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The hearing is hereby opened – or maybe not – #1

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Jack makes it on time again with his guest blog –

Back in 1979 my old band ‘Heritage’ embarked on its first foreign tour – to Brittany in France. The last few days we were based in Quimper (Kemper) and being fed our meals in a local restaurant. We had arrived in a coach and were due to travel back the same way.

On the way home I began to feel dizzy and a bit nauseous and thought it might be down to the food we’d been eating. But then I noticed the hearing in my right ear was coming and going and over subsequent months whenever I flew anywhere it would improve but then deteriorate again.

I wondered if the loud sound of the pipe band that had been on the same tour might have been the reason, but still didn’t connect it to the dizzy nausea.

Some years later I began to suffer from nasal polyps and it was affecting my singing voice so my doctor sent me to the ENT expert at the local hospital. He was clearly bored with my polyps, but as I was leaving he asked if there was anything else. I mentioned the hearing issue and he immediately brightened up.

There then ensued a series of tests – starting with outer ear, then inner ear and finally an MRI. The good news was they confirmed I had a brain, but the bad news was that back in Brittany I had an inner ear infection that was untreated. So the damage to my right ear is permanent – no high frequencies, just low!

Moving on a few more years and Wendy and I were booked to play at a weekend Celtic festival in Abingdon VA. Friday evening was fine but when I woke on Saturday I was completely deaf and we were due to sing at 2pm.

Off we went to the local ER and had to first, of course, give my insurance details – “I’m Scottish and we have the NHS” I said. Then to a side room and a doctor arrived, had a look and went off. She came back a few minutes later with a big syringe and a basin of warm water. After a couple of plunges of the syringe I could hear again. It was impacted wax in my good left ear!

The anatomical structure of the human ear. Image

We returned home to Scotland and a few months later I received a bill for $600. The whole hospital visit lasted about thirty minutes, of which fifteen were at the reception desk. If I’d asked for a detailed bill I expect there would have been a charge for use of the syringe and the water, not to mention the chair –

To be continued – –

No Pressure

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So this weekend is going to be a little weird…

This afternoon Jack and I drive up to Fairfax to old friends Barbara and Bernard, of the Celtic Band Iona. We’re doing a house concert for their Swift Run series tomorrow night.

We’re going up today because at 11:59 pm tonight, the prompt drops for Round 3 of the NYT Short Story Challenge. It’s been on my bucket list to enter for years, and finally I got around to it. And am now halfway through the challenge, whittled from more than eleven thousand entries to just 215 writers advancing.

The contest gives you a character, a setting, and a genre. My first one was action-adventure, coast to coast, and an oddball. Yeah, thanks. But they loved my story of a murder victim who crocheted the killer’s identity into a shawl. (Whew!)

Next up was drama, a personal chef, and the digital divide. Having spent my life working with people caught in poverty traps, that wasn’t quite so hard, and the feedback was wonderful.

How I found out I was advancing in the competition: a friend needed to be picked up at the Roanoke airport about 10 pm. Back home about 11:45, I did what Americans do to try and calm for sleep: checked my messages. There it was, notification of the second round winners. You clicked on the group you were assigned, and the name of the five selected stories and their authors would appear in a row.

I clicked twice to confirm what I was seeing: Wendy Welch “Across the Great Divide” SYNOPSIS: Forty Cornish hens are all that stand between Rona’s family and homelessness. A cell phone would have been more useful.

And stayed up for another hour, just clicking again and again, staring at the notification.

So Friday night I will get up about 11:45, read the prompt, jot down some ideas and go back to sleep. Saturday, I’ll get up at my friends’ house and start writing. They have offered to leave fruit and crackers outside the door for me. It is the sweetest thing when friends you haven’t seen in forever set up to isolate you so you can fulfill a fun dream.

Saturday night we do the concert, and a dozen lovely friends will beta read the draft I send. Sunday morning, get up early and get that puppy edited and sent, then drive home for a 7 pm online book launch. Stories for Social Action has been in the works awhile, and the Healing Story Alliance is celebrating its release. I’m on at 7:30. By then the NYT story will be in.

I will sleep the sleep of the dead (or the deeply troubled) and get up Monday rejoicing as a befuddled person to run a race. My day job has a board meeting that afternoon.

Monday night, I will sit and stare at the wall, methinks. That sounds good.