Deafinitely Girly's available for dates*

This month I am 32.

It seems like yesterday that I turned 30, surrounded by a wonderful selection of my family and friends at my favourite local pub, drinking rum – which makes me fun – and diet coke.

What's odd, is that that night, I thought that perhaps I may be one step closer to growing up a teensy bit. 'This is it,' I thought, as I dressed in shoes so high I couldn't walk and piled on the black eye liner. 'I am now a grown-up.'

And that night, I clearly started as I meant to go on. I was a social whirlwind, chatting to as many people as I possibly could. Introducing people by their blog names, which made a whole lot more sense that their real name. 'Oh, you're Blanco,' SuperCathyFragileMystic declared, while GBman and the Singing Swede met Gym Buddy and her husband.

I had a guy there at my 30th birthday party. A person I had been on one to two dates with, who after MUCH wine one evening I had invited to my 30th. I never expected him to come, but amazingly, he turned up, late, and ignored me for much of the evening.

But in all honesty, I barely noticed as I was accidentally kissing the hot bar manager at the pub who I had fancied since moving to the area one year earlier.

Disgraceful? Heck no, I was just being 30 after all.

The evening moved back to my flat, where I had seven friends staying. I'd like to say my memories are crystal clear, but they're not. And it's not the age that caused that, unless you count how old the rum was that I was knocking back.

Bad DG? Er no, I don't think so. I was just being 30 after all.

At around 2am, the cute bar manager texted me. I shoved my phone in my back pocket and went to my bathroom and sat on the loo.

The next thing that all seven of my guests heard me wailing was, 'My iPhonnnnnnnne!!!!! My iPhoneeeeeeeeeee' as the realisation that it had fallen out of my back pocket and into my toilet dawned on me.

I fished it out in a panic and looked at the waterlogged blank screen. My friends came to the rescue with helpful suggestions that would see me locating my sad and sorry phone on the radiator, which was off, hidden in a boil-in-the-bag rice sachet the next morning.

It never worked again… taking with it the number of the sexy bar manager – who turned out to be 22 incidentally – and a host of treasured 30th birthday text messages. Plus the number of the guy I had been dating, but lets face it wouldn't be seeing again, after my accidental snogging of the bar manager.

In one clear manoeuvre I wiped two men out of my life. And I wasn't really bothered.

But really two years on has anything changed?

I think so. 

The guy I was dating was an utter prat – I don't date prats anymore. I'd rather be single.

The guy I kissed was a complete player – I am DONE with players now. I'd rather be single.

And my iPhone? Well, there's no way on earth I'm peeing on it again this year.

However, if a non-player, non-pratty bloke, who doesn't send me photos of himself with the trifle he made that weekend (DO. NOT. ASK) or talk about his special relationship with his dog before we've even had our first date (EVEN. I. DIDN'T. ASK. ABOUT. THAT. ONE) happens to come into my life, I finally think that I might actually be a little bit happy about this.

So I guess what I'm saying is that Deafinitely Girly is available for dates* (*not with people I've never met, scary stalkers or complete nutters I might add). This year I'm older, wiser and with a clean and shiny – if a little bit retro – iPhone 3GS.

Deaf girly loves O2!

This week I have praise for O2!

I know, I was shocked to be writing that sentence, too, but after yet another hideous iPhone bill due to my ability to go over the 500 free text messages included in my plan, I decided enough was enough.

I had a look online at the upgrade/downgrade options and got completely confused before emailing O2 for advice. Somehow my email must have gone twice as one person contacted me and said pop into a store to discuss things, and the other person, despite my email explaining my deafness, suggested I call customer services.

Hmmmm

So on Saturday I went to a central London O2 store and the god-of-reducing-your-phone-bill gave me Sam!

Now, I'm pretty sure my love for Sam is not mutual as I asked more questions in the 30 minutes I was there than he probably gets in a week, but he answered them all with charm and grace.

I explained to him my bill issue, and he saw it with his own shocked eyes when he called my details up. I then explained to him the 'dropping my phone down the loo' issue and that although I'm due an upgrade, my phone is not yet a year old so it would be a sheer indulgence to get another one – particularly having paid a £150 insurance excess on my first one.

