secure the balcony first , which is in quite a sore state on the whole. I was hoping to be putting the decking on next week but I don't think so, not with these few minor problems arising, then of course I have to adjust all the beams so as they will allow the decking to sit on top .
All the old beams I numbered so as they went back on the same bracket in the same place and even with no work done to the bracket area of the wood on the beam apart from a little sand and then treated, they don't all allow the decking to make contact so I will have to either raise or lower them a little to try and square it all up, just shows how bad the work was done on it in the first place .
That's it , not all doom and gloom from below it looks quite nice. Sally and I think and the weather is great for doing this work. Hope all is well. Cheerio, Mark
Dear Mark. Thanks for the latest news on the balcony. It will cost more and take more of your time but there's no question this must be made good. Please go ahead and ‘replace totally'. This is a key support for the whole balcony isn’t it? It will take more time but please order a tanalised beam from the Velonades yard. It’s a jolly good thing you found this. If it had been left, even with a dose of Resolcoat, it could have been a weak link in the whole ‘new’ balcony. Glad you are figuring out ways to deal with the inequalities of the beams as they emerge. That’s our John the Builder again. All the best, Simon
This wooden balcony has been a problem since we bought the house in Ano Korakiana in 2007. The house has two balconies - one of concrete, on the official house plan, and our wooden one which is not. It is a temporary structure within the law. Turning it into a permanent structure - or stone, iron or concrete - would be an expensive bureaucratic nightmare. Ignoring the law and creating an illegal addition would be no better, as planning regulations are tightened across the Republic - and rightly so!
Early on we made the mistake of thinking we could make the balcony leak-proof, so that the area beneath it would be dry in bad weather. We covered the decking with UV resistant polythene. Lin and I went to great pains to seal it all the way round. We should have realised that covering the wood in this way would make it sweat, encouraging rot.
I put some L-brackets under the dodgier decking and even began replacing some of the planks - an expensive option that didn't deal with rot in the support beams.
Before Mark started work
By May this year I was putting temporary planks over the worst areas of rot; wholly unsatisfactory, especially as we'd at last dealt with the problem of keeping the space under the balcony dry by rigging a tarp on hooks and carefully anchored bungees.
Amy and her mum fix a tarpaulin to create a rain shelter beneath the balcony
Once the tarp had been fitted the first time, it became a matter of minutes to put it up again. It works perfectly. If only we'd thought of this years ago. The new decking will have gaps between planks; no attempt to make it into a 'roof' for the veranda below. It will be stronger, having more support beams. It's hardwood, more resistant to sun and rain. The wood will never be covered again, prevented from breathing or allowed to rot. Yet the balcony will remain a temporary structure; not too tricky to dis-assemble if required.
Why all this trouble over a balcony? When we first inspected this house in in 2005 we were taken out onto it and saw the view. As we stood on this balcony gazing over the island's olive-clad contours, on to the Sea of Kerkyra, to the mountains of Albania and mainland Greece, Linda and I decided to buy the house.
Our wooden balcony ~ overlooking the Sea of Kerkyra, Albania and Epirus on the mainland of Greece beyond
One of our neighbours from Democracy Street - Angeliki Anthi - posted on Facebook:
Οι Κορακιανίτες κατ' επιλογήν, όπως ο φίλος Simon, ο γείτονας και φίλος Mark και πολλοί άλλοι, είναι άξιοι σεβασμού, εκτίμησης κι αγάπης! Πιστεύω πως κι αυτοί τρέφουν τα ίδια αισθήματα προς εμάς, αλλά πολύ περισσότερο στον τόπο μας! Αυτό φαίνεται με την προσοχή και τη φροντίδα που έχουν δείξει με τις κατοικίες τους ώστε να μην αλλοιωθεί η αρχιτεκτονική του χωριού μας! Να είναι σίγουροι πως δεν θέτουν σε κίνδυνο "την ακεραιότητα" της Κορακιάνας, και ακόμη πως δεν τους θεωρούμε "αλλοδαπούς" αλλά σημαντικό κομμάτι της κοινότητάς μας.
Could anyone ask for such generosity of spirit?
