A Rainy Day In Leyton

God found me.

My right ear’s blocked so I make an appointment at a place called The Hearing Hub in Leyton at 2:30pm.

I arrive and discover that the clinic is inside the Leyton Orient Football stadium. Orient are kicking off against Stockport at 2:30pm, the exact time of my appointment (makes sense of all the flat caps on the bus).

I sit in the waiting room and listen to the stadium announcement welcoming me to the fixture and encouraging me to take my seat.

In Australia, the idea of a suburban football stadium with two-bedroom flats and an NHS Pharmacy inside it would be absurd.

But then, in Australia, our lawyers and bankers commute into the city everyday wearing elastic-sided horse riding boots with their navy suits — so it goes both ways.

By the time I’m called in the match is underway. The window is partially frosted but looks straight over the terraces and the pitch. I can sort of see the players in the centre and — even with my blocked ear — can make out the cockney patter from the back rows.

The technician examines my ears and tells me the right one is completely obstructed with wax. She’s going to irrigate it with pulsing water.

“Do you like football?”

“Not really.” She says. “Hold this under your ear for me.”

I sometimes wonder, after 12 years in this country, if I have missed out by not immersing in the culture of football. None of it — the oligarch owners, the silky shirts, the effete and spidery players — has ever grabbed me.

Yet there are times when I get it. When, even observing through the frosted glass of an earwax removal clinic, you can sense that it all adds up to something more.

I’m staring at the blue and red blurs as the water ricocheted off my eardrum and into the metal cup I’m holding in my right hand.

After a few minutes the pulsing stops and the last of the water drains out of my ear. The pressure releases and the stadium air crackles through my eardrum, down through my jaw, equalising me. I’m not reborn exactly, but the feeling is cleansing and not un-spiritual.

I’m dizzy, which the technician says is normal. She tells me not to get up too quickly, that there was plenty of time. I reach for my phone and it makes me even dizzier.

So I give up and just sit there in the chair for a while, clean and relieved, watching as they all — footballers, February weather, full time nursery fees, the whole fucken lot of them — dance briefly behind the frosted glass before mercifully and graciously passing me by.

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I took March off. Thanks for bearing with me. Regular Thursday morning (0900 GMT) posts will now resume.

In other news, my dear friend Jessica Stanley’s new book Consider Yourself Kissed is out! I’d tell you how good it is, but basically every brilliant literary author in the world has already written a blurb about it.

Also, my consultancy - Moderation Projects - is now open for business. Get in touch if you would like to work together. My specialties are:

• making complicated things feel simpler

• helping people to feel known and understood

• funny dumb ads

Finally, welcome to the recent subscribers. If this was your first taste of In Moderation, here’s a few other bits to push you over the edge:

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