I re read Deaf Sentence by David Lodge last week while on holiday, it was on a bookshelf in the house we rented at Freshwater Bay. Last time I read it I was not deaf myself, but it really struck home this time. It is about an elderly linguistics professor who gets into an embarrassing situation due to not hearing what a woman says to him at a party. My deafness is at its worst in a large group especially when it includes small children and I constantly have to guess, usually wrongly, what has been said, with or without my hearing aids. It must drive the rest of the family barmy, but they were very patient.
However, it was a great holiday in a really comfortable enormous house,with plenty of bathrooms and huge sofas. It was near the beach so the more energetic of us could nip over the road for an early morning swim. The Island is still as beautiful, and wonderfully unchanged. It is so reassuring to find that there is still the shop on the corner selling `ham on the bone` and slicing bacon up on a machine, (though we ate neither as we are all mainly vegetarian these days) There were about eighteen round the table for most meals and we took it in turns to cook and shop. Having the three little boys, my great grandsons, was a joy and seeing them running in and out of the sea at Compton Bay as my kids used to do was lovely.
It was a week with hardly any mobile phones (no signal) radio, or television, and lots of swimming, walking, cycling, Scrabble and other games, and talking (though for me only the last two) Coming back here to Dumbrells Court, it seems so quiet with all of us oldies. And boringly neat and tidy too.
Unfortunately when I got back, I discovered to my horror that I had inadvertently turned off the fridge freezer when I left (absentmendedness or senility?) so I was faced with a mountain of rotting food including all the blackberries and apples I had squirrelled away for making crumbles later and quiches and pies for future Quaker bring and shares. What a disaster. I felt really guilty when I went to the dump with my black bagged load, as if I were disposing of a body.
How I love these late golden days of summer. In spite of dodgy knees,I can still walk up Lodge Hill accompanied by an imaginary Bradley Wiggins and I had better start blackberrying again to replace the last lot.