Τι γλυκό πράγμα είδους να πω, Αγγελική! Είναι τιμή μου. Συγχωρήστε τα ελληνικά μου (:)) Σαίμον και Λίντα
**** **** ****
I had lunch with Mark Woblee* in town. He'd driven down from Lancashire to give me recordings he'd made of Old Country as a young man. We had two pints of Doom Bar and sausages and mash in The Bull on Loveday Street. A proper pub entirely built for privacy in public and undamaged by restoration and fake tradition.
*Mark's domain name! He's really Mark Carroll, but I rather like Woblee.
In The Bull, Birmingham Gun Quarter
I've seen some of Mark's recordings of Old Country before but not all the episodes he's so generously let me have, and certainly not the ones with signing, nor the additional programme - a BBC interview. Pity that the recording ends abruptly mid-sentence before the end.
Almost within minutes of streaming it on Facebook I got a message:
Iwan Bob Geldart - I was a cameraman on the show on the Vimeo link above. The show was Open Air shot at BBC North Studio B, Oxford Road in Manchester. The presenter was Susan Rae
...and then hardly an hour later...
Simon BaddeleyThanks Iwan. For neatness it'd be good to have a date, but I've already got more than I could have expected from you by way of information. Perhaps Susan Rae will know. I'll tweet her.
Do you know whether this programme was actually broadcast as scheduled? If not, tell us what was. Or do you know something else about this programme? The information you send using the Tell Us More form will not be published on the page. We plan to hold on to it and use it at a later stage, to fill…
Shoot forward 15 years ....Wet on the allotment this Friday.
Not much to do but continue weeding and tidying. Winnie pruning too.
She found a plastic cloche and made it into a shelter for Oscar as he gazed at the park. I dug up enough potatoes for supper and harvested a pound of Jerusalem Artichokes - peeled, boiled and liquidised with a chopped onion and a few young carrot leftovers in chicken stock made a good winter soup.
*** *** ***
27th November....
Hi Simon and Lin. Rained off today maybe avrio also. As you can see from the photo's all the new and old beams are up which includes the two end beams.
What I did with the support beam on the house was to cut it back at about half the length which was well passed the rot and using one of the old better spare beams from the end of the balcony which I cut down to the size of the removed rotten beam...see photo...
....sanded it down and treated it then secured it back to the end of the house .This way keeps costs down for you and it is just as good as a new one anyway. Then I put back the removed beams from the top so now it is all complete .
Next step is to start with the decking when the weather improves. Hope all is well. Mark
All new and repaired beams in place ready for new decking (photo: Mark Jacks)
Dear Mark
That saved a journey to the north and with preservative it should be fine - especially as we’ll never again try to cover the balcony.
Ridiculous that we were so focused on preventing it leaking to the plaka below, we ended up ignoring the consequences for the wood.
Mr and Mrs Rot must have been overjoyed when we covered the balcony and worked so hard sealing it all the way round (:))
What was it like screwing into the wall to refix the ’new’ beam?
Look forward to seeing the decking. Nice to think of all the firewood we'll get from sawing up the old decking. Its pretty wet and grey and chilly and often misty in the evenings here - typical English winter, otherwise all’s well.
We’re babysitting Oliver this evening and I’ll take him and Oscar to the allotment tomorrow.
How are you?
Simon
I've collected all Out of Town commentary tapes from the lock-up and about 50 cans of 16mm Out of Town film. I'm going to see if I can match one tape to one film. P & F N specialise in film transfers to other media. They'll make a sample film to assess quality and feasibility. Chris Perry, from Kaleidoscope, is seeing them 13th June. I just hope I can make the match they need.
Looking at the dry-marker written phrase on one of the boxes Linda picked up second hand from someone's removal operation, the blokes at the lock-up might have wondered what kind of film I'm keeping in storage.
I laid out the tapes in the order of the numbers stuck on them...
...at the South West Film and Television Archive. I did the same with the films...
...For the first part of the afternoon I struggled. Making head or tail of this collection stymied others. Some film's aren't even in reverse negative. Some lack library sound effects - the noises from Southern TV's library dubbed onto Stan's silent location film for Jack, when going out live, to add his studio musings. Some reels do have a magnetic strip for sound effects (and are in reverse neg), but there are some cans full of out-takes and rushes. Some cans are so rusty I can't open them. Of course I recognise some of the scribbled titles but none appear to correlate with a tape (or v.v.).
