Going to church regularly can be a useful hearing test. I first realised I was becoming “hard of hearing” (in that nice euphemism) when I found that the priest seemed to boom almost unbearably through the amplification system while, paradoxically, I couldn’t hear a word that Gospel readers were saying.
St Paul, we remember, was not keen on women speaking in church, and I began to wonder if the “thorn in the flesh” that Paul speaks about was possibly a hearing deficiency. As I have had cause to remark previously, women’s voices can be more difficult to hear – the high registers being more inaccessible for those gradually going deaf – and I’ve often had the urge to call out, “Speak up, lady!” when a woman ascends the pulpit. (There are notable exceptions: some women enunciate with clarity – and how welcome they are.)
Anyway, sitting in the pews made me first aware that I was beginning to lose my hearing; or, to employ a nice Irishism, that my hearing was “disimproving”. And so I took myself off to avail of a hearing test, courtesy of the NHS.
All went well, and I was duly equipped with a couple of hearing aids – two little thingamabobs which hooked over the ears. A prominent notice in the hospital’s audiology department warned patients NOT TO LOSE these precious accessories, since they are very expensive.
Reader, I lost them. One popped out on the streets of Dublin, never to be seen again. Another went AWOL in a restaurant, never to be found again. Too mortified to return to the audio-logy department, I decided to procure a fresh hearing aid through a local private supplier. I was tested, fitted and presented with the bill: £1,000. Wow! That’s what it costs, just for one aid in one ear. (Cue the credit card.)
The new hearing gadget looks like a piece of foam and is inserted into the ear’s internal passage. But it, too, so easily slips out of my lugholes that I’m too terrified to use it at all. On second wearing, it popped out, and was found in a beret I was wearing. As it represents a thousand quid, I returned it to its box vowing to use it only sparingly.
So I’m back to St Paul now, who counsels us to “suffer in silence” when vexations plague us – such as creeping deafness. I think I’ll turn to an older solution: lip-reading.
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All sorts of revelries have taken place this week to mark St Patrick’s Day. How jolly to see St Pat honoured again in the country of his birth – Britain. Claims that he was a Frenchman have not been sustained, though it has been reliably established that he studied in France – in the Burgundy area – at one point.
Paddy’s Day is not quite as religious as it once was, but then it always had an irreligious aspect too. There’s a wonderful painting in the National Gallery in Dublin of St Patrick’s Day in 1856 by Erskine Nicol, depicting a group of country folk (including one African participant) dancing, playing games, trading, eating, drinking, flirting and chatting in front of a church, celebrating St Patrick’s Day. I think the notion of carnival was always included.
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Asked by Andrew Marr if he was a Marxist, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said that Marxism was “in the mix” of his influences, but cited William Morris (nowadays of wallpaper fame – Mary Killen, a current star of Gogglebox, is televised in front of her William Morris wallpaper) and Nye Bevan as significant aspects of the Labour tradition he respects.
When the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson was asked a similar question, he replied that British socialism “owed more to Methodism than to Marx”. But then Harold Wilson knew his history, and understood the contribution that Christian socialism had made to the British Labour Party. The founder of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, was a lay preacher (as well as a strong temperance campaigner). I daresay Mr McDonnell is not ignorant of history: but when a party forgets or sets aside crucial aspects of its roots, then it loses something of its essence and authenticity.
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