It's deafinitely a Thankful Friday

Well, my silence on Deafinitely Girly demonstrates that I've been a little busy in the real world this week.

One of the main things to suffer because of all this chaos, is my flat. It's a little in need of a clean. In fact, I think if it were a child, social services would have taken it away by now.

And so this morning, after waking up to my fluff covered carpet, I decided I was going to do a spot of cleaning before I left for work.

I did a load of washing, I dusted a few surfaces and I got my giant Dyson out, which to be fair is where it all started to go a bit wrong.

You see, my Dyson is large, and I am clumsy, and my flat is small, and all three together are, as you can imagine, a recipe for disaster.

First, I knocked a collection of necklaces of a table and, quick as a flash, I was soon looking at them through the glass cylinder of my greedy vacuum. The survivors were to be found clinging to the brush underneath.

Next, I tackled the ladybird corpses by my bedside cabinet. Where do the little blighters come from London peeps?

And while I was doing this, I knocked over a lamp, which knocked over my bottle of Champney's Pillow Mist, which took out my treasured glass Guardian Angel that Ma bought me years ago.

Scrabbling around I found my angel, halo-less, and immediately abandoned cleaning and headed for the kitchen, where I keep the superglue.

The surgery did not go well. I am sad to say, my angel is still halo-less, but at one point my thumb was not. I managed to superglue her halo to it and it wouldn't come off. And in the process of trying to get the halo off, I stuck three of my fingers to the glass chopping board on the kitchen worktop.

Great morning so far, yeah?

So there I was, superglued to a big glass plate with a halo on my thumb and a broken guardian angel... trying not to wonder if the three were connected.

But now, my flat is clean, my left hand has no fingerprints, my guardian angel has no halo and I am in the perpetual traffic jam that is my journey to work.

But I don't care and today is still most definitely a Thankful Friday because I am seeing The Rents later, and I am very very thankful for that!

When I'm in charge…

My iPhone, it seems, likes Mondays even less than me, as it keeps crashing when I attempt to write today's blog.

This week is going to be a busy one. The Boss is away skiing which means I'm the erm… Boss, so I get to make lots of decisions and stuff.

What fun?

Luckily I don't have the power aspirations of a dictator, which is just as well right now, because across the world, they don't seem to be doing very well at staying in charge.

I think I'd make a crap dictator to be honest, because I'd never know what was going on. My entire secret service could have conversations out of eyeshot and I'd be none the wiser of their forthcoming coup.

Worse still, I'm not good at confrontation, and if someone is more bossy than me, I usually bow out… but not always gracefully.

A democratic leader however, I think I could be, because when I listen to people, I really listen.

People wouldn't get promoted because I went to university with their second cousin's mother, they'd get promoted because the knew stuff.

What's more, I'd do my level best to make sure that the people who worked hard to save all their lives and made responsible choices with their money did not end up the worse off. I would set aside money to help those people who have never claimed benefits, had no debt because they chose not to buy the flat screen TV on credit but perhaps didn't choose the most salary-driven job, and I’d make sure their nursing home fees that could be paid without their equally diligent children having to sell their own houses to pay for it.

There would also be a penalty clause for people who chose not to plan for the future. If they were not willing to be responsible, then why should they be bailed out?

Yes, if I was in charge, I'd have ‘Manage Your Money Lessons’ put on the curriculum, ban store cards and limit credit purchases to one a year.

I’d also make the following things compulsory: regular subtitled film screenings, all TV programs and channels and DVDs to have subtitles, cheap broadband-only packages for deaf people where the incentive was NOT to have a phoneline, too, and finally a three-day weekend.

Monday would be banned, and as The Doll Says (@thedollsays) – one of my favourite Twitter peeps – tweeted yesterday, ‘Monday should be called Sunday, the Sequel.’
She’d definitely have a place in my Government. Go and check her out on Twitter and you’ll see just why…

I am thankful... honest

Today is Thankful Friday.