Anyway, back to Sam. He was brilliant! He recommended I move to a rolling sim-only contract for just £10.50 with a data bolt on of £10 and the best thing? I get unlimited texts. I lamented about the lack of unlimited data but he showed me that this was something I actually didn't need and that if it was readily available to all O2 customers then everyone's network speed would be slower.

He also explained to me that as I am on a rolling contract, I can upgrade my phone any time to a shiny iPhone 4S but that this buys me some time to wear this phone out and for the newer model to go down in price.

I also cancelled my insurance (saving me another £15) because if I lose this phone, it will be cheaper to just upgrade than pay another £150 excess.

In all, the lovely Sam managed to shave £50 off my phone bill and while this isn't great news for O2 in terms of income in the short term, in the long term it has dramatically reduced the chances of me changing mobile providers.

What was even better was that Sam, noticing how slow my iPhone was showed me that if you double click the bottom button it brings up a base bar of all the apps that are open. I did not know about this. And that meant that my phone had all its apps open all the time – and had done for the last year.

I left that O2 shop very, very happy. Happy that the stress of the expense of my iPhone bill had been dramatically reduced. Happy that my faith in O2 had once again been restored, and happy that when I do decide to upgrade and get a calling plan to suit me, I know just the man to ask

Thanks O2. You did good!

Life without my iPhone

So, anyone who has seen me in since my birthday, will know that I broke my beloved iPhone in a moment of clumsiness as it slipped out my back pocket and down the loo.

*sob

Seriously, I think I sucked all the air out of my flat when I realised what I had done and watched my main port of contact with EVERYONE disappear in a little fizzle of the screen.

And since then, everything’s been a pain.

Firstly, it turns out I had the wrong insurance in spite of the fact I used my big amplified phone at work to call and check and asked the lady on the other end of the phone to confirm twice it was OK to keep my existing insurance with my new phone.

Then, when Pa spoke to O2 to try and sort things on Sunday, they told him to call back on Monday. Monday wasn’t good enough in my book, so Jenny M rang back and the person she got was very accommodating. Although, he broke the news of the £150 insurance excess, in addition to my new, more expensive monthly insurance payments.

At this point, I looked at my generously given 30th-birthday cheques sat on the mantelpiece and realised quickly what I was going to be spending them on.

Then, Jenny M was told that iPhone 3GS phones were out of stock – evidentially I am not the only person throwing them in the toilet. But Jenny M was also told that I would be texted when the stock arrived and informed of a delivery date.

However, in the interim, I had a million questions for O2 – they really must love me there – and so emailed the Disability Customer Care email with all of them.

No reply.

So then, I got two texts through in two minutes offering me two different delivery dates.

By this time, I was totally confused; so I cranked up my work phone’s amplifier and took the plunge to call O2 again, with my colleague on stand-by to help if need be. The first guy I spoke to was lovely, he then put me through to an insurance guy who was also lovely and said that I could choose a delivery date. So I replied to the first text message, but being a Blackberry handset that I am using at the moment, the texts were all grouped together so then I had a panic about which date I had confirmed for…

So I rang O2 again and got the most wonderful man on the other end of the phone. After the 50th pardon, I apologised for my hearing loss and he replied, ‘You can say pardon as much as you need to.’ along with a whole host of other reassuring things to help put me at ease during the stressful process of making the phone call.

And while we were nattering, hey presto! another text came through from O2 Insure informing me that the first text had been an error and I could only have the later delivery date.

This was fine, I just wanted to know when to be around to collect my new beloved iPhone.

I have been documenting my daily life without my iPhone on Twitter, not least because I cannot get over how much I relied on it to get me through the day. From the Tube App, which would have been very useful in yesterday’s chaos to Run Keeper to track my run home from work.

I haven’t been able to write my blog on the bus to work in the morning and have no Twitter feed until I log in at work. I have only been able to communicate by text, so had a very long-winded chat with Snowboarding Boy the other day about our dinner arrangements that normally could have been sorted easily on MSN. The list is endless…

Then today, the lovely Twitter peeps at O2 noticed my plight and DM’d me to find out what was going on. And they’re going to check that my iPhone is going to arrive on Monday and that everything is OK. Wonderful service as always from the O2 Twitter peeps, so thanks guys.

