As I get older it’s finally dawning on me that my body isn’t what it was a few years ago. Sure I’m only in my mid thirties but sometimes I may as well be a fucking octogenarian given the shocking way my body (just about) works. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration, but in general I am not the person that I used to be and it is starting to piss me right off.

So what, you may ask, has caused me such distress over the past couple of weeks? The fact that my hearing has been reduced to the level of some old codger who has to use an ear trumpet to hear anything. The cause? A plug of wax the size of a football lodged in my tube.

Could I move the bastard thing? Could I hell. Believe me I tried absolutely everything; cotton buds, baby wipes (don’t ask), bog roll, even shaping my finger and thumb into a sort of plunger didn’t fucking work.

I have to make an appointment to see the ear irrigation specialist at my doctors. After a week of getting the wife to squirt fucking olive oil into my ear (aren’t ears for hearing, not drizzling bloody salad oil into?) to apparently “loosen” the plug, off to the surgery I trot.

After a few minutes staring at such joy-inspiring leaflets as “Get your arse checked or you could die” and “If your balls are lumpy you could die” the ‘specialist’ appears and beckons me in.

After taking a seat she nicely explains to me that “this procedure could perforate your ear-drum and/or cause you permanent hearing damage”. Nice. I’m then handed something which looks like some kind of futuristic piss pot, that I am instructed to hold under my ear to stop her getting wet. Then she goes crazy squirting my ear with what feels like the force of about 15,000 pressure washers whilst giving me a commentary on the amount of fucking shit that is coming out of my ear. Thanks for that.

Anyway, long story short I never had problems with mutant earwax as a child or even up until my thirties, but all of a sudden as I approach forty it seems that I develop enough of the stuff to keep a candle factory in business indefinitely.

If this is one of the signs of old age creeping up on me it can just fuck off and do one!