I am thankful that it is Friday and that I finish work in just under two hours.
This weekend should be wonderful as I get to see lots of my favourite people: Uni Housemate, The Cyclist, Onion Soup Mate and G. We're getting together for a wedding brainstorm and this will involve decisions about the kind of cakes I am making for Uni Housemate and The Cyclist’s big day. I can’t wait to show them some of my ideas and see what they think.

Recently I’ve been in a really bad mood. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s troubling me, but I think it’s partly because there’s so much unfinished business in my life right now. I’ve drawn hypothetical lines under things, but they’ve yet to be traced over in permanent pen. I feel in a bit of a limbo.

Silly really, eh?

Anyway, there’s lots to look forward to, starting with this weekend. So I’m just going to push all the other stuff to one side and look on the bright side of life. Denial is a wonderful place and for now, that’s where I’m going to stay.

I 'hear' when I read

I'm a chick lit girl.

I love reading books by the lovely Freya North, Katie Fforde, Jenny Colgan and Lisa Jewell. They provide fabulous stories to escape into, and usually restore my faith in love and all that jazz.
What I also love about these books is that I ‘hear’ everything in them. Little asides and whispers are not out of reach as in real life. I get to hear the secrets – something that NEVER happens to me. Honestly, do you know, I used to think the point of the game, Chinese Whispers was to pretend to hear and then make something up!
Anyway, recently I’ve been taking a break from my usual favourites to read a book that Friend Who Knows Big Words gave me for my 30th birthday.

It is: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and it is wonderful.

But it's not wonderful in an escapist, oh-isn't-everything-fabulous kind of way. Indeed, I spend most of my time wincing in my seat on the bus as each character develops in a thoroughly disagreeable manner.
But what is wonderful is that Oscar Wilde gives you everything you need to know, and often through body language – which is something that I rely heavily on in real life to work out what’s going on – so I feel as though I’m completely immersed in this story. I’m not on the edge of it, as I often feel in real life, I’m right there, hearing, seeing and experiencing everything each character does.

What makes it uncomfortable however, is that with chick lit, you always feel as though the author has the characters best interests at heart, but with Oscar Wilde, I get the feeling that he, like Lord Henry in the book, enjoys toying with their emotions, sending them down unsavoury paths and displaying their foolishness.

It's wonderful in the same way a Swedish massage is wonderful. It’s not all that pleasant at the time but afterwards you're glad you had one.

I get the feeling I will always be happy that I read Dorian Gray, that I stepped out of my Happy Ever After addiction, because after all, life doesn't always give you one of those, does it?

A very productive phone call

One of the most exciting events this year is that First Ever Friend is getting married.

I've known her since we were 4 and even though she lives in Switzerland now, we're still in regular contact, particularly as I am her witness for the wedding.

I'm rather excited about this role, although if I'm required at any point to speak Swiss German, it may be interesting.

I booked all my flights for her wedding the other week and texted Ma to suggest she did hers too, so that we were all on the same flight home. But knowing how much Ma detests online booking systems, and with Pa still quite hop-along from his hip, I offered to do it for her.

Cue laptop set up and phone number being dialled.

Now, Ma is one of the people I can hear best on the phone. Perhaps because I've heard her voice all my life, I know the way she says things, so am able to guess quite a lot what is going on.

This was going very well until the credit card number bit... And the mobile number bit... Actually, pretty much any bit where I needed to hear numbers full stop, as they all sound the same to me. This meant that she would recite them and I'd recite them back. But because she’s also a little bit deaf, this was a little challenging as neither of us could hear what the other was saying, and so we were in fits of giggles.

Eventually however, we got there, and all that was left was the booking code, which I read out in my own variation of the phonetic alphabet, with Ma-appropriate swear words – this turned what should have been an extremely stressful situation for us both into a very productive phone call.

Which just goes to show, there really is a first time for everything.

DG's erm... lovely morning

Oh boy, what a morning it's been!