I finally feel as though things will actually work out… but just make sure, does anyone know where I can buy a waterproof iPhone case that’s drop resistant, and generally Deafinitely Girly resistant?

If so, drop me a line, as this is not a week I want to repeat again any time soon!

My deafness wishlist

This morning on the bus to work, I saw a friend of mine who works for O2. He’s a great guy and always listens to my O2 rants with patience and helpful suggestions. So it was fab to let him know about my recent success with contacting O2 via the press office team on Twitter.

We chatted about technology for a while and this eventually turned into useful apps for my iPhone in terms of my deafness and other things I’d like to make life easier in my Hard-of-Hearing World.

When we were talking though, my mind went quite blank, but now I’ve had a chance to think a little bit more about it, it’s made me resolve to start compiling my Deafness Wishlist – things I want changed or services I’d like to see.

I mean I know I write about them often, but perhaps if I put them all in one place, it’ll make it easier when I bump into VIPs on the bus…

So here we go:

1. Subtitles at all cinemas for more than just one movie, at one time, once a week.
2. Accessibility email addresses for all major companies so we don’t have to call.
3. Email or online booking in all doctors’ surgeries and dentists.
4. Deaf plates for bicycles – they have these in Holland and I have one, although English drivers won’t have a clue what it means.
5. Subtitled announcements in train and tube stations.
6. All tube trains to have subtitled announcements so when stuck in a tunnel, we know what’s going on – the District line already has this.
7. Subtitled options on all movies and TV shows on iTunes.
8. Subtitled on the iPhone BBC iPlayer app.
9. Prettier vibrating alarm clocks.
10. An iPhone app that converts speech to text live – so if you’re in a meeting or at a non-subtitled, play it translates it for you.
11. An internet provider that gives deaf people a discount for their internet even if they don’t take a phone line.
12. All extras on DVDs to be subtitled.
13. Better live subtitles from the BBC. Am sick of reading ‘Urine for a nice sunny day’ when the weather forecast begins.
14. An app that links my iPhone to the unhearable things in my flat – such as the fire alarm, cooker alarm, door alarm, so it’s all in one useful place.
15. Birds that tweet lower! OK, this is one for Mother Nature, but I’d love to hear a robin sing just once.
16. Deaf-aware quiz masters in pubs. Admittedly I am normally very lucky with this, but when they’re bad, they’re very, very bad.
17. Subtitled exercise DVDs! Would love, love, love this as it’s quite hard to lipread someone when you’re bobbing about on the spot.
18. Ways to alter the pitch of the warning noises in my car.
19. More subtitled comedy shows – I know the Soho Theatre did one recently, but I want to be able to see any comedian and for some tech-savvy person to work out a way to subtitle them efficiently.
20. Deaf-friendly store alarms – am sick of setting them off and being pursued down the street by security, completely unaware I’ve done anything!

And that’s just the beginning. Please add you own at the end of this list, or let me know if you know something I don’t, and let’s see how many get ticked off by the end of this year. If just one or two could be achieved, I reckon I could live without a tenor-voiced robin – for now, anyway!!

Subtitles on my iPhone

Phew! What a fabulous weekend of weather we had!

First Ever Friend and her Ma came over from Switzerland to visit, which was great fun. The Rents joined us and we went to Kew Gardens in the baking Sunday heat. It was amazing but very, very hot!

I'm not good in the sun. I require factor-50 sun cream and a big sun hat. If I'm not watered regularly I keel over, too. So Sunday was spent looking like a dessert dweller, shrouded in a lightweight scarf and sheltered by a big straw hat that I bought in the men’s' department at Debenhams.

Anyway, yesterday I booked my first ever cab online. And it didn't go well.

With a BBQ at Gym Buddy's house, we decided to travel there in style rather than throwing ourselves on the hot, rammed, smelly, unreliable tube. It couldn't have been easier to book and I got quite excited about the thought of having this online booking service at my fingertips no matter where I was in London.

So we waited, and a text came through saying the cab was 20 minutes late. We waited for 20 minutes and no cab arrived. So I tried to call them but couldn't hear clearly enough. In the end, Gym Buddy took over and when it became apparent that our car might never turn up, she cancelled it, before securing me a full refund and politely having a go at the clueless woman at the other end!!

