Can You Keep the Noise Down...

So, a while ago I told you that I was going to have my ears syringed owing to the fact that the level of waxy build-up had reached the point where, in a birthday party situation, I wouldn't need to go and buy any candles.

That day was yesterday. I hadn't been to the doctors for about fifteen years, and when I walked in they seemed to give me a very funny look ("Oh, I thought you were dead!"), and I wondered in when summoned to see the nurse.

She had a cursory glance in my ears with that thing they use before exclaiming that she was surprised I could hear anything at all out of either of them. "Pardon", I said, hoping for a cheap laugh, but I think she'd heard it before.

I didn't realise that they syringe ears with a little machine now, which looks like something that might launch a vicious attack on your plaque in a dentists surgery, not something that will restore the ability to hear. Last time I went, they actually used a whacking-great-big syringe. Admittedly, the world was in black and white, and I took a carriage. But I didn't realise that technology had progressed so.

She got cracking on my right ear - the one that wasn't quite so bad. It all came out quite nicely, I was told. All of a sudden there was a "pop", and I could hear a mouse cough six miles away. I felt like Brave Starr (remember him? Ears of a puma, anyone..?). It was incredible. I had to stand up and turn around so she could do my other ear, and the room moved around a little (I was warned it could make you a little dizzy) but I got away without embarassing myself and sat down facing the other way. She now attempted my left ear. I haven't been able to hear properly out of this one since Wham were still together.

She gave it a good go, bless her. But it soon became fairly obvious that there was too much wax in this one for even the hardiest of ear-syringing equipment. At one point, she started brandishing a pick-axe, but I think she decided that that might be a bad idea. Essentially, the drops that you have to use for a few days beforehand, to soften the wax, hadn't quite penetrated the furthest echelons of the wax to the left of my head. She sent me away again, under orders to carry on using the drops to soften what was left in that ear, with instructions to come back to have it done again if necessary.

The resulting effect is rather startling. I can hear like a superhero out of my right ear, but barely at all out of my left. I could hear a whisper at a distance of several miles, but only if it happened to my right. If a small nuclear explosion occured two inches to my left, I might be vaguely aware that someone might have sneezed.

The oddest thing about it is that it totally removes your ability to know where sounds come from. If something happens to my right, I turn to my right. But if something happens to my left, I also turn to my right because I can hear it better through my right ear than my left. I'm moving to the right more often that Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

But it's undoubtedly better than it was. In fact, on one side of my head, it's even better than that.

The problem? I daren't use my iPod in case one side of my head explodes.