THE SIXTH SENSE

THE SIX SENSES

Those who read my blog will know that I have been suffering from deafness for some weeks.

I went reluctantly and without any expectation of an improvement in my condition to have my ears syringed, fully expecting further complications. The process was uncomfortable but not painful. Suddenly I wondered why the nurse was shouting at me. The wax in my ears had escaped and I could not bear the level of noise that was assaulting my ears. The left ear is not quite clear (I have to go back in a fortnight, so I had an echo which was disorienting. (This sorted itself out in a day or two, so I presume the brain makes adjustments as it does with visual distortions.)

I can no longer be startled by the arrival of people – I will have heard them parking their car, approaching the front door and so on, often long before other people do. I have great sympathy for people whose deafness cannot be relieved. It is good to be able to let the conversation wash over you, without having to strain to inject meaning into it, knowing you can plug into it at any point.

The nurses and NHS staff were very kind, patient and helpful.

Our senses enable us to experience the world around us. We need all of them: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling. I think we also need a sixth sense, which may just be the combined insight of the first five. It is a kind of intuition or hunch and it sometimes strikes you when you meet someone for the first time, before you have had time to process the data of the other five senses.

I once met for the first time the husband of a female friend who had depicted him in glowing terms as handsome, polite, charming, clever, chivalrous and in short a gentleman in every way. It is most unusual for a wife to describe her husband in this way to a girlfriend and I rose to greet him with interest. My immediate reaction on setting eyes on him was; “But you are a knave!” I was surprised that such an old-fashioned word described him. He stood smiling before me, the very picture she had portrayed. She was his wife, I thought – who would know him better? I set aside my impression and allowed myself to enjoy his debonair charm and wit.

Never the less, in the end, he was a knave.

SUCCESSIVE HOUSES

We visited friends when on our recent holiday in the Cotswolds, viewing their latest house: the fifth since we knew them. This couple are particularly skilled at house renovations. Their style is unique; they have a mixture of pieces from really quite ancient to modern classics, and they put these older pieces together with very modern items of furniture with great success. The lady of the house is a very keen gardener. She also dyes wool with vegetable dyes and knits the results. Cushions of her needlework are everywhere. It is a very comfortable, welcoming house.

I love it that when you see a succession of a friend’s houses, despite the fact that the style of the house may be quite different; they may have replaced their furniture etc., in the end, the ambience is just the same.

In other people’s houses, I identify articles I especially like, and I look for them in each house. I do not covet these items at all; I just enjoy them in their home and am glad to see that they have found a place for it in their new house. So I was glad to see the flying goose (a large wooden Canada goose which if you pull its string its wings rise and fall as it ‘flies’; there is a ceramic pot with a lid on it with a lion handle which I could come very close to coveting; a large architectural drawing of the Natural History museum (they are a family of architects). They also have some inherited furniture – a huge set of drawers with marquetry fronts and another bow fronted set. The colours my friend chooses are not at all what I would choose. She has earthy colours, warm and deep; rust, turquoise, brown.

Her house is full of plants; and things she is nurturing along fill the window ledges.

All of their houses have been lovely, and I think this one is nicest of all.

It is a great privilege to be invited into pople’s intimate private space and to enjoy it with them.