It was so frustrating. Like a half-finished convenient service for deaf people.

One thing I am very excited about though is a new application I have discovered for my iPhone called ‘Subtitles’. This allows you to download subtitles for movies and then read along from the screen as the movie plays on the TV. The first thing I did was check if there was subtitles for Withnail And I – London Aunt’s favourite movie – and there was. She has been trying to watch it with me for years and the DVD isn’t subtitled. But now, I have the subtitles downloaded onto my phone so we can finally watch it together.

I’m hoping that the new Sex & The City movie subtitles will be added onto it relatively soon so that I can go to that as soon as possible instead of waiting for a subtitled showing. It would be amazing! Just think, subtitles at the cinema without being at the mercy of the scheduling people.

Subtitles at the cinema and erm…

…a flat iPhone battery!

Ah well – you can’t have everything!

Evolving deaf services

Well, we have a new Prime Minister! And he may look young now, but give him time and soon the curse of the PM will get him and his face will slowly start sliding down his body.

Seriously though, watching all the news, I couldn't help wondering that, if Gordon Brown had come across the way he did during his ‘Bye-Bye’ speech yesterday during his entire time as PM, he might have actually succeeded in gaining enough Labour votes to win this General Election.

There was something rather lovely about him.

Bravo to his speech writer I say.

What’s great for me during all this election stuff is how I’ve been able to catch snippets and thoughts of others that I would usually miss out on in general conversation, through Twitter. It’s given me a new perspective of what’s been happening, especially during live TV broadcasts when the subtitles aren’t that reliable.

And better still, because I choose who I follow on Twitter, it means I have a select narrative forming – much the same as if you’re conversing with friends. It’s great!

It’s things like this that remind me just how much technology has changed for the better for me. I remember when The Rents had to spend over £200 on a video recorder that played and recorded subtitles on the TV. But even then you had to hope that the show was actually subtitled in the first place. I also remember trawling through Blockbuster with my friends trying to find a captioned movie. Sometimes there weren’t any we all wanted to watch, and I’d be left with just the pictures.

And then there’s the theatre – OK so there aren’t many subtitled performances, but there are some, which is a long way from where it was when I was doing English A-level. I remember going to see Macbeth and almost wishing he’d murder me too, as I was so bored of sitting through hours of inaudible Shakespeare! I thought I must be terrible uncultured to be so bored – when really I was just deaf.

And now, this year for the first time, The Globe is captioning things – ‘Bring on Shakespeare’ is now something I can finally say!

I also remember buying Smash Hits and Fast Forward magazines religiously just so I could cut the song lyrics out and learn then to prevent embarrassing and wrong renditions of Kylie songs. Now, I can get lyrics online at the drop of the hat, and have an application on my iPhone that I play my iPod through and the lyrics for each song are automatically brought up!

Amazing!

It’s all this that gives me hope, when I discover things like the iPlayer for the iPhone to be lacking subtitles, or a lack of subtitles on iTunes. Only recently, I discovered a programme you can download that adds subtitles to things – and while it’s all gobbledegook to me now, I fully intend to research it to see how it can help me.

I’m incredibly excited for the day where I can attend the theatre at the drop of the hat and know there’ll be subtitles, see films with subtitles at any time, any day and any week and buy movies for my iPhone safe in the knowledge that I’ll have the same extras as a DVD and be able to switch on captions.

I wonder, sometimes optimistically if there’ll eventually be a day when I come to write my daily blog and realise that I have nothing bad to say about services for deaf and hard of hearing peeps – imagine that?! Which is why I am going to continue to complain to companies like the BBC and O2, who I think could be doing better, until they do, do better. After all, it can’t hurt, can’t it? And maybe if enough of us do, then these companies will eventually take note.

Fingers crossed, eh! Fingers crossed!

When train subtitles go wrong

Today's blog comes from the train on the way home from The Rents' house. I had a lovely weekend with them both – although they've both been quite ill recently, Ma with a chest infection, and Pa with pneumonia.

As a result we had a quiet weekend of chilling out, watching cheesy movies and catching up. It was perfick.

This morning though, my train almost gave me a heart attack! After a particularly speedy journey to the station, I was able to just make, by running, the earlier train. I didn't even bother to look at the details of the platform, I just jumped on the train waiting to leave and sat down.

