The infection in my ear has finally cleared up. It’s taken its bloody time, but it’s gone.

However, in the meantime my brain had kind of got used to that damped-out sound, and was happily processing the world while taking that fuzziness into account, and thus amplifying whatever was getting through, so all was OK and at about normal volume.

Now that it’s just gone, though, it’s still catering for that problem, with the result that the world seems like a very loud place at the moment…