limbo

She’s got the cut-glass features of a classic Eastern European femme fatale and, currently, she’s looking at me, from across the bar, with all warmth of a high security prison guard.

“I’m sorry, but that room has already had breakfast”

"Err, no, I haven't"

Her manner is matter-of-fact, she's The Bored Bouncer, as if hotel guests ARE ALWAYS trying to con second breakfasts. The withering disdain seems a bit much, I think. 

To be honest, up until the minute I walked into that breakfast room, I'd taken for granted I was indeed the guest in Room 91 - it's the same room I'd stayed in the week before - but now I was being challenged, it threw me a little.

She repeats herself, because repeating her position will clear the issue up. 

“Room 91 has had breakfast” Her belief so unshaken to contrary evidence,  I wonder if she’s a Creationist.

“I'mm in Room 91!” I whine the whine of the unjusted. “And I can assure you I haven’t had breakfast yet!”

She is not having it and, the point is, neither am I. I’m annoyed and I am hungry and I cannot resist challenging this Escher styled logic.

I try another tact:

“Okay, have you seen me before?” she hesitates. Got her.

I imagine my next move might be to invite Her Bloody-Minded Highness to my room...

"See? I can get in!" as I open the door.

"See? ONE toothbrush?" as I show her the bathroom.

"See? A boyfriend I can dial up on Facetime who is a living eye-witness to it just being me and the flocked wallpaper and those weird little disco lights in the bathroom that are meant to affect your mood (which, in fact,  they kind of do, because whatever I am thinking or feeling, their incessant flickering makes me think of Donna Summer and waltzers and screaming-if you-want-to-go-faster and who the hell thought of putting flashing coloured lights in a toilet?)"

I’m about to implement my unconventional plan when I spot my name by the room number

“That’s my name!” I'm indignant now. “Why would I want a second breakfast? I’m not a bloody hobbit!” At which point another waitress leans in. She smiles and informs The Ice Maiden that it's a mistake before disappearing to serve coffee elsewhere. 

The Woman Who Wanted To Say No is foiled. At least this time. Curses. She doesn’t apologise, her mouth as tight as the apron wound 'round her tiny waist.

“Sowhatdoyouwant?” she asks impatiently.

I note she doesn’t offer me a menu. “Can I just have a cooked breakfast, but no eggs?”

“What can you mean by that? Is it meant to be a full Irish breakfast?” 

She really is an arse.

hearing things

“Nothing yet?” he enquired.

And that’s when I knew I was in trouble. The “he” in question was an audiologist and I was his patient, sitting in a heavily-lined bunker, cushioned from sound, much like (it turns out) my ears.

“I’m afraid your hearing loss IS moderate and that IS significant” breaks the casually brusque Doogie Howser with a preference for upsizing his ISes. I am busy guessing our age difference as he points at the damning evidence before me. There it is, a downward-sloping graph, which he is helpfully deciphering with all the jolly detachedness of an Akela reading a map. (I’m guessing sixteen years.) But this is no map, it IS the inner life of my ears. And they are f*cked.

Wow, I thought, I could be his mother.

“I think you should consider a hearing aid at this stage and do everything you can to avoid further exposure to loud noise”

“Define loud…”

He smiles “Been to a lot of gigs, have we?”

“Yes, Father, for I have”

No nonsense, he talks on: anomalies..blah…in my results…blah blah….indicating loss…blah..might be not be environmental..possibly hereditary…blah…recommending an MRI scan…

Ironically, I was only half-listening because my inner Edinburgh monologue had kicked in:  “A hearing aid? A Hear-ing? AID??  But that’s only a short skip to mechanical hearts! Next stop: walk-in baths! Free bus passes! Whay-hey! I was always advanced for my age!” 

I was sent back outside to wait for my fitting. And whilst I sat on the plastic chair, balancing my belongings, I reeled. I sat and I reeled because that day, I had gone in for a check-up and was leaving with an actual disability. Like the man who walked down a mountain and came up a...creek of shit.

“Look on the bright side, you’d qualify for the Paralympics”

My boyfriend, a man with a profoundly-deaf sister and a practical way of seeing things…

But its not like I suddenly discovered last Wednesday my hearing was a bit..faulty. For years I thought I wasn’t concentrating enough or was being a bit dim - really. That’s the thing about gradual deterioration. It’s deterioration. And it’s gradual. Whether it's your hearing or your eyesight, you compensate for the loss, and keep compensating and then before you know it, you’re doing a Helen Keller with the household furnishings.

I have a friend of mine whose Blackberry typeface setting is so big it can be seen from space. She’ll squint at wine bottles, menus, shaggy dog stories - but her glasses remain in the case. She has a clear view of her place in the world, so what if it's a little hazy?

I don’t know when my hearing started to diminish. I know I missed the odd word, then the odd sentence, then I realized I was listening really, really hard in any situation that involved atmospheric noise, or music, or more than one person. I’d rewind TV shows because throwaway lines were lobbed right out of the ballpark. I didn't hear my phone ring so often, it became a running joke amongst friends. Ah, my friends! This news has been a bit of a eureka! moment for them:

“So, I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve met a divorced unicorn and we’re moving in together…”

Me: (blank face) “I’m thinking of having the spaghetti, what about you?”

Under certain circumstance, trying to catch the conversation is akin to trying to roll a jelly trifle across a cattle-grid. It’s simply not going to get there in one piece.The pub chats I’ve missed; the tiny panic during a “mumbled” shopping transaction; the inability to understand A. Single. Word train station announcers say…oh wait, that’s everyone.

My soundscape has been unavoidably retracting, the dull, sometimes shrill, thrum of tinnitus taking its place. This summer, in Italy, I couldn’t hear the crickets chirrup. I don’t always hear birdsong. I can’t remember the last time the lazy hum of a bumble bee registered in my head. My heart breaks a little bit. It feels like part of reality is loosening from my grasp. I’m DiCaprio, slipping from the floating wood, sinking…

My childhood jumps out at me via albums: Drama (Yes); Two Days Away (Elkie Brooks); Elton John and his Yellowbrick Road; Rod Stewart with Atlantic Crossing; The Police, The Stones, The Who, everything by The Beatles ever; Sweet Charity and West Side Story; Modern Lovers and Kate Bush. I was chained to the stereo, I worshipped at her altar as my nimble hands reverentially slid crisp paper sleeves from cardboard jackets. That exquisite pleasure from feeling the weight of the needle balanced upon my finger, the sheer thrill of being completely absorbed.

By Christmas 1981 I had my first Sony Walkman. Life finally had its own score. I was hooked - and I cranked it up to eleven.

The technology attached to my ears has changed: cassettes became CDs became mini-disks became MP3 players...but the isolated joy has always been the same. Pure and unadulterated.

I don’t know how to end this post. I don’t know how this story will end. I hope to preserve the rest of my hearing. If I’m DiCaprio, I want to be saved by the Carpathia, accept losing a foot to frostbite, maybe, put daft Rose behind me as the holiday romance she clearly was. I don’t want to disappear from this beautiful, audibly-nuanced world.

I continue to listen to music – but I keep an eye on the volume and I carry earplugs (just in case). But mostly, I’m no longer ashamed of not “keeping up” with what’s being said – there’s a reason, and it’s been a blessed relief to finally admit it.

"Are you Sarah Connor?"

The first time I knew Something Was Up was right before my move to Belfast.

It was a time of great excitement, a time of dreaming, a time of swotting up on the locale via Google maps, a time of…damn, what is WRONG with my computer? WHY is it sooooooo SLOOOOW…?

The rainbow of doom had been spinning lazily across my screen with alarming regularity for weeks. For a while, the gaily-coloured beach ball companionably bounced me out of one program. And then another.  And then it upped the ante and began cartwheeling across everything. Things got heavy between us when it started to crash.

And then it all went dark.

I don’t remember much after that but my hard-drive was gone, along with my photos, my questionable movie collection, my short stories, my unused blog posts and the countless invitations I’d ignored from the last chance back-up saloon.

I’d had my G4 Power-book for years. It was a tank of a Mac and I’d loved it. It was sturdy and hardwearing, and satisfyingly retro-heavy. It was deserving of a happy montage highlighting all the places we’d been together: high-fiving in parks, laughing on street corners. It was as loyal as a golden retriever pup and I wasn’t willing to let it go. So there I was, sitting in geek pre-op waiting on a couple of bearded, up-talking Macperts who were about to give it a full frontal lobotomy.

