February – Ghostplant

I adore finding new words that I have never heard before. Some writers have so wide a vocabulary I find myself noting down words I don’t know or with our online services finding their meaning. I roll the words round in my mouth like a good wine or pint, yoke them to other words and enjoy the combination. I have always enjoyed percussion in music, even writing an essay on the place of the gamelan in Balinese culture when I studied South East Asian Studies.

Listening is so important to me that I was crestfallen when my doctor advised I needed hearing aids. My wife had insisted I get my ears checked because she could hear every word of the tv programme I was watching upstairs, downstairs.

When I first used my hearing aids I was amazed at what I could hear, and dismayed that I had missed so much.