Why all old fogies are stone deaf, but only when it suits us Maybe the Duke was exaggerating a little, even boasting, or perhaps his hearing is selective, although a lifetime of blasting away at pheasants with the royal shotgun must have had its effect. It's still possible to decide not to hear. He said: "We're stone deaf," but I'd guess the Queen could still hear the distant yap of a corgi from the far end of a Buckingham Palace corridor. I find that, as my hearing has suffered with age, I miss out on some of the treasures of conversation. The whispered scandalous aside, the fascinating parenthesis, the sly tip-off and the muted confession are all too often lost. You can't stop that sort of conversation in its tracks and ask for a rewind. Some sounds are heard only too well - like the quadraphonic roar from the open window of a car, the mobile phone banality, the niggling buzz of the Strimmer and, for that matter, the ceaseless thud of motivation in the gym. Meanwhile, the scripted babble of the telephone cold caller is completely lost on me. At first I think it must be a friend in terrible trouble or distress, calling on me for help, and I waste too much time trying to sort out the situation before it dawns on me that the person at the other end is just trying to tell me some lie about PPI money I am supposed to be owed. Someone once pointed out to me that one of the pleasures of being married for a long time is that trying to remember names and places becomes a joint effort; you pass clues back and forth until you unravel the mystery together. I find the same applies to hearing. My wife and I sit together watching Homeland on television, trying hard to keep up with the twists in the plots and to decipher the accents. "What did she say?" we ask each other. Does he know that she knows? With luck, one of us will have heard what the other one missed. It could well be the same with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, celebrating their 65th anniversary together this week. Maybe, every so often, the Queen turns to her consort and asks: "Philip, did you happen to catch what the ambassador was talking about?" And, if by any chance the Duke of Edinburgh finds himself in need of some motivational music, I'm sure he can get it from a military band.