And so it set off. Then, there was a tinny announcement on the tannoy that I couldn’t hear, so I read the subtitles scrolling on the screen and it welcomed me aboard a train going somewhere completely different!

Um...

I sat for a moment contemplating the situation and then decided to ask the guy next door me, who confirmed I was, thankfully on a London-bound train and the subtitles were in fact wrong!

Phew! I’ve never been so pleased in my life that subtitles were actually incorrect!

*teehee!

Anyway, I finally have 3G coverage on my iPhone! Awaiting me at The Rents' was new SIM card from O2, with no instructions whatsoever. It didn't work. So I decided to visit an O2 shop instead. There the staff were lovely and explained that the SIM card probably hadn't been set to my phone. They also did not disagree with my opinions of O2 online customer service and in 15 minutes flat had sorted my new SIM!

Utterly brilliant!

Now I know I have brilliant contacts at the press office, a disabilities email and helpful staff in O2 shops, I feel much more reassured that I will now get the service I am paying for…

Maybe it is easier being deaf after all!

The problem with deaf customer service

Apologies for my silence this week – I’ve been recovering from my bank holiday weekend, which included my running race.

I completed it slowly and steadily, without stopping, which was quite an achievement as it was pouring with rain and freezing cold. But the camaraderie between the runners was fantastic and Tigger stayed by my side as promised throughout.

Now, I’ve just got work on getting faster – this morning I had a jolly good go at it, but my egg timer failed so I have no idea whether I was quicker or not! Ho hum.

Anyway, I’m back to an old bugbear today.

O2!

As regular readers will know, I have an iPhone, and the recent upgrade procedure – done completely online with no human contact whatsoever – demonstrated that in some areas O2 have got better in making it possible for deaf people to use its services. However, what I didn’t factor in was that, as I have been a loyal – and long-suffering – customer with them for almost 10 years, my SIM card was too old to receive 3G coverage.

I thought it was my iPhone that was the problem, so spent my entire lunch hour queuing at the Apple store only to be told that lack of 3G was due to the fact that my service provider still appears as BT Genie! Remember those days?

So, I went onto O2’s website and had a good hunt around through the FAQs to see if this was fixable online – but it wasn’t. I had a look at the contact us section, which features lots of phone numbers for all sorts of reasons, and one email us section. I even bit the bullet and called O2 – and after 10 minutes of saying pardon, asking the call centre peep to repeat himself, reminding him of my hearing loss and trying to request yes or no answers, I gave up, red faced, conscious of the fact that once again I was hitting a brick wall with what should be a disability-friendly company.

So, counting to 10, I filled in the convoluted email form and sent it off. And guess what? They will endeavour to get back to me within 24 hours. When people on the phone get an instant service. How is that fair?!

It just makes me cross that after years and years of technological developments, O2 does not have a designated email for hard of hearing people – or if it does, it certainly doesn’t advertise it.

Surely there must be someone in O2 thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, this can’t be fair – a crap service for people who can’t use the phone?!’ but then, seeing as they’re a phone company, this is probably not the case.

But what I want companies like O2 to recognise is that it is more than just a phone provider now – and for a deaf person like me, my phone is my lifeline – I can book tickets on the internet, find out train times, send emails, chat on MSN, text, search for traffic issues when I am stuck in a jam, check London travel situations while on the move, and even, when stuck on an overland tube, find out if there are any problems on the line. All this, is invaluable to me – it saves me from trying to communicate, it enables me to build relationships, keep in touch and maintain friendships. And when it goes wrong, I literally feel as though I have lost a large area of my world.

To have no way of contacting O2 quickly to sort this out is a big problem for me.

Now, I know that I could cancel O2 and go elsewhere, but guess what? You need the phone for that. And also, apparently, I can go into an O2 shop and sort things like my SIM card out – even though I am an online customer. And I have done this on occasions, but it reall does seem to depend on the friendliness of the shop staff as to whether they can actually help you. So with the whole SIM card issue, an O2 shop is going to be my next port of call. But I’ve heard a rumour that I may be charged for a new one.

Charged for 10 years of loyalty!?

Well that makes sense, doesn’t it.

