pick him up, and take him back to Lime Avenue two days after Boxing Day. ‘It would help if you are all packed and ready when I arrive,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to drain the tank that morning,’ he says. ‘It takes time.’ ‘Why?’ I say. ‘Well if the weather turns cold the pipes might freeze,’ he says. ‘Leave the central heating on, then they won’t,’ I say. ‘What?’ he exclaims. ‘Leave it on when I’m not here?’ We have a long argument about this at the end of which I threaten not to come and fetch him if he won’t agree to leave the central heating on while he’s away. Reluctantly he agrees. Whether he’ll keep his word is another matter.
I’ve been to see two more residential care homes for the elderly in our part of the city. The cost is finely calibrated to the degree of comfort offered, like air fares. At the lowest end of the scale you get a stale smell of cooking in the dining room, and of pungent air-freshener in the lounge, fumed oak furniture and faded floral wallpaper in the bedrooms; at the top end air-conditioning and sleek modular furniture and tasteful decor. But there is the same rather melancholy atmosphere in all of them, of lonely old people waiting stoically for death, deepened rather than relieved by the tinselly Christmas decorations in the common rooms. One can imagine them all carefully chewing their Christmas dinners in a couple of weeks’ time, wearing paper hats on their grey or bald heads, and pulling crackers if they have the strength. Well, at least Dad will be able to join us for Christmas dinner if he can be persuaded to move into such a place.The most promising is the one whose brochure I showed him last time I was in London, Blydale House it’s called, a purpose-built place, so the ambience is light and modern and comfortable. It’s a couple of miles from us, but on a bus route that passes the end of Rectory Road. Expensive, but not impossibly so. I have made an appointment to take him there on the day after Boxing Day.
14th December. The last lip-reading class of the year today. We had more exercises and talks to do with Christmas. Ordering Christmas dinner at a restaurant. The origin of Father Christmas. The history of mistletoe. The biggest Christmas cracker in the world. At the end of the class they all went off to have their turkey and trimmings at a local restaurant. I had not signed up for the lunch on the pretext of another engagement, but felt a little guilty about this fib as we split up, wishing each other a Happy Christmas. Beth announced the dates of the next term in the New Year, and a guest speaker. It seems that there really is a deafies’ equivalent to guide dogs for the blind. Not specially trained parrots; they’re called hearing dogs, and we are to have a talk about them in January.
Beth brings to the class magazines published by the RNID and similar organisations and leaves them on the table for people to borrow or read in the coffee break. An article called ‘Researching a cure for deafness’, about the experimental use of stem cells to regrow hair cells, caught my eye. Sadly the programme won’t produce any results for ten years and then will need another five years of clinical trials, so is unlikely to be of much use to me. But it was an interesting article, which began by stating that there are nine million people who are deaf or hard of hearing in this country. I had not thought deaf had undone so many. And the writer used a chilling phrase to describe traumatic hair-cell loss: ‘exposure to damaging drugs or noises causes these hair cells to die with a kind of suicide program. They basically commit suicide in your ear.’ Is it possible, after all, that that rock band at Fillmore West provoked mass suicide in my inner ears? If I could remember the group’s name I might sue them, but no doubt the statute of limitations would apply. They’re probably all deaf themselves by now, anyway. I hope so. The good news is that the anti-oxidants in red wine may help prevent hair-cell loss.
15th December. Fred came home yesterday evening and reported that Alex had been in the shop and ordered some curtains. ‘I gave her a discount - I thought it was