ON a recent holiday, I was chatting happily with a fellow diner, when I became aware she was looking at me with the kind of fixed grimace you produce when you realise you are in conversation with a mad-man.

We were discussing pets and I was delighted to hear that she was the proud owner of a cockatoo.

“How fascinating,” I enthused. “Does it talk?” She looked mildly stunned, and muttered something about it not actually speaking, but she felt it understood every word she said.

“Do you keep it in a cage, or do you let it fly around the room?” I continued.

“If you let it fly round, you have to be careful if doesn’t poo down the curtains.”

She was shrinking back in her seat now, making strangled gurgling noises, and I assumed her distress was to do with the fact she was missing the feathery fellow.

Then I felt a firm grip on my elbow, as Mrs Hextol came to the rescue, explaining sweetly: “Have you got your hearing aid in? The lady hasn’t got a cockatoo, or any other parrot; she has a cockerpoo, which is a dog, a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle.”

Luckily, my recently-acquired suntan hid the crimson flush of embarrassment as I realised I had committed another Dick Emery moment, a term I use in deference to the denim-jacketed creation of Emery, who with “Dad” Roy Kinnear always got things wrong.

The lady was very understanding, but gave me a wide berth for the rest of the cruise, responding to all comments with a nervous giggle.

It was a reminder of a similar gaffe I may have mentioned before, when a diminutive fellow of my acquaintance told me he had lost three stones.

As I spluttered in incredulity, Mrs Hextol was again on hand to inform me the man had actually had three toes surgically removed.

How many misunderstandings have gone unexplained when she had not been there to put a ladder down the hole I have dug for myself I have no idea, but I suspect it is a significant number.

My deafness seems to come and go, requiring constant fiddling with the television remote control to turn up the sound in a film, only to be hastily turned down when the adverts come on at a volume so loud as to get the lady living two doors away to rush out and buy some car insurance at the insistence of a fat man with a twirly moustache.

Being deaf does have its upside though, for I sleep through the 4.30am cacophony of the dawn chorus which wakens Mrs Hextol every day without fail. She can also hear an annoying squeak in the car to which I am totally oblivious.

The hearing loss is not the only peril of advancing years I struggle to cope with.

My teeth have always been one of my prime assets, not only for flashing in a winning smile, but also for taking the tops off beer bottles, stripping wire on the frequent occasions I have to reconnect electric cables after cutting through the wire and biting through fishing line on river banks from Cornwall to Sutherland.

No fumbling around inside the many thousands of pockets in fishing bags or waxed jackets in pursuit of a knife or a pair of scissors for me; I just popped the nylon between the mighty gnashers and chomped it to the required length for making up a cast of three flies in a matter of moments.

However, the last time I endeavoured to make up a team of flies, I found I could only give the line a nasty suck rather than severing it, no matter how assiduously I chomped away.

And that wasn’t all – even with my brand new, all-seeing, flexible spectacles, I had the greatest difficulty in finding the eye of the hook through which to thread the nylon once I had shamefully resorted to using scissors.

Several times I thought I had done it, only for the fly to drop to the floor as I succeeded in avoiding the eye on several occasions.

I tried it with specs on, and specs off, with equally unsatisfactory results.

My memory is going too, for while I can remember the names of every FA Cup-winning team from 1946 to the present, I frequently forget why I have come upstairs to fetch something for Mrs Hextol.

Luckily, I cannot hear her plaintive remonstrations.