Washer

After years of threatening to do something about it, I'd arranged a hearing test for this afternoon. First there was a questionnaire to answer, then the tester checked the inside of my ears prior to the actual test. Woops! There was wax build up in both — not too bad in what I think of as the good ear, seriously bad in the problem one. It was so bad in fact that the test had to be cancelled. I was lucky to get a slot tomorrow morning with a wax-clearing specialist in the same place, and I was given a provisional appointment next Monday for another try at a test, provided tomorrow's visit solves the wax problem.

Carl had joined me, since I'd been told that part of the test would involve seeing how I'd respond to a familiar voice without knowing when he was speaking. We were due for one of our Chew & Chat sessions at 7:45, so had already decided to hang around until then anyway. We began in the food emporium on Middle Abbey Street where I had a fantastic French toast cum croque monsieur — and then we went on a bit of a pub crawl before meeting Tom the Chew & Chatter in the Market Bar.

We ate across the road from there, in l'Gueuleton restaurant, a place which long had a policy of not accepting advance reservations but now does so. The meal was okay (starters and desserts much better than the mains). After the meal we spent rather too long in the Czech Bar off Parliament Street, a regular late-night haunt of Tom's. We had a terrific time, but it was really, really late by the time we left. We got a taxi back to Carl's. I watched an episode of Breaking Bad on Netflicks while Carl listened to music, and got to sleep some time around 4:00 am.

(The blip comes from the food emporium. We were directly under this guy who was doing a serious cleaning job on the glazed roof.)