Back in June 2010, Jennie at SWFTAtold me it took them ages to make just one film-commentary marriage - and they had a Steenbeck to run the film and check what it was about to aid their matching for one film - - the 'exploding' bait-box when fishing for black bass out of Littlehampton with Richard Hill...
Roger and Jennie with my stepfather's films on shelves in Plymouth
After a break and a cup of tea I looked again at list I held on file, assembled by Jennie Constable's husband Roger Charlesworth - one that matched numbers on tapes to numbers on films. I realised the extent of my debt to the archivists who looked after and catalogued this material over so many years. In an hour I had assembled a working sample of paired film and tape.
Dear Chris. I've managed to collate 8 tape-film pairs from which to select one (or more) for Francis to create a broadcast-quality tape which we can assess as a pilot for processing the rest of the archive. I know you're seeing Francis this coming Thursday, and I am going to Scotland for a week on Tuesday.
The tape-film pairs are:
JH526 Point-to-point & Apple grafting (sound dated 14 Oct 1986. Not original OoT)
JH741 Broom maker & Saddle maker 30 June 1975
JH762 Grayling December 1969 (possibly incomplete, with date variation)
JH764 Foxhounds & Marlborough horse fair 17 March 1977
JH765 Roach & Pub Games 10 March 1977
JH782 Seasons in the garden 31 Jan 1974
JH811 Casting champions 23 July 1973
Any chance I could bring over these pairs to decide which might be the best pair to work on. Perhaps Sunday or Monday?
I have a preference for JH741, JH764, JH765 and JH782. Given variation in the state of film and tape Francis may appreciate a larger sample from which to select the pilot.
Best wishes
Simon
Reply: Excellent news Simon! I am delighted if you want to drop in all 8 pairs of film/tape for P&FN to do for you. ...So glad we can help with this exciting project. c
"When we return from Scotland" said Lin "we'll go to your lock-up with copies of the match list, lay out the whole collection, and use it to code every film to every tape. Then we can see what's left." She had, even as I was having a cup of tea, put labels on each selected film can, with the number that had been on the corresponding sound tape.
I can hardly believe that this transfer and marriage of film and sound will just happen. There'll be a problem with the state of the film. A sound track will be missing. The whole matter of synching location film to Jack's commentary will prove impossible or far more time consuming than expected. There will be big gaps in film and tape.
Dear Chris. I’ll try to drop over after lunch with the material, on my way to the allotment. So so glad of your help. I can’t quite believe we are on the road again as it were. I just hope the material doesn’t prove too unwieldy in one way or another. We have had so many slips betwixt cup and lip in the last few years of recovering Jack’s material that I don’t expect anything to be straightforward so far as this project is concerned. But I’ve also met and been able to depend on so many friends and interesting people, real persevering enthusiasts (of the kind that Jack so admired) on the journey.
I occurred to me that if Francis is able to marry sound and image on one of the pairs from the sample, we will still need to add still images for the places (usually start and finish) where Jack is musing in the studio shed. Can I suggest Francis leave this blank on any pilot DVD produced. I can then rip the DVd and add stills later as in the ‘exploding’ bait box sample DVD made from the only tape-film marriage so far at South West Film and Television Archive in 2010. Could you perhaps - if Francis can go ahead with the pilot - ask what he thinks it might cost to go ahead with up to ten tape-film combinations? I can start thinking more seriously about future funding for recovering the archive. Best Simon
Meantime I've made an appointment to have lunch with Charles Webster of Delta Leisure to discuss how things are going with the sales of their box sets of Out of Town DVDs and what possibilities there may be for releasing film of Old Country from the BFI as well as exploring the commercial prospects, if any, of the archive material in my lock-up.
Extract from Out of Town's successor Old Country from Channel 4
** ** ** **
Last night, eating salmon pâté with brown bread, Lin and I squeezed juice from the last of the lemons brought from our trees in Corfu two weeks ago.
...and early this morning, for the first time in my life, I had a fleeting dream of mum...
