(the linotiled floor reeks of pee because Dad’s aim is not as good as it used to be), and making my breakfast in the cramped kitchenette where everything is covered with a film of grease - the chairs, table, plates, cutlery, cups and saucers, toaster, saucepans, work surfaces, everything - from the daily precipitation of molecules of burned cooking fat. The house has never looked really clean since Mum died thirteen years ago, but it’s gone steeply downhill since Irena, Dad’s Polish home help, got sick and retired, because he won’t have anyone else. The local council tried sending replacements, but he suspected them all of trying to steal his ‘things’ and the money he’s got hidden under the floorboards in various places, and told them not to come back, so eventually the council stopped sending them and he won’t let me find him somebody privately even though I said I’d pay for it.
The best part of the day was the journey to London. My train was on time, I found a seat in the Quiet Coach, removed my hearing aid, and settled down with the Guardian and a new biography of Hardy. Whether and when to wear your hearing aid on a journey by public transport, if you’re travelling alone and don’t have to make conversation with anybody, is a complex question. Obviously you need to wear it to buy your ticket and hear possible change-of-platform announcements at the station, but it’s tempting to take it out once you’re on the train, though you will then not be able to hear information delivered over the PA system by the train manager, such as why it has been stationary beside a field for ten minutes, or possibly more important messages, such as a signal failure which has halted all trains travelling in and out of King’s Cross for an indefinite period; and you may have confused exchanges with the catering staff when they come round with the refreshment trolley, about milk and sugar in your tea or the contents of sandwiches. Of course I could leave the hearing aid in place but switched off until needed, in which case the earpieces would act like earplugs, but if they’re not serving their real purpose I find I become acutely aware of and irritated by the intrusive presence of these little plastic pellets lodged in my head, a sensation I can’t stand for very long before plucking them out. So usually I remove my hearing aid as soon I’ve found a seat and the train moves out of the station. The only advantage of being deaf is that one is, as it were, naturally insulated from a lot of irritating or unpleasant environmental noise (which becomes even more irritating and unpleasant when amplified by a hearing aid) and one might as well make the most of it. Removing the hearing aid on the train is like a magical instant upgrade from Standard to First Class: the metallic rattle and grind of the wheels on the track is reduced to a faint rhythmical clickety-click and the voices of your fellow passengers are muted to a soothing murmur.
Only mobile phones retain their power to annoy even the hearing-impaired traveller, both by their ringtones and by the peculiarly irritating staccato rhythm that characterises one side of an indistinctly overheard telephone conversation, which is why I always try to get a seat in the Quiet Coach where these devices are prohibited. But it’s surprising how many people either ignore or don’t see the notices to this effect, and proceed to make and receive calls while seated right under a window sticker saying, ‘Quiet Coach. Please refrain from using mobile phones’, and it often falls to me to point this out to offenders since most of my fellow passengers cravenly restrict themselves to disapproving looks, to which the mobile-phone user, mentally focused on his or her distant interlocutor, is of course oblivious. I don’t welcome this task, since it disturbs the tranquillity which I hoped to achieve by removing my hearing aid; in fact I sometimes replace it in order to be equipped if necessary for an argument. A certain amount of adrenalin has to flood the system in order to act, and to decide how and when - do you intervene as soon as the phone is in use, or wait till the call is finished, or interrupt in the middle if it seems to be going on for an inordinately long time? I now have