Wednesday 3 June 2009

Self-conscious? Zoi?

We have a friend who had a cochlear implant last year. It has transformed her hearing, although it's been a difficult time for her - the first thing that's done is any vestige of natural hearing is destroyed and she heard literally no sound at all for a few weeks, and then had to be driven to Cambridge from Norwich every week for months for adjustment and training. However, the operation has been a success and she can hear better than she has for years. Nevertheless, she finds it difficult to use the telephone and especially to hear messages. The Sage loves the telephone and keeps leaving her messages. Today's was to say he understands that she can't hear messages and he knows she prefers email. *sigh*

I'll be off in time to hear the lark's first breath tomorrow, as I'm due in Norwich at 7 am to leave for Hampton Court. Very jolly. Last visit, to the Royal Academy, I was taken to lunch at Fortnum & Mason by an acquaintance, and felt obliged to invite him to lunch in my turn on our next visit. He's a perfectly pleasant chap but, as I wrote at the time, he was slightly too possessive and I felt awkward and slightly over-burdened by company as he was waiting for me at every turn. It reached the extent that I was teased about it, not unsympathetically. Anyway, I have asked friends to stick fairly close so that I don't feel self-conscious.

I was talking to a friend today, and she mentioned that another mutual friend is getting married again in the summer. "Ah, I met him briefly just before Christmas" I said. But no, that was a different fellow. "I don't think I could do it all again," I mused. "It's taken me decades to train the first one, and why would I risk it again? She agreed. I know plenty of second or later marriages that have been a great success, mind you, but I can't think that I'd want to adapt again.

Ooh, I've just looked at my polling card. My number on the voters' register starts FU. Well I never.

6 comments:

Pat said...

Couldn't you suddenly develop a mythical jealous husband?
I would never marry again. Second time lucky is enough for me and there comes a time when intimacy with someone stranger is daunting.

BK Chowla, said...

Marrieges are made in heaven my dear friend.

Dave said...

If Mr Chowla were correct, then they would be perfect, which patently many are not. Yours, however, clearly is. Despite the sighs.

Dandelion said...

Stranger than you, PI? It's not possible, is it?

Dandelion said...

Yes, dave. And don't forget the dining table.

Z said...

But he hasn't ever said anything untoward, Pat, so there's nothing to object to.

Dear Mr BKC, thank you for returning. My marriage is, indeed, but I'm lucky.

It's like making a garden, perhaps. Sometimes, the soil is completely unsuitable. But even in the most propitious of circumstances, one has to weed and fertilise for continued success and hope that pests and diseases don't prove too much of a problem.

Dand, you're a tease. I suspect that none of you is stranger than the Sage and I, in any case.