Ugh!

I have a problem. My hearing isn’t what it once was. It’s frustrating. But I’ve never been good with accents. Never. My friend and I went on a trip to New Orleans years ago to attend a writing conference, and we stopped at a restaurant in Mississippi. The waitress came to take our orders and to tell us what the specials of the day were. We both listened to her and looked at each other. What did she say? “Can you repeat that?” I asked. She did. We still had no clue what she said. Her southern accent was so strong, we couldn’t make out what she said. We both ordered off the menu. I was too embarrassed to ask her to repeat the specials again.

I love English mysteries. So does HH. We watch more of them than we should, and we’ve always been able to understand what everyone says in every Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. We watched every White Chapel and never had a problem. We watched all of the episodes of Pride and Prejudice without a hitch. But lately, it’s hit or miss if we can understand what the actors are saying. I asked a few of my friends, and they’re having the same problem. The actors talk fast and lower voices, and HH and I look at each other and say, “What?”

We tried to watch the new mystery, Karen Pirie. The acting was wonderful. The story was topnotch. I’ll never watch another one. I didn’t understand key scenes and had to rewind them to try to figure out what people were saying. One of my friends uses Closed Caption to READ the dialogue. If an actor can’t deliver lines that I can understand, I’m not watching her or him. I have other options. We have a Bose speaker, and sometimes, that helps. The words are crisper, clearer. But the new way of acting that mumbles words in a low voice is just plain irritating to me.

Time for me to start watching Hallmark mysteries. The actors are easier to understand.