Mum and Lin dancing with the young men on the battlements of Qaitbay in Alexandria
...stirred perhaps through sifting and inhaling the dust of rusty film cans - a flash of such evanescent happiness I woke, suffused with the pleasure of it. We were facing each other as though in an open carriage passing, floating by, a place in the countryside I knew, and know, from childhood, sun dappled grazings receding into the distance under the shadow of ancient oaks and beeches
"Now" I whispered "and at the our of our death, I will never stop thinking of the beauty of the places we've lived, My god, mum, we have been so lucky. Relaxed, she gazed at me and sighed 'I know'"
The Lambourn near the place we dreamed (photo: Barbara Hargreaves)
Now and at the our of our death, τώρα και σε μας του θανάτου μας
***** ***** Handsworth Helping Hands on Facebook.....reverse timeline:
Denise and Simon, working for Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH), took a van load of green waste from a garden in Maxwell Avenue, along with two discarded mattresses and a bed frame, collected from Francis Road, Handsworth, to the city waste depot at Holford Drive yesterday. The green waste was bagged up by Targe (also HHH) who had done a really good front and back garden make-over for an HHH client who met our criteria for free work.
Our first clearance and tidy-up of a private garden was completed while Simon and I were away. Thanks to Mike for arranging it. I'm awaiting photos to post here.
We are now seeking referrals of clients in the Central Handsworth area who are eligible for free or subsidised garden clearance, tidying and planting work. Applications are invited from residents who have difficulty doing their own gardening for any reason such as age, health or mobility related issues. Relatives, friends or professionals such as social workers, health visitors, etc. may make referrals on behalf of clients.
We may also be able to help out people on low income who would like to tidy up a previously untended garden and need help and/or materials to do this. ...See more
Denise, Learline (hope the spelling's correct!) and I spent this afternoon tidying up the bed we planted last year (was it really that long ago?) at Church Vale Triangle. Once we'd cleared the inevitable bottles, cans, bits of paper and copious weeds, we found that many of our plants have survived and are doing OK. We planted more things from our gardens and left in a lot of the little, bright green weeds that had done a good ground cover job in our absence.
We still need more plants - preferably perennials that spread quickly. If you have anything suitable, please let us know.
And if you fancy going and doing a bit of weeding in a week or two, feel free!
Another garden cleared, another mattress to the dump
**** **** ****
We have a leak from under the bath tub discolouring the ceiling in our boiler-room below. I've prevaricated about this. The leak is minimal. It can be safely ignored
"Meanwhile the wet and then the dry rot spreads" warns Lin
"There's an immovable sheet of slate on the side of the bath preventing access to the plumbing"
Three days ago, I attached the stone cutting disk to my angle grinder; removed the cupboard that stood beneath the washbasin up to the side of the bath, and began cutting out a panel in the slate that would be invisible when the cupboard was replaced. The slate dust was stifling, settling everywhere, blowing out the window I'd opened. A tap with a hammer and a panel appeared.
"Just great! I've found the leak. It's in the side of the old lead pipe just below its junction with six inches of copper pipe, old fashioned 1" gauge"
Lin peered in too.
The plumber we found took a look. "I don't know what I can do"
He was worried about cutting the lead pipe in case it made the leak even worse. He applied liquid metal and refused any payment.
"I could have done that" said Lin
"Lin! It's old piping and it's copper to lead. That's a stinker. I don't blame him leaving it well alone"
Checking the next day the leak continued, but a bowl beneath the bend of the pipes contained the drips - hardly a centimetre deep.
"Who can we find who can connect lead piping to old gauge copper.piping? I guess we'll have to have the tap off, try to fit it with 15mm copper pipe and then cut the lead pipe below the leak and join the two pipes with a lead to copper compression joint. Phew."
*** *** *** ***
At Lin's urging, over a few years, I got myself a hearing test. It lasted hardly five minutes. An abrupt woman summoned me to follow her from the Health Centre's waiting area, ordered me to to sit and pressed a horn gently to my ear.
"How many sounds can you hear"
"What?"
"How many sounds can you hear"
"What do you mean?"
"How many sounds can you hear"
"I thought you were going to ask if I could hear anything? What do you mean how many sounds can I hear?"
"How many sounds can you hear?"
"I don't know. Can we try again. One I think?"
She switched the horn - a 'hearcheck screener' - to my left ear
"How many sounds can you hear?"
"What? I don't know. I think you're being rather rude"
"How many sounds can you hear!" she said; louder
"I don't know. None?"
"There were six"
She started filling in a form
"Six?"
"Yes"
"Blimey! I'm amazed."
