My wife comes into the kitchen while I’m opening the post.

“What’s new?” she says.

“My rescheduled appointment at the clinic has itself been rescheduled,” I say. “It was meant to be two weeks ago, and now it’s in January.”

“Does that matter?” she says. “It’s not as if there’s anything actually wrong with you.”

“True,” I say. “And I suppose this gives me three months to come up with something.”

Late that night I wake to find the bedroom tumbling end over end like a hamster wheel. I spend a few minutes watching the bookcase fall away, and then I go back to sleep.

When I was first diagnosed with labyrinthitis back in March, I heard from a lot of people who’d suffered the same thing – my own GP, friends, acquaintances, strangers on social media. They all said the vertigo would go away by itself, gradually, over a number of weeks. They were right. They also said it would come back.

“My ear thing is back,” I tell my wife the next day. “Like they said.” She is a few steps above me on the stairs, and it feels as if I’m addressing someone in the next car of a moving ferris wheel.

“Oh no,” she says. “Well, I can chop back the front hedge and clear up the kitchen, but you’ll have to do the shopping.”

“Are you kidding?” I say. “I can’t drive!”

“Fine,” she says, exhaling the word impatiently. “I’ll just do everything.”

“No, don’t worry, I’ll go,” I say, crawling backwards down the stairs.

“You just said you couldn’t drive,” she says.

“I’ll probably make it,” I say. “Just help me put my shoes on and get me to the front door.”

Only later, when I get impatient and go out for some milk, do I realise what a hollow challenge my threat to drive had been. The scenery lurches alarmingly with every step. Even the second time round, labyrinthitis remains impressively debilitating. On the walk home I feel queasy and decrepit. An old man with underlying complications; banned from ladders, foxed by packaging.

As I approach the corner I see Colin the painter coming toward me from across the street. I avoid turning to face him, so as not to set the whole intersection spinning. Instead I stop and wait for him to cross my path.

“How you been keeping, mate?” he says. Colin once took so long painting our house that by the time he finished the rear exterior the front windows needed doing again. He was in our lives daily for years, but I haven’t seen him in ages.

“Fine,” I say. “You?”

“Yeah, well enough, well enough,” he says. “I saw your oldest the other day, I think. Is he wearing the bins now?” I have to take a minute to process this: bins equals glasses; not sure why.

“Yes,” I say. “He is.”

“Similar design to yourself?” he says, pointing at the bridge of my nose.

“Pretty much,” I say.

“That’s right, I thought it was you at first,” Colin says. “How old is he now?”

“Twenty-one,” I say.

“Shit!” he says. “Where does it go, you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You don’t look like you’ve aged,” he says.

“I’m feeling pretty aged right now,” I say. Behind Colin’s head, the horizon seesaws gently.

“That don’t matter,” he says. “As long as you look good, that’s what’s important.”

“Well, I suppose that’s one way of...”

“Gotta shoot off, mate,” he says. “Be lucky.” Colin holds out a palm as he walks away, as if to stop me following him. I turn toward home, and the world turns with me.