Short Cuts Anne Robinson

It’s great to get gifts from someone who knows exactly what you want

I have welcomed in the new year with three presents to myself. All unexpectedly demonstrating how aptly I qualify as an oldie.

The first is my new Audi. Alas, I realise that cars and their gadgets interest me less and less. Therefore all sorts of fresh tricks offered with this vehicle will be ignored. (On an earlier model, for six months, I twiddled with the switch for the wing mirrors thinking it balanced the sound when receiving Radio 3).

Even owning a sparkling, off-the-production-line, navy blue job with its swishy 17 in the number plate, produces nowhere near the excitement of being given my first car: a red Mini, registration 808 TU, when for a week my feet barely touched the ground.

The second ‘self gift’ is my dark brown working cocker puppy. I have christened her Hattie. Her tail is docked. Her energy is boundless, while her eagerness to please has no limits. She is a joy in every way. Well, she is to me.

Ellie, my elderly working cocker, has grown to hate cars and has an understandably short fuse with Hattie. But as I have warned Ellie, who is nearly fourteen, she needs to get real, as both Hattie and the car are likely to outlive her and me by some years.

I never wished to become a semi-expert on being deaf. Who would? But my third present is a pair of hearing aids that have transformed my day-to-day life. While self-evidently showing that only an oldie could be more thrilled by this piece of kit, measuring less than a square inch, than a brand new Audi A6 Quattro estate.

To recap: I have severe deafness in my left ear. I was recommended to Young Mark who owns the audiology department of Specsavers in the Edgware Road. He fitted me with a pair of aids that technically improved life. The problem was, I never achieved synchronicity when it came to taking off my reading specs and keeping at least one of the wires and the battery in place.

I went elsewhere and, after much persistence, was fitted with a tiny blue device that sits in the ear. To date, I’ve lost four. Nor did any of them offer help in a crowded room or allow me to watch television without subtitles.

However, once I wrote about this in The Oldie, Young Mark emailed to ask if he could pay me another visit.

The smaller the aid, the less effective it is going to be, he reported. Would I try a new behind-the-ear aid (six weeks on the market) that would astonish and delight me?

Dear Reader, I said yes!

Admittedly this new set of hearing aids, sexily named Widex Beyond 440, look much like any other. Except the tip is moulded to the shape of my ear and stays put. And once Young Mark had married everything up with my iphone, I was indeed astonished.

I have Bluetooth and GPS! So, by pressing a button on an app on my phone, I can adjust the television sound to suit me, without disturbing the volume for my easily exasperated and intolerant family.

In a crowded room, I can order my aids to focus on those in front of me, or to my left and right, and cut out the loud background chitter-chatter.

In a church or theatre or cinema, I can join the sound loop. If the person next to me is guzzling popcorn, I can exclude them.

Even better, I can position the aids to focus behind me. Thus avoiding my small, shouty grandsons in the back of my car from moaning, ‘Noni, why do you have to be deaf?’ or ‘Noni, I can’t say the same thing another ten times.’

If I lose one or both of the aids, GPS will track them down.

The cost? It’s £3,000 – a grand less than inferior jobs on the market.

Unsurprisingly, women seek help for their hearing loss within ten years of noticing it, while men can wait up to twenty years. And then they only have a hearing test because an exasperated wife has dragged them out for one.

Anyone who owns their own land and has routinely ignored the advice to wear ear-protectors when shooting is likely to suffer deafness. As are men who have done National Service or worked on building sites before Health and Safety got its act together.

Left too long, a deaf person retreats into their own world. At this point, my Edgware Road guru reports, the untreated deaf person is likely to become a mental health problem.

In my case, the family already thinks I am nuts. But at least now I can clearly hear them discussing my many shortcomings.