"The thing about hearing loss is you compensate. Read lips. People talk louder. You don't notice what's happening"
"But I hear lots of sounds"
"You see lots of things even when you're short sighted"
Sylvia, the audiologist, checked my ears, peering inside with an otoscope
"No there's nothing in there"
Too right I thought, having half-expected there'd be an easily removed blockage to explain my test results.
"I'm really sorry. Being so rude" I said
I'm to have an appointment in about 5 or 6 weeks at the Hearing Services Centre at City Hospital, to have a more detailed hearing test; possibly get a hearing aid.
"I told you you should get your ears tested" said Lin when I got home.
"What?"
"Ha ha"
Well it could be interesting to see if I can extend my hearing. What puzzles me is that I'm quite sensitive to sounds I dislike, like distant amplified music late at night, the background noise of game show audiences on TV, the noise of football crowds, the sound of motorboats revving out at sea, the yapping of a stir crazy dog, as also to those I like; waves, wind in trees, the sounds of my bicycle, people in conversation in the street, a distant piano...
Reactions from friends on FB (it may be the 'devil's machine', 'the President's earpiece' and 'tool of the CIA' but it's darned useful on occasions like this):
Jane CochraneMy husband has just got digital hearing aids and they have transformed his life in terms of conversing at parties or being able to answer questions when presenting on stage.
Be warned though that they are so comfy and non-visible that it's easy to walk into the shower with them on ... after a series of near misses I ended up making a laminated warning card that is kept by the shower tap!! Jx
Zena PhillipsYou are hearing quite a lot. You are probably missing out out on certain wave lengths. I have suffered a certain amount of hearing loss since childhood, couldn't' t read till a doctor discovered that I was lipreading to a certain extent and had me sat...See More
Jane CochraneAah ... Zena - my husband is an engineer/technologist and understands all the feedback issues etc ... he simply gets the audiologist to adjust the tuning to prevent the worst of the feedback or "clipping" on some of the sounds ... it might be possible to get some "fine tuning" that cuts down on the oscillation.
Simon BaddeleyIt's so strange that people used to be (perhaps still are) ashamed (perhaps mildly but often worse so) about hearing loss. I was prevaricating about a hearing test because I thought my 'hearing loss' was simply the result of being 'somewhere else' when...See More
Zena PhillipsAn awful lot of people are still embarrassed by hearing loss. Another lot of people, when you ask them to repeat something, think it's funny to say eh? What? Pardon? Etc. I just smile and say 'yer lips is moving but there's nothing coming out'. At checkouts assistants will talk while not looking at you. I say 'sorry' and indicate my ears. They are invariably polite and kind.
Amy Elizabeth HollierDad we have put up with you being deaf and angry so long we whisper nasty things about you! So you see , you can't possibly get a hearing aid now else we will have to start writing notes to each other.
Zena PhillipsMy children solved that problem by facing each other with their hands in front of their mouths but looking at me with smiling eyes. (They understood at quite a young age that I could probably lipread what they were saying.) They always were imps with a wicked sense of humour.
*** *** ***
The sun was strong on Sunday afternoon. Amy brought Oscar round. Liz came too, her pregnancy showing now. She and Amy and Lin walked Oliver in the garden. Liz sat and held him on her lap beneath the honeysuckle
"I'll get the kitchen tidied" said Lin "and start making supper. You take Oscar round the park"
Oliver in a pushchair, I headed proudly for Handsworth Park - trusted with the precious boy. I negotiated the busy Hamstead Road and entered the park through its familiar gates. The place was as lovely as ever with couples, families, friends, individuals of all ages, enjoying a late Sunday afternoon, sitting and strolling, cycling and standing gazing. Near the bandstand I let Oliver out if his pushchair. We strolled together up the long slope that leads towards the flatter stretch of grass and trees bounded by Holly Road. Oliver walked confidently beside me, stopping now and then to examine the ground.
Its texture seemed to engross him. I watched as he examined the grass, picking several blades and bringing them to me - a sort of gift. He found twigs, and would have tested them in his mouth had I not gently asked for them. I held his hand on the tarmac path as we strolled homeward over the railway bridge. Back in his pushchair he looked around at people, dogs, geese and a swan flexing its wings, drinking in this new wonderful world. Will all this be recalled in his memory, in a subliminal space that, if he lives as many decades as I, will forever return as a fleeting moment of déjà vu?
