Bouchon Ablution

Everybody needs their own inner sanctum, their own bolthole of privacy. Modern life is just too hectic and all consuming to steer through if you haven’t got a mental layby signposted on the horizon. France was supposed to be that oasis but three children later and, over the last eight years, the comings and goings of five dogs, four goats, four cats, two horses, a donkey and five hens have ridiculed the notion that we had gone for ‘the easy life’. 
That elusive tranquillity is even more necessary now than it ever was but unfortunately being a petty minded control freak means that you’re always ‘on’. Conversations that have nothing to do with you are raided for problems, some animal is always making a noise somewhere that you can’t not investigate, home life is played out to a soundtrack of bickering, laughter and tears like a Woody Allen Thanksgiving acted out by children. There is no respite from the endless din and clamour of life and I’ve never found a way to silence it, take a step back.
Until now.
Thanks to ear wax.
Yes, I know some of you may be eating and all that but the truth is that just a few minutes of over-zealous cotton-budding led to a week of almost serene peacefulness that I will always look back on with great fondness. One moment the world was all ‘Daddy, do this’ and ‘Daddy, can I have that?’ and the next, after I’d pushed a load of cerumen further in rather than get it out, it was like I was underwater, I still had clarity of vision but the rest was all muffled like a sedate conversation heard through thick walls. It was bliss.
Of course I affected some level of trauma. Halfway through a conversation with Natalie or the boys I’d just hold up my hand, contrive some sort of emotion of loss, point to my ear theatrically and then waddle off unsteadily looking for a chair somewhere. After a couple of days people stopped trying to talk to me altogether and I was, shamefully, utterly at peace with the world as a result. I’d bought some deblocking liquid at a local pharmacie but it became clear pretty early on that it simply wasn’t up to the task. I ostentatiously squirted the stuff in my ear in front of the family so that I could at least claim I was addressing the problem, but in reality all it did was add to the dampening of sound and increase my isolation.
A week I stayed like that, and it was like a holiday in a fancy retreat, but like all holidays it had to end and Natalie, bored now with my deaf old man act and beginning to see through my faux discontent, decided to take action and booked me a Doctor’s appointment. I could have possibly pretended not to have heard her of course but by now I was only taking written communication and that, as any lawyer will tell you, is binding.
The Doctor was not happy. His secretary, also his wife, had booked me in for midday which is odd to say the least as France shuts down at midday for pre-lunch apéritif, so when he opened his door to let out what he thought were his last patients for the morning and saw me sitting there, he was not best pleased.
“Have you got an appointment?” He snapped
“Yes,” I said, “it was made with your wife this morning.” His shoulders sagged as he looked beyond the room to where his wife could be heard gossiping with the previous patients, ‘typical’ was the word running through his mind.
“Okay, come in, come in.” He said testily while looking at his watch.
I explained the problem to him and he seemed to cheer up obviously thinking that this was easy and wouldn’t take long at all. He jauntily wrote out a prescription without even looking in my ear and handed it to me with a flourish.
“Erm,” I stammered, trying to construct the French in my head, “I’ve been using this stuff for a week. It hasn’t worked.” His demeanour changed again and again he looked at his watch and then at me, a look of ‘You’re English, what do you know of lunch?’ on his face. Again he looked on the verge of some personal defeat and seemed almost crippled with inaction as though he wanted to tell me to just clear off but knew that he couldn’t.
“Right!” He said suddenly, “Come with me!”
He led me into the ‘surgery’ part of his office and made me sit down by a sink, quite rough as he manhandled me into what he thought was a better position for the operation. He called his wife in to help.
“Blocked ear.” He barked at her, “And we have to be in Orleans for two.”
“So what?” She replied, clearly used to these pre-food tantrums, “It only takes an hour to get there.”
“Yes, well...hold this!” And he handed her a kidney-shaped pan, “hold it under the ear.” He then attached something to a tap and then also attached an orange rubber hose. He turned the tap on and the water blasted out into the tiny sink, splashing back at him. He then pinched the end of the hose, like you would a garden hose, to make it a stronger, more concentrated jet of water.
“Ready?” I’m not sure if he was asking me or his wife.
For the next five minutes, while he practically sat on my shoulder and twisted my head while power jetting my inner ear I was, to all intents and purposes, water boarded. All the while he barked instructions at his wife, “Don’t hold it like that, like this...” which meant he lost his aim with the hose and sprayed my face and clothes instead, “honestly,” he berated her, “you understand nothing!”
That the Sarkozy-Kärcher treatment of my inner ear worked was nothing next to the satisfaction that he’d obviously got from the exercise, a chance to publicly shout at his wife and torture an Englishman seemed to leave him with a sadistic calm, like Laurence Olivier in The Marathon Man and I could tell he was now going to enjoy his lunch all the more for the experience.
Despite the indignity of the treatment though I have to admit that emerging from the surgery to the blast of summer birdsong was actually quite wonderful.
“Feel better?” Natalie asked when I got back, the boys splashing noisily behind her in the pool.
“Much. Feels good actually.” I said and I meant it.
“I’ve just been speaking to my sister,” Natalie continued almost whimsically, happy to be able to chat again I suppose. “They’ve just adopted a Jack Russell puppy...where are you going, I’m talking to you!”
“I’m going to find some cotton buds.” I replied over my shoulder, “And hopefully some wax.”
The whole gruesome story about my futile quest for peace is published by Summersdale and available HERE