But, it shouldn’t be relevant whether or not I can go into an O2 shop for service. I am an O2 online customer. I should be able to get a decent service from my provider. I mean, I certainly pay enough.

It’s not rocket science, I don’t think. O2 need to give deaf people the same service they give hearing people. And if that’s really not possible, then deaf people should get a reduced tariff as an apology for substandard customer service – plenty of other companies offer just that, from theatres to travel.

The 24-hour window of the email response I have been promised by O2 has almost run out – I’m hoping I hear from someone. I’m hoping that they’ll tell me that a new, improved 3G-friendly SIM is in the post to me, free of charge.

I’m also hoping I win the lottery and achieve a 7-minute mile by the end of the month. And right now the latter wishes are looking more feasible.

UPDATE: Oh the power of Twitter! Through it, I contacted O2 and I have been assurred that I can go in store and get a new SIM for free and that I will soon have an email back in reply to the one I sent yesterday. It was so nice to actually have a conversation with a real person from O2, that I got carried away and asked them about an easier way to get in touch with the online peeps. I was forwarded a link about access for all, but it only gives phone options or the email form that I filled in yesterday and have yet to have a reply from. So I am not sure how this helps. So I said that – and it's gone quiet for now. I will keep you posted!

Running with music

So the countdown is almost at an end – my run is almost here!

*eek

Actually, in a weird way, I'm looking forward to seeing if all this training has paid off. This morning's run would imply that it has, as I didn't get tired until right at the end of my 30 minute jaunt, and before I started this running lark, I couldn't even run for a bus without getting uncontrollably out of breath.

It really is amazing, and quite satisfying, too.

Anyway, today I tried something new and different on my run. I tried running with my iPhone playing music. Now, it was quite good, except that I didn’t have a playlist and so hitting shuffle meant that any old song could pop up at any time and these were not always best suited to pounding the pavements.

What I also struggled with was actually hearing it, above the sound of the traffic and general rush-hour din. I never listen to my iPod in public places for this exact reason – for instance, on the bus, I would have to have it on full volume just to get the bass, and I’d be one of those people on the posters being inconsiderate about my music. Except I wouldn’t be being deliberately inconsiderate, I’d just be trying to hear the bloomin’ thing.

So where, was I, erm… yes I didn’t really hear much of it. I’d miss the first minute of the song and then finally get the bass line and realise what I was listening to, and then my head would make up the rest. And because my head was so busy making up music it forgot that it was running and the whole thing flew by.

Not quite the point of running with music, but if it works, I’m not complaining. I do however, need to source some bass-heavy music to run to so that I can actually hear it all the way.

Time to get Pa to dig out his Napalm Death album I think.

My can't-hear cold!

Does anyone believe that an ulcer on the tip of your tongue means you've told a lie?

If so, I must have told the most humungous lie as I have the most humungous ulcer. It's so painful that talking hurts, and people who know me well will know it takes a lot for me to stop talking!

What I really need is some Bonjela and a week in the Bahamas… think we all know which one I'll be buying at lunch.

Anyway, the love/hate relationship with my iPhone continues to rage. When I accidentally poured water over it the other day, I realised I loved it and apologised repeatedly for ever thinking bad thoughts about it, promising to never think bad things again if only it would keep working.


But then, when auto correct changes words that are already correct into completely insane alternatives, I find myself tempted to immerse it in an entire bucket of water as punishment. It really is driving me bonkers.

And another thing, I never thought I could miss buttons this much. I never thought I would ever write a sentence about missing buttons.

But on the other hand, I love iTunes and Pocket Lyrics, and the tube application that tells you how many minutes away a train is, even if the station display board isn’t telling you.

Love/Hate – it’s a very fine line indeed, it seems.

This week I've managed to catch the tail end of the lurgy that has left French Boy bed bound for two days and knocked Friend Who Knows Big Words off her feet as well. It's not nice, but so far the main thing I have is blocked ears. It feels like the pressure is constantly changing and I can't clear them.

Naturally, this makes me a whole lot deafer.

For example, my TV is on twice the normal volume right now, and I'm sure I'm shouting when I speak, too.

On the whole, I'm not really aware of it until I do something so loud that even I notice. Like this morning when I went into tidy-up mode in my flat – Niknak is coming to dinner tonight – and started putting lots of things away in a hurry. It was only when I made the floor shake that I realised I was probably being very noisy, and then I remembered that French Boy is bed bound and sick and that noise will probably not make him feel a whole lot better.

I resolved immediately to be a whole lot quieter...

... and at that moment managed to drop a large box of cutlery onto my stone-tiled, kitchen floor!!

*sigh

I did try, honest!

Being deaf aware

Today, is a very important day! It's Big Bro's and London Aunt's birthday!

Whoop!

The former lives far away in Clogland so this morning I texted him birthday wishes. I expect his birthday will involve a lot of cake. That's what birthdays seem to be about over there... cake!

The latter, lives just up the road from me, and she's having a party tonight, which probably won't involve much cake and deafinitely will involve wine!!!!

It's a special birthday for London Aunt, even though she's perpetually 21, and my gift to her is a weekend in Barcelona – actually that bit of the gift was my prize for winning the Superdrug competition, so my proper gift to her is a visit to a Gaudi-something attraction followed by tapas and bubbles!

Can't wait!

Anyway, another day has passed with me as an iPhone owner and every day I like it more and more! Sure I'm panicking about the fact I left my charger at home today, but apart from that, it's deafinitely growing on me!

I even used it to make an essential phone call yesterday to my insurance company to insure it. And for the 5 minutes I spent saying pardon, before handing the phone over to a helpful colleague, it was great. And had the prepubescent boy at the other end the phone slowed down when I told him I was deaf rather than speeding up, I might have fared a lot better.

This seems to be a common knee-jerk reaction though when I tell people I am deaf. They either start to witter in a panic, look down in embarrassment or in some cases start shouting so their voices are distorted anyway. The guy on the phone yesterday did two out of those three things, he may well have been doing the third, too but I couldn't see him!

But I know in all honesty I'd be no better – and even I cover my mouth when talking to Fab Friend Who Actually Wears Her Hearing Aids, and expect her to hear me when she can't see my lips...

Hmmmm time to book a place on a deaf awareness course perhaps.

Blogging from my iPhone

Today's blog comes directly from my new iPhone, which has of course already been customized with a fabulous pink case!

As I type, I'm sat in a first class carriage, zooming back to London after an utterly brlliant weekend. I said "I do" and became Little Frenchie's godmother and had a nice time catching up with The Rents.

Anyway, the iPhone, what do I think? Well, on the surface I love it. It's pretty to look at, sleek, offers a host of utterly useless applications such as Paper Toss - addictive in some ways and annoying in others.

It also offers a wealth of utterly brilliant applications such as Scrabble, Facebook and perhaps the best one, Pocket Lyrics. When I saw this in the app store I couldn't quite believe it, after all these years of Googling song words, here's a program that works through the iPod and brings up the lyrics of the song you are listening to.

Amazing huh?

As a very hard of hearing person who doesn't hear lyrics at all, this is the best thing since sliced bread! No more mumbling along to songs, I'll have the words right there! This means I can also find out if songs are full of swear words or inappropriare content before declaring to my grandma for example, that she simply must listen to my new favourite song.

It's made me wonder what other brilliant applications there are out there on the iPhone for deaf peeps...

So let me know what your favourites are!

And, what of the iPhone cons? Well, as I suspected I miss having real buttons to press as it's much easier to hit the wrong key on here, but mostly what bothers me is the battery life. Just writing this had used up 5%, and you can literally watch it diminish before your very eyes, even with 3G turned off, wireless turned off, location features turned off, everything turned off.

Indeed to have any sort of decent battery life on this phone, it seems you have to turn everything off, or sit by a plug socket at all times. But if you do that, is there any point in having an iPhone? Wouldn't it be better just to get a smartphone, which has a working battery? A Blackberry perhaps?

Even though my lovely old Pinkberry didn't have a virtual bin I could toss paper into, a lyrics application and fast Internet, I trusted it to last the day, I trusted the keys to input the letters I wanted, and I trusted it to be a phone, push me
my emails and surf the web without the battery draining faster than, erm... water down a plug hole.

It shocks me to say this, and I suspect as Snowboarding Boy reads this he'll be thinking 'I told you so' – but i miss Pinkberry.

Will she ever lose her crown of Best Mobile Phone Ever?