Friday 25 June 2010

Hearing in my car!

Woohoo it's Friday! Almost the weekend! Two whole days of fun!

Thankful Friday wise, I am thankful for the weather, the weather and the erm... weather!

I love the sunshine!

This weekend I am taking London Cousins 1 and 2 on a road trip to see The Rents. London Aunt is going on a girly weekend away so I offered to look after them.

I love London Cousins 1 and 2 and, at 10 and 8 years old, it's amazing watching how they're growing up and what interests they have and how much they seem to know about everything – way more than I did at that age.

I mean, there I was pondering over what music to play in my car when London Cousin 1 piped up, 'Can we have Capital radio on?' – apparently it plays her favourite music.

As a result, when I was out last night, I tuned my radio into Capital – which at volume 48 on my car stereo isn’t actually that bad, so it's all ready this evening to pick them up.

I am a bit nervous about the journey because I know I won't hear anything they say to me. I should be able to lipread London Cousin 2 in my rear-view mirror if I have to, but I have warned them both that I won't be able to chat to them on the journey up there.

I think I feel sadder about this than they do to be honest. Rather randomly, not hearing in cars is one of the main things that bugs me about my deafness – coming in a close second to not hearing guys talking in my ears in clubs. They always find someone who’s easier to talk to rather than get to grips with letting me lipread them – but that’s a whole other bugbear.

So anyway, after pondering about the not-hearing-in-the-car issue on the bus this morning, I suddenly remembered my portable T-loop system. OK so this doesn't work for me most of the time but what if I rig it up so that if London cousins 1 or 2 want to speak to me, they just grab the microphone part and talk directly down that, so I'll get their voices much louder than the usually are.

This has made me very excited and the T-loop is charging as I type this.

I'll let you know if it worked in Monday's blog.

2 comments:

Valerie said...

Ah, the dreaded car conversations. This is the main reason why I hate driving anyone around and usually I try to get around it by saying that I hate to drive (which isn't a total lie!). If I'm really honest with myself, I can't really hear anything unless I'm in the passenger seat! I also tend to avoid clubs for that same reason as well.

Anyway, I discovered your blog this week... good stuff you have here! Nice to see someone who can relate. :)

SpeakUp Librarian said...

Keeping my fingers crossed that it works for you. Have a wonderful weekend!
Sarah

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