The Bromley Acupuncturist
lives in a sliced up house
Hello friend,
How are you?
Well, I can no longer hear silence. If silence has a sound, or is the absence of noise, I am without this ability to enjoy it. Difficult for a writer who loves to write in peace and quiet. You see I’ve had a noise in my right ear, like someone blowing into a bottle, for months. At times it’s as if I’m carrying a coastal wind in my head. So last week, after I’d exhausted all NHS options, I took some advice and travelled to Bromley North to visit an acupuncturist.
It’s an odd part of the world. The streets are out of time; think the road from top TV comedy The Good Life.
As I approach the address, looking at the shiny cars, searching for evidence of wayward lives, the absence of wonky recycling boxes and fox strewn chicken bones offers a few conclusions: Money. Boredom. Sexual frustration. Isn’t this still the buttoned-up Bromley David Bowie escaped, in order to become his-selves?
Telling myself not to be so dismissive, so clichéd - to BE OPEN - after all I once lived behind Penge net curtains before making it to the wilderness of art college. Really, I tell myself, your annoyance at these houses and the unknown people within them must be about something else. Maybe it is nerves and a touch of cynicism about acupuncture. It is possibly worry about the sixty-five pounds I cannot afford which I am about to pay for something which might not work.
When I was a teenager I had been open to Chinese medicine, so now at fifty-two, is this a sign of my mind narrowing? My arteries furring up? In my teens I’d happily stretched out flat in the back room of a shop on Penge High St, aching to be relieved of intense period pains and mood swings. (I don’t know how Mum and Dad afforded this for me back then, maybe I saved my pocket money, or used my wages from my Saturday job at Dolcis shoe shop.) I still can’t recall whether it helped, I bet I told people it had. I think I had enjoyed the experience; something different.
A short bird-like woman answers the door, ushering me past a seated man in a suit in the hallway. She leads me to a slim room where the treatment table dominates. Taking a seat I notice the light from the bay window over the other side of a tall partition. The lounge has been spliced in two and my part is odd and irregular. Gill asks me to wait here and fill out a form. She won’t be long.
On the mantelpiece is a genderless porcelain mannequin with acupressure points charted in red dots over their body. If I have time I will study it before Gill returns. I am sure my blowy ear is connected to another mysterious issue in my body. I grew up reading about energy, emotion and illness. I knew if you do not express yourself, or keep bad emotions pent up, it can make you ill. After my dad died, I wrote, ‘grief lives in the kidneys.’ In writing ‘Lifting Off: A Life in Freefall’, I explore the effect of depersonalisation when you are not free to be your true self.
One of the questions on the acupuncture form is - Have you been ill this year?
I write down my two run-ins with Covid, how I then caught chest infection after chest infection. I do not write down about the stress with mum which could have a whole page of its own. Then, on cue, my phone rings: Mum. I switch it off. She has called my sister fifty times today already, and me, over twenty. Her brain is caught in a loop and there’s nothing we can say to stop the questions about her TV magazine, the TV channels, the time her carers are coming. Goodness knows what it must be like for her.
This is one of her bad days. There are a lot of these lately.
When Gill returns (from where? Tea break? Phone call with her mum?) I explain about the noise in my ear. Gill nods, offering no words, just like a therapist would. There is no smile when I joke about how Mum called my condition ‘tittiness’; she is a professional and I am terrible with professionals. Like a Labrador I seek out friends at every inappropriate opportunity, pressing my wet nose to their trouser leg, trying to find the entry point where their face might soften into a smile.
Once I am on the table, she asks me to stick out my tongue.
She takes a while to visually inspect it.
‘You have a tired tongue,’ she says. ‘I can tell by the colour of it, it confirms what you have been saying. Your Yang is depleted.’
‘What colour is my tongue?’
‘Grey, pale. And there’s an ulcer pointing to your stomach.’
Gill silently inserts the hair-like needles into my ankles, between my toes, by my knees, wrists and neck. I remember the ever so slight prick; how certain points might ache or, over time, become more important than others.
After that she leaves me on the table and goes into the other sliced room next door. I hear a man laughing, friendly, like he has been coming here for a while. He was the one in the corridor, waiting. I wonder if he is suit-less, or has just rolled up his trouser legs. He looked like an accountant. I must drift off, because in a bit I hear him discussing his knee. How he might be able to run in two days. She is warm with him. I am a bit jealous.
While she is away, I let my weight drop into the table. I have been tense, it seems. I start to drift off again. I think about ‘Lifting Off’. How it is doing in the world. After the excitement of the launch, all the publicity demands have calmed down, yet I have not. I have been on high alert looking after Mum while my sister is away. This is all part of my grey tongue, the constant stress of being on call for someone who no longer remembers they have called.
Last week I worked back at Bookseller Crow for two days. It was an absolute pleasure, people were polite and pleased to see me there. A blonde woman came in and before I could place her, she said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘No, sorry,’ I replied. ‘Remind me?’
‘I’m B.A. crew. I was on your first ever flight. Remember I collapsed and you administered first aid on me. So, I wanted to pop in and tell you, I have bought your book by the way, from here, that on the plane the other day, I walked into the galley and two stewardesses were discussing your book.’
‘Oh, wow. Actually in the air?’
‘Yes.’
Gap. Oh god. What is she going to say now. That they don’t recognise the world I painted? How all the drinking, the lesbianism, the confusion, the sadness, the specificity was too much for them? Still, I half expect British Airways lawyers to contact me and ask for my redundancy money back.
‘They loved it.’
‘Phew,’ I said, relieved.
Gill returns to the room and I realise I have been on the edge of sleep. She whips out the needles and then wipes the areas with a cloth, which I imagine is a fancy tea towel.
‘You must rest,’ she says. ‘This is the most important thing in your recovery. That and maybe we could try some Chinese herbal medicine soon.’
I get dressed and meet her in the corridor. Where the telephone table once would have been is a small unit with a diary, leaflets and a card machine. She types in the amount and holds it out to me. I tap my card. Another silent transaction.
Then she opens her diary and says, ‘two week’s time?’ I explain I am going away. What I do not tell her is I have been awarded an Arts Council Projects Grant to undertake research and develop my new novel, The Proper Channels. Set in Deal, Kent and Skala Eressos, Lesvos in Greece, it is a dark comedy about borders, mothers, older lesbians and what is proper. More on this soon.
‘Can I expect relief in my ear straight away?’ I ask Gill.
‘It might take longer,’ she says. ‘Sometimes it takes a series of treatments.’
Inwardly, I groan, panicking at the cost.
‘You must rest, that is the most important thing.’
On the bus on my way home, I think about resting and what that means, what do I stop doing? I start to hear a sound like sand shifting at the top of my spine, in my neck. I daren’t touch my ear, but I bet myself, if it wasn’t for the thrum of the bus engine, I might be able to notice a difference. Maybe this is wishful thinking, to be well again. Like in those days when I moved freely through the world, my body without complications. I took that for granted of course. But I suppose this is how Mum lives now with dementia - agitated, things not quite right, constantly aware of tryng to find a place called yesteryear, when all was well.
Tomorrow I leave for the seaside. There will be plenty of rest. I’m packing my swimsuit. It’ll mark the start of a time of writing, reflection and expansion - so I’ll rest when I’m not writing.
Will the sea cure my ear? One thing I know for sure, there will be fruit machines and fish and chips and inky smooth rolling pens. Plus, there will be a small bit of work as I am running a workshop on life stories for the people of Deal and Dover on 7th September as part of the nationwide Open Heritage Days. If you know anyone in this vicinity who wants to write about their lives, do let them know to contact me. At the time of writing, there are just four places left.
There will be sea noises outside, there will be sea stories coming inside. I’ll let you know if this heals me.
Thanks for reading my Short Tall Letter as always.
Come and see me!
After Deal and Lesvos I am going on a mini book tour to discuss and read from Lifting Off - I’m going to be here:
21st Sep -Â Hastings Book Festival, The Observer Building, Hastings
26th Sep - Table Talks with Travis Elborough, Stanfords Travel Bookshop, Covent Garden, London
29th Sep -Â Â Polari Brighton, The Ironworks, Brighton with Joelle Taylor, Neil Bartlett and Paul Burston
4th Oct - Wivenhoe Bookshop with Evie Wyld, Wivenhoe
13th Oct - Coast is Queer Festival, Brighton - Challenges and Truth in Writing Memoir panel
16th Oct -Â How I Write, ARVON online - a discussion about my writing process with Arvon Foundation (free to register)
The Short Tall Letter takes me about a day to write (I am a slow writer!) Substack is supported by paying subscribers, so if you are able to, please support me and upgrade to a paid subscription. Extra VIP experiments are sent your way too as a thank you.
Keep writing and keep in touch.
Love, Karen xx
I absolutely love reading your letters every month Karen, thank you xx
How great that the air stewardesses loved the book! Good luck on the tour and I hope your ear clears up soon. Have you tried microsuction? I did it at Woodfall's optician's in East Dulwich when I got water in the ear on holiday and got earache and went temporarily deaf! It's like a miracle cure!