I shed a discreet tear but I went through with the unholy procedure anyway.

Like all things bought back from the dead, the replacement hard-drive was… well, it was not the same. Changed beyond all recognition underneath its familiar metal skin, my computer had been violated. The Krays had gone in and moved all the furniture around, it no longer responded to me. What a fool I had been!

I didn’t have my zombied laptop for long before I unceremoniously dropped it on the floor. Killing it for a second and final time, in a domestic collision between my big toe and the corner of a rolled-up-carpet, it landed with a sickening thunk. I knew, this time, it was over.

They call me Elecno

At the Regent Street Apple shop, I bought a spanking new MacBook Pro. It was glossy and sleek and light as a feather. I was taking it out of its box just as I was putting the rest of my life into one. I didn’t have time to try her out properly (yeah, her) but I was pretty sure We’d Get Along Fine. But my new Macbook was faulty out of the box - the very box I’d just packed up, along with the receipt, and carted off to a storage facility ahead of the move.

And that was the start of it, what happened next is how I got my nickname: Elecno. For I, and I don’t like to be immodest here, have a super power and by a super power, I mean, a really crap power: I can make electronic goods go wrong…by sheer dint of using them. 

The next indicator Something Was Up was when the company I was working for in ordered an office laptop for me. It was the size of a small dining room table, weighed more than a short man and was made by Dell. It was almost-new. And it almost-worked. It was eventually repaired enough times to warrant them giving up and replacing it with something new-new. Dell Replacement No 2 (same make, same ridiculously cumbersome build) was just that. I dragged it two hours down the road to Dublin before I realised the screen was dead. It was taken back to the company’s HQ to be sorted out by a mystified IT – the wires to the screen had magically become loose. When it happened a second time, they decided to replace it with another...

About this time, the Blackberry I’d had for nine months also died in my hand. The screen went blank and that was the end of that. Insured by Orange, the replacement phone swiftly arrived but, being reconditioned, within the space of a week, performed the same dying swan song as the first. I complained bitterly and was sent a brand new phone.

Blackberry No 3 lasted SEVERAL weeks before I dropped it in the washing up bowl.

Look, this, and that other (carpet-related) incident, are the only times in this tale of woe where I hold my hand up, and toe, and say, “Yes! THAT was MY BAD!” I’ll tell you what else was my mistake: thinking a pack of rice and a Tupperware dish were ever going to make it any better...

Orange immediately resorted to a reconditioned replacement, replacement phone. Not that I had time to think about that, I had Dell Replacement No 3 to deal with – this one had a keyboard with keys only loosely attached to the board. Still, at least it had a screen that worked even if I did keep dropping my H’s. (And T’s and D’s).

Blackberry Replacement Phone Number Four didn’t work out of the box. It was so obviously faulty, I followed the Orange delivery man down the office stairs demanding he replace it then and there. He didn’t. Blackberry No 5 arrived two days later via the same (now sheepish) courier. It lasted not much longer thanks to its inability to take calls or email on a daily basis. It was at this stage that a wise Orange employee kindly released me from my two year contract and suggested I find another phone – and also another phone company.

Dell Replacement No 4 didn’t like Word documents. Or PDFs. Leading to Dell Replacement No 5 which worked, if very slowly.

IT began avoiding my calls.

Epilogue

I moved on from Orange to O2 and the iPhone. A year in and things are going okay (touches wood). Mostly I keep my phone in a rubber cover and there’s a plastic screen protector too. I try not to touch it with my bare hands. I’m sporting Marigolds as a fashion statement. 

Dell Replacement No 5 was handed into my old company when I left the job – and not thrown out of a high, hotel window, as often fantasied.

Macbook Pro No2 has just had its hard-drive replaced. (Just two years in.) The upgraded hard-drive continues to spawn issues. As I type, I am just back from my fourth trip to the Genius bar in two months. I think I deserve an honorary blue geek tee for keeping them in business - but my requests remain unanswered.

Like I said, as superpowers go, I won’t be recruited to The Avengers anytime soon but maybe I have my role to play? Maybe people like me are the Sarah Connors of the future? Waiting in the wings as humanity’s secret weapon against our robotic overlords?  

Until then, I’m buying a bonnet and a buggy and joining the Amish. If you need me, I’ll be in a field somewhere. Ask for Elecno.