Body changes

It is pretty obvious really. I mean first of all we are born, then we grow bigger and stronger until we reach a point where this stops. From here on although our body size may change little, various bits do begin to wear out. The speed with which this happens is delightfully unpredictable and we have very little control over which bits will wear out first. When we first begin to notice this we might consult with a doctor to establish what is happening to our bodies but there comes a time when the doctor will simply use one of the most upsetting phrases ever spoken...'This is fairly normal for someone of your age'.

One of the most noticeable changes to our bodies that happens as the years pass is the loss of a certain amount of hearing. We can all be grateful for the subtitles that appear on the TV screen when we're watching a foreign film (this is something we take completely for granted until they get the spelling wrong or something gets lost in translation) but to accept the need for them when the actors' words are in our own language, this is a big step to take. One might try to disguise it at first by saying that they are mumbling their words or that their (American?) accents are so strong that it is difficult to make out half of what is being said but gradually there comes a point where the subtitles are switched on for most, if not all, the TV programmes you are watching. The alternative to this, turning up the volume, is likely to be unacceptable to others in the vicinity, those whose younger bodies have yet to change in this way.

Of course there are these things called 'hearing aids', electronic devices that are supposed to improve the quality of one's life by boosting the sound frequencies that one's ears no longer respond to, mostly higher pitched noises. [At this point I did consider adding a picture of some sort to illustrate my text but only an audiologist gets to see inside my ears so instead I have found an appropriate icon.]

Based upon my own experience I can confirm that these gadgets are far from perfect. Go outside on a windy day with a pair of these things in your ears and you almost certainly won't hear the car coming up behind you until it is too late, let alone the voice of the person shouting a warning beside you. Then there is the issue of replacing the tiny batteries every few weeks without dropping the new ones and losing them, again something that can become more difficult as more bits of the body don't function as well as they used to.

Not long ago, however, some very clever person recognised all these problems and made use of some of the artificial intelligence floating around these days to build some more efficient gadgets to stick inside your ears, things that will recognise wind noise, for example, and suppress this particular frequency so the car engine can be heard. A few years ago a device like this might have required you to carry a computer-sized box around with you but thankfully these modern day things are tiny and barely noticeable when worn.

It has, however, taken me several steps to get to the point where I was prepared to try such sophisticated gadgets. One supposedly clever pair of hearing aids that I tried seemed to work fine until I walked past the self service checkout machines at our local supermarket. It appears that these things have cameras focused on you which emit bursts of electronic noise normally inaudible to human ears. The hearing aids did hear it, however, picking it up and passing it through into my ears as a violently loud clicking noise. Even the audiologist couldn't believe this could happen.

STUNT EAR

What I now have sitting quietly behind each ear are things that constantly adjust themselves to the environment they detect around me, mimicking in many ways what my brain once learnt to do. I even had a choice of colours - so naturally I chose silver to blend in with my hair. Wind noise now seems no worse for me than it is for those with younger ears and the devices seem to know when I am in a noisy place with lots of people talking and they do their best to suppress most of the chatter. These things go further, however, in that they use Bluetooth to pair with a mobile phone or a computer so that I can stream music straight into my ears or conduct a phone conversation with someone that only I can hear. This puts me on the same plain as many others in this modern age who walk around with earbuds playing music into their ears from a device hidden elsewhere on the body. Best of all my hearing aids use rechargable batteries which means no more fiddling around with changing the tiny things.

I am not kidding myself. I know my hearing will never again be perfect, no one can expect this. But the improvement once these gadgets are in my ears is both significant and, strangely, hardly noticeable now that I am used to wearing them.

Rain, rain and more rain

The west coast of Scotland has a maritime rainforest climate.

OK, so anyone imagining scorching temperatures right now with us spending most of the day wearing almost nothing, jumping in the sea to cool off now and again, needs to understand just what the term 'rainforest' actually means. Well, first of all there is the rain. To qualify there must be at least eighty inches (204 centimetres) of the stuff each year. Along with this, as the name suggests, there must be trees, most of which, according to the standard definition, should be evergreen. But there are other things that grow only in this environment which are distinctive to a rainforest. These are plants that grow on other plants, 'epiphytes', and the reason they can grow here is because of the presence of moisture in the air. They can obtain nutrients from the water, dust and debris around them. Although they do need other plants on which to grow they are not necessarily parasitic.

They might be ferns, mosses, and lichens but there will also be fungi which, although technically not plants, will feed upon decaying plant matter.

So if we live in a rainforest here in Scotland then what are we missing? Could it be the heat? Of course we all know about tropical and sub-tropical rainforests and how these are so endangered due to the actions of us humans but there are other places, like on the west coast of Scotland, where the annual rainfall meets the definition and the epiphytes flourish but the climate is definitely not tropical. This is called a 'Temperate Rainforest'. Although not scorchingly hot here we do benefit from a climate that is less variable than other places in the UK; milder winters - frosts are less common - and cooler summers too. The true wild characteristics of a rainforest are often difficult to spot but they are here if one knows what to look for.

We have been on guided rainforest walks locally, taken to the best places to look for particular mosses, places where the ferns are hanging from the branches and the lichen and funghi cover every available bare piece of wood. The trees are often not evergreen (although the Scots Pine can only be regarded as a native) which means that the whole forest changes with the seasons so it is always an exciting place to visit at any time of year.

Did we know, when we first came to live here, that we would be living in such an environment? Well not really, although we did know about the rain. We have learnt so much since we moved here and now take any opportunity that comes along to learn more about just how precious (and vulnerable) the environment around us is. We have also learnt to live with the rain, to adjust our lives so they fit in around it. We know there will always be a dry spell that follows rain, no matter how long we have to wait for it. One of the features that comes with so much rain is the way it runs away, soaking into the land or else rapidly gushing downwards into the sea. We try not to be too smug about it when we hear the flood warnings and see pictures of houses inundated by rising water levels elsewhere in the UK but despite us getting significantly more rain here this is generally not the way it affects us. This may be largely because this part of Scotland is sparsely populated by humans so there is much more uncultivated land and this soaks up the rain and then releases it gradually over time. There is also the fact that our hills are steeper than much of the rest of Britain so there is less chance of water pooling and causing flooding. What can happen after significant rainfall, however, is that those steep hillsides become unstable, particularly if the soil is not held in place by tree roots, and landslips can cause significant disruption when this happens.

Which brings us neatly back to the forests. We may live in a temperate rainforest climate but this does not mean that everything is thickly covered with rainforest trees. Sadly much of the forested land is cultivated, covered with a single species of non-native tree being grown for the value of the timber. These areas are clear-felled then re-planted on a multi-year cycle and lorries carrying massive cargoes of logs are a frequent sight on our roads, logs which are then loaded onto ships and taken away for processing into chipboard or other wood related products. Maybe our kitchen worktop came from locally grown trees, who knows.

As I write this it is not, for once, raining outside. Indeed the sun is out and the forecasters predict a run of rain free days. We welcome this, of course, but before long we will be missing the rain and wondering whether our climate is going to change into something else.