So far today, in the two hours I've been up, I have put my foot down the toilet, fallen out of the shower, seen my car get blocked in on a yellow line by four gigantic wheely bins and had to move the said wheely bins across the road and back again before I could leave for work.

In addition to this, I kneed a working guide dog in the face and smacked a fellow commuter around the head with my Pukka Tea bag for life.

My catastrophic cacophony of events began in the shower, when I reached to put my shampoo down, slipped on the gradient of my bath and fell in a flailing force of velocity onto my bathroom floor.

Dusting myself off and a little bit shocked, I got dressed and checked out of my bedroom window for available parking spaces to move my car to from the yellow line on which it was currently residing. There was one right outside my flat.

Next, I re-entered the bathroom to shut the window, missed the part where I needed to put the loo seat down to reach the window lock and put my entire foot in the loo, socks, skinny jeans, the lot.

Cold and soggy, I let out a yelp, threw the offending items in the washing machine – minus the loo – and checked the state of the road again.

Now, last night, when I moved my car, I parked it in the only available space, half in a space and half on a yellow line. This involved backing up very very closely to a rather shiny Lotus Elise. The success of this great plan rested on the hope that nothing got put in front of my car. And so, on my second glance out of the window I discovered four gigantic tubular silver wheely bins, practically resting on my bumper and just 15 minutes to get my car off the yellow line before the traffic wardens turned up. A little bit peeved, I rolled up my sleeves and moved the bins, one by one, heaving and and ho-ing them across to the other side of the street while trying to remain in control of them so I didn't accidentally wheel them into a parked car.

And so my car was free. But I had unintentionally blocked my neighbour's gate, as I discovered when he angrily stormed out of his gate and gesticulated wildly at the bins. And so, I moved them each one by one, all the way back to the other side of the road towards the awfully shiny Lotus Elise, aware by this point that I was now in fact so late for work that it almost warranted a half day.

And that was my morning. In my haste for the bus, a poor guide dog sat in the aisle got my knee in his nose and then an idiot girl who had an empty seat by her but wouldn't stand up to move out the way got clonked on the head by my bag as I shuffled into the seat by the window.

And now? Well, I am sitting as still as possible on this bus, well aware that in my currently run of luck, anything could happen.

This morning it would seem, bad things come in dozens... Bakers' dozens!

Deaf Girl y's Thankful Friday

Today is Thankful Friday and I am thankful that I have a fun weekend ahead of seeing London Aunt and the Singing Swede.

It’s been a week of birthdays, too. It was Big Bro’s, London Aunt’s and Web Whizz’s yesterday and tomorrow, it’ll be Gingerbreadman’s turn to blow out the candles. Hurrah!

I am also thankful that London Cousin 1 has got into her first choice of secondary school – she worked her little socks off for the exams and it’s definitely paid off. It’s strange to think that in September she will be in Year 7. It seems no time ago since I used to help look after her in the early months when London Aunt was still getting used to life with a newborn.

Anyway, I spoke to Big Bro on Skype last night and we were reminiscing about the birthdays we had spent together. On one of his birthdays he had a ski jump cake complete with a Playmobil man hurtling down it, and he also seemed to spend most of his birthdays sick. There was chicken pox, mumps, and various other catching ailments. If I remember correctly, this tended to dictate who was present at his parties. If they’d had it, they could come, if they hadn’t, they couldn’t!

But back to thankfulness… ah yes, where was I?

Well, I am thankful for true love – because without it, I wouldn’t have the three weddings to go to this year that I do.

I booked flights for one of them today – First Ever Friend’s – and I am now feeling super excited about the whole thing.

The first wedding is for Uni Housemate and Cycling Boy. This should be a fabulous affair, and I am making the wedding cake.

Then finally, there’s GBman and the Singing Swede. They’re marrying in July in the far end of the Wild West erm… Country… and I can’t wait.

And while we’re on the theme of love, it’s Valentine’s Day on Monday.

*sniff

I hope I get a card…

Then I can have a thankful Monday, too!

From peace and quiet to mayhem

The reason I have been so quiet this week is that I've visiting SuperCathyFragile Mystic in her little cottage in the Wild West erm... Country. The Photographer was there, too.

I had the most wonderful time catching up, shopping, eating drinking and being very merry. On Tuesday we went for a wonderful walk and from the top of the hill overlooking her house, everything was calm and still. And quiet. At least to my ears!

Ah what fabulous memories. Especially as this morning I am sat on the bus with a revolting shouting child who I would quite like to propel out of the window. His father is talking on his mobile completely oblivious to the death stares the entire bus is giving his nose-picking, screeching spawn.

No wonder I didn't want to leave the calmness of SuperCathyFragileMystic's place.

But alas we had to, because Blackberry, the best dog in the world, who we had borrowed for the weekend, had to be delivered back to her rightful owners.

The Photographer and I did this, and enjoyed a marvellous supper with his Rents and then, when it came to dropping him off at the tube on arrival back in London I pointed out a bag in the footwell of my car that I had loaded earlier that day. It was an Asda bag for life and I assumed it was loaded with the wine that's currently cheaper to buy there than a bunch of grapes.

But The Photographer said it wasn't his...

And not only was it not his, but it wasn't mine either. It was SuperCathyFragileMystic's and it was full of wire and leads and TV cables and all the things you seem to have lots of spares of and do eventually need. And this was now 100 miles away from her little cottage in my car.

Naturally this seemed like a very valid excuse for driving all the way back to her place and I almost did. But have you seen the price of petrol recently?!

So this means that instead of waking up in the countryside, I am in London, in the rain, on a bus, in a traffic jam, with a child who is yelling at the top of his voice in a frequency I can actually hear, who is shows no sign of shutting up until his neglectful father gets off his phone and pays him some attention.

Phew!

I think everyone will agree that perhaps I got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

Indeed, perhaps I shouldn't have bothered getting out of it at all.

Captioned King Lear

This week shall be renamed Deafinitely Girly’s week of culture I think!

I’ve been very busy seeing and listening to things, and so far, it’s been great fun!

On Monday, I went to see captioned King Lear at Donmar Warehouse with Fab Friend. It was three hours of riveting but exhausting drama, headed up by the formidable yet incredibly endearing Derek Jacobi and included a cast of familiar faces who ceased to be familiar once they stepped into their Shakespearean roles.

Also in attendance was John Major, which added a slightly surreal element to the occasion, and it was noted that during the particularly gory eye-gouging scene, both he and Norma looked away – I know this because I too was looking away, which meant I was looking at them.

Honestly, never before have I cried at Shakespeare, not at Romeo and Juliet, not even when I saw my favourite Shakespeare actor, Kenneth Branagh go slightly mental as Richard III. However, when Jacobi as Lear stepped onto the stage in the final scene, broken at the death of his youngest daughter and the most lucid he’d been throughout his descent into madness, my heart actually broke. Reading the captions to his woe only accentuated the pain Lear was experiencing, and watching the tears fall freely from Jacobi’s face, made it all seem so real.

Embarrassingly, I let out an audible sob, and felt my own fat tears roll down my cheeks.

At the end, both Fab Friend and I admitted to feeling a little bit like we needed a nice cup of tea an a sit down… and just like that, Derek Jacobi was added to my fantasy dinner party list along with Tennessee Williams, Jeremy Clarkson, Jenny Colgan and Katie Fforde.

Then last night, I went to see Junip, a band headed up by Swedish guitar whizz José González. I love José, and this was my third time watching him perform, but first time with his band. He was supported by an emergency act, after the original one didn’t make it and this guy, whose name I have completely forgotten, looked a bit like Linus, sat towering over two of the smallest synthesizer/keyboards I have ever seen. His voice however was rather lovely, sliding about all over melody, with just a drum and two-handed accompaniment. At first SuperCathyFragileMystic and I were baffled by him, and when he murdered a Lenny Kravitz song, we were less than impressed. However his other stuff was lovely.

But this is not the end of my cultured week – in fact, I have two more excursions coming up that I am eagerly awaiting. And in the meantime, I’m just off to peruse Time Out London’s website to see what else I can pack into 2011!

Door buzzer dilemma

I have just received a text message from my dentist, reminding me that I am due a check-up at the surgery.

I love how instead of getting an unintelligible voicemail, I get a nice polite text.

However, the reality of the situation is that I will not in fact be going for my check-up at the dentist anytime soon, as I quite simply cannot afford another £174 bill.

Anyway, I had the most marvellous weekend of seeing London Aunt, The Good Guy, SuperCathyFragileMystic and The Photographer. Friday night saw London Aunt and I toasting the most fabulous news, while Saturday saw shopping and dinner in Notting Hill with SCFM and The Photographer.

There was drinking, and erm… drinking and it was a miracle I kept my eyes open due to the fact that I had been up since 7am on Saturday.

And here’s why:

I am a girl of many shoes, bags and coats. And nothing goes better with this than gloves and scarves. However, after the demise of my coat stand – it didn’t survive the second fall, despite being held together with electrical tape and wall brackets – I decided that I needed a new storage solution in my narrow hall.

This came in the form of a shoe cupboard from Homebase, which once ordered had a delivery window of 7am to 3pm on Saturday.

Now, this is all very well and good, except that I can barely hear my door buzzer when I am awake, let alone when I am asleep, so it was with dread that I set my vibrating alarm clock to awake me at 7am on Saturday so that I could be ready and waiting in anticipation for the arrival of my cupboard.

Two hours passed. At 9am I was starting to flag when I suddenly heard the buzzer. Hurrah! It was finally here and I could go back to bed.

Wrong!

I was now completely awake and so all I could do instead was set to work building the cupboard, which took one hour, several screws and a good deal of hammering. What satisfyingly enjoyable work it was… although probably less so for my neighbour below as the fiftieth nail got hammered in to the back panel.

Sunday saw the hammering taking place inside my skull as I awoke at 7am facedown in my pillow from a fitful night’s sleep dreaming that I was going bald. It wasn’t fun. This then meant that the next two hours were spent on the sofa attempting to turn the wine content in my body back into water…

After succeeding this, I went to London Aunt’s, where she and The Good Guy was on hand to make hangover sandwiches, hangover pasta and hangover tea, which actually means that I am raring to go and looking forward very much to seeing Fab Friend this evening.

Phew!

See you tomorrow peeps.

My amazing Pa

Today, is Bro Bro and Maxi-Clog’s wedding anniversary.

This time five years ago, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and it was very much below freezing on the temperature scale.

It was a truly amazing day – we ate, drank and were merry; feasting on chocolate brownie cake and sipping bubbles.

Memories of that day still filter back whenever I hear the music Big Bro and Maxi Clog had for their first dance, and many of the special touches I have passed on to friends as great ideas to incorporate in their own big days.

What this anniversary also means is that it’s five years since Pa redesigned his nose and eye socket on the bar in the hotel where the wedding was being held. There we were, the morning after the wedding, when we suddenly heard an almighty crash and I saw Pa, flying through the air towards the bar, which he duly head-butted and actually dented.

It wasn’t the best end to the weekend. Alas, we had to leave him and Ma in hospital and return to the UK without them as he had cocaine-soaked sheets stuffed up his nose to numb it before they gradually realigned the shattered pieces.

And so, it’s kinda odd that five years almost to the day, my Pa is back in hospital, but this time instead of a newly designed nose, he has a newly-designed hip! And not only that, but he’s doing so well with it that they are letting him out today, just three days after the operation.

Amazing!

My Pa’s resilience to everything life throws at him never ceases to amaze me. He is quite fabulous, and I hope that when he reads this, he gives himself a pat on the back for getting through this latest challenge with amazing gusto.

And so I guess today, on Thankful Friday, I am thankful for my amazing Pa! He's quite splendid and I can't wait to see him, and his new hip, soon.

DG
x

Deafinitely Girly does dating

Recently, something has been doing my head in.

I’ve been consistently single for too long.

Rather than wallowing, I’ve been trying to be more proactive and talk to people in bars and stuff, but it’s always slightly disastrous and trying to hear over the thudding music gives me a rabbit caught in headlights look, which is not exactly a know flirting technique.

Looking back at my dating history, I’ve never been very good at flirting or indeed getting the guy.

One of the things I find when I am in bars, chatting to people is that my mind goes totally blank. London Aunt finds this too, so perhaps it’s not just a deaf thing; perhaps it’s a genetic thing. London Aunt for example once started talking to a guy about The Shipping News – not the book, not the movie, but the real life Shipping News that plays nightly on BBC World Service.

I can totally relate to this. If I can’t follow the conversation, I find myself nodding with a vacant look on my face before changing the subject to something I can follow – but in a panic this will be something insanely random such as fixing my leaking shower door.

But worse still, if I can follow the conversation, I will be so afraid of losing track of what’s going on that I will stare intently at the poor guy not daring to interrupt. Once I was talking to a guy who thought I was on drugs as I didn’t blink during the entire conversation as I was so worried I’d miss something.

And then of course there’s always the ‘I-need-to-lipread-you snog error’ which has happened to me more times that I’d like to recall. It goes like this: You meet a guy you like in a bar. It’s really noisy so he talks to your ear. You tell him a few times that he needs to look at your face so you can lipread him. He keeps forgetting. Eventually, tired of having someone screech down your ear, you move his face with your hands to face yours. He then reads this as an invitation to kiss you and moves in for the kill. On one particular night, I had three of these within half an hour of each other, all of whom where huffy with me for apparently moving on so fast!!!!!

I have NO idea what to do to get a date. I mean I’m not desperate to get married or anything, but a date would be nice. Where should I go to meet guys in an environment where I can hear and not blurt out my latest DIY disaster? Should I join a club? Take up a new hobby? Do a team sport?

Or…

…perhaps I should put someone else in charge of my love life for a while to see if they do any better?

So that’s it. I’m throwing open the vacancy of DG’s Dating Guru to all applications. Please email me your credentials and ideas to deafinitelygirly@gmail.com and I’ll let you know how I get on.

There must be a guy out there for me somewhere surely?

My hearing and me

Whoa, this week has been non-stop so far, with barely any time to blog!!!!

Make that NO time to blog.

Anyway, yesterday, in-between the massive work deadlines on my mind, I was thinking of my Pa, who, due to a cancellation, had his hip replacement a week early.

It went well, I was pleased to discover, but I am still in awe of his bravery, as he had it done awake… with a spinal block.

Now I know millions of women have Caesareans this way, but to have your hip replaced and lie there listening to all the drilling, grinding, clanging and banging can’t be fun – especially when you’re paralysed from the waist down, so you can’t even get up and do a runner if it all gets too much.

It took a bit longer than usual apparently but eventually I had a text from Ma to say all had gone well, and she could see him. And the best bit was, there was no grogginess from the anesthetic, no declaring he was a horse at the top of his voice like a certain DG did after her surgery.

*blush

On the subject of hospitals, I’m going back to the hospital today for my three-month check-up. Having lost 6lb since my last visit, I hope I’m going to no longer be the only Crohn’s patient who actually puts on weight… And I also hope this visit will signal six-monthly checks from now on as all’s been nice and quiet of late.

While I am there, I will also pop in to the audiology clinic and see if I can make a new appointment to get my ears checked out. As Fab Friend pointed out, in the two odd years since I was last there, there’s bound to have been some technological advancements in the world of hearing aids, and you never know, one of them may be beneficial to me!

It would be interesting to hear more than I do now. But in many ways I am still quite reluctant to try…

You see I always have this overwhelming sadness after wearing hearing aids and then taking them out, that the world I have loved and tried to listen to for the last 30 years, sounds completely different. It makes me feel quite panicky.

Silly really. But perhaps a part of me thinks that if I get by on what I have, and don’t really miss it or indeed know what I am missing, then is there really any point in cranking up the volume?

I think it’s a case of, yes it’s broken, but I don’t wanna fix it…

just yet!

I heart Fridays

I love Fridays and Fridays love me!

Simple!

I don't think there's ever been a Friday I wasn't thankful for in the almost three years since I've been writing this daily blog.

And on this Friday, a very exciting thing happened. I had my 30,000 visitor – as clocked by Sitemeter that is.

Amazing stuff!

So, on this already very Thankful and very sunny Friday, I thank you guys. For reading this. For checking in. And making my slightly non-sensical ramblings worth it!

Hurrah!

Have a good one peeps.
DG
x

Overhearing on the bus!

This blog is being brought to you live this morning because there’s a lady on the bus who is driving me, and the other people on the top deck craaaaazy! Sometimes I swear I am not deaf enough.

The offending lady is sprawled across two seats with her floaty skirts and handbag and is talking so loudly on her mobile phone that I can actually make out whole words that she’s saying, without even looking at her.

The lady next to me and I have exchange frustrated looks and I am insanely close to telling our travelling companion to put a sock in it.

I cannot stand people like this woman. They simply do not care about anyone else around them. Ooh, and update: we just had a blissful moment of silence when she got cut off but now she’s at it again, nattering, chattering, gossiping at the volume level of a foghorn.

With phone call one out the way, she’s now moved on to phone call two. What in the world is so important that she has to broadcast it to the entire bus at top volume?!?!?!

I just caught the sentence: ‘So we will see, we’ll see!’ which signalled the end of that phone call.

And on to phone call number three.

Now, phone calls on the bus are OK in an emergency. But vapid rambling conversation? Really? Is the woman really that incapable of amusing herself for 30 minutes on the bus without making it awful for everyone else?

‘Oooh it’s complicated, really complicated!’ she’s bleating AT THE TOP OF HER VOICE! Before going on to repeat that sentence over and over again.

In some ways, if I’m looking for the silver lining in all this, it’s actually quite exciting for me. Rarely does someone speak clearly and loudly enough that I can eavesdrop what they are saying. In fact, I think it is my first time.

Amazing!

But honestly, right now I feel incredibly lucky that usually, very present company excepted, I largely travel in peace and quiet; unaware of people’s drama being played out on public transport, unaware of how sodding complicated something is and being made to listen to how complicated it is 50 times.

Hearing people, I salute and commend you for not committing acts of verbal violence against idiots chatting loudly on the bus. If I had hearing, I’m not sure I’d be so restrained!

When relying on websites goes wrong

This weekend I went to the Wild West erm… Country to visit Tigger, which was great fun. We ate curry, went for walks, and I got a magical mystery tour of various ancient fort, burial and religious sites, too!

Also living in the very same town as of this year, is an old uni mate called Lanky. He’s married to The Teacher and they have the most gorgeous little girl who has just turned 1.

It was great to see them all and wonderful reminiscing about our time in Pompey. I felt a pang of nostalgia for the old place even though only Uni Housemate and Christoph are the only ones left there.

*sniff

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I hate the reverse journey home after a lovely weekend. You know the feeling where you don’t want to leave so you know you should get the leaving done as quickly as possible.

So, with a lunchtime train booked, I was feeling quite umpty about the whole thing. I’d also been keeping an eye on the train status on my phone so I would know if it was delayed. So far that morning, all London-bound trains were listed as delayed.

This made me more umpty. Poor Tigger! In the end he took me for tea and cake, which made me less(ish) umpty but then… CANCELLED flashed up on my phone next to my train time!

DISASTER!

Tigger offered me a paper bag to breathe into.

Tigger then suggested we go to the station anyway to find out what was going on and weirdly, there was my train, listed, and actually waiting on the platform for me.

Cue the realisation that the National Rail website I use as the font of all travel knowledge, is WRONG!

I tweeted them to ask why they had got wrong info on the site but had no reply, but I only hope it was a one-time error.

And the journey? My empty train chugged through the countryside back to London in perfect time, even depositing me at Clapham in time to get a connecting train home.

AMAZING!

So what have I learnt this weekend? How to tell the difference between buzzards and other birds; where the mole is at the fairy rings; not to stress about my train from three hours before; that Tiggers get you places on time; never to look at National Rail’s website for reassurance as it won’t be there, and finally that millionaires shortbread tastes much better when shared.

My Thankful Friday List

Today is Thankful Friday and I am thankful for the following:

Wooly hats to keep the rain off my hair

The anti-Atkins diet – it means I get to eat the muffin from The Boss’s breakfast every morning

New winter boots

My flashing phone ringer – makes every day seem like disco day

Subtitles on the bus – this morning it let me know we were being held briefly in order to help regulate the service

Gorgeous men on tube trains – quite a treat on my journey home last night

Marks & Spencer’s soup – I will lose the Christmas pounds

Big Bro, who has sent me a Christmas present in the post

My fab friends, who this week have been keeping me sane and offering amazing advice

Secrets, because sometimes they're so exciting they cause you to skip down the street, smile at strangers and wake up grinning

And of course, Fridays. Because without Fridays there wouldn’t be a weekend and without a weekend, well, life would be rather dull.

I have a fab one planned. Hope you do, too.

DG
x

Deafinitely Girly's cooking disasters

Last night I bit the bullet and decided to go to a spinning class at my gym for the first time. I have always shied away from spinning, wondering if I’d be able to follow an instructor over the loud music. And honestly, I didn’t really have much clue what was going on, but I just mirrored him, tweaked the difficulty setting on my bike every now and again, and I LOVED it.

OK, so today I feel like I have dislocated hips and have done 80 lunges without a warm up, but no pain no gain, right?

This being brave and doing things I wouldn’t normally do is starting to pay off – what a brilliant resolution that was!

Take yesterday, I tried the spinning class, and as a result I really do feel one step closer to achieving my goal weight, losing the pounds that have crept on in the last year due to my complete inability to resist biscuits – custard creams mainly – Combos and Bush’s Baked Beans from America, and of course Wotsits!

Anyway, today is Wednesday, which is my favourite day of the week. It’s the middle. The weekend doesn’t seem quite so far away today. Just two more days!

This week though, I have been having daily kitchen disasters. It’s not been fun. First there was the erm… cooking in my underwear incident on Monday, which saw me throw a tub of vegetable curry soup over me, my kitchen and all my clothes – including my favourite white top. In a panic I took all my clothes off and shoved them, lots of Vanish and some washing power in the washing machine. Thirty minutes later, it was apparent that vegetable curry soup does not like coming out of white tops, and three washes later, I am close to giving up.

*Sniff

Then, yesterday, while trying not to throw beetroot soup down my remaining white top, I shut my fingers in the fridge. You see, my kitchen floor slopes somewhat and in order to get the fridge to shut I have to kind of swing for it. So I did, but forgot to move my hand out the way. It hurt, I jumped, and threw beetroot soup down my top. Cue, me cooking dinner in my underwear again.

Then this morning, I was making a boiled egg and picked up the pan in a hurry, burning my thumb in the process and throwing boiling water and the egg on my kitchen floor. Luckily the egg bounced, which I guess says something about my culinary prowess at being able to produce a soft-boiled egg. Trying to look on the bride side however, I concluded that at least the water was see through, and boiling(!), so at least I didn’t ruin yet another white top.

I don’t know what it is about me and the kitchen. Get me baking and it all goes to plan – the peeps whose wedding cakes I am making this year will be very glad to hear – but with everyday stuff, well I’m lucky if I come out with all my fingers still attached and an edible meal.

So from now on, my mantra is going to be – slow and steady. I’m going to look before I leap, before shaking soup cartons without lids on and before picking up hot pans without oven gloves, that way there might be less cooking in my underwear… and the neighbours can go back to curtain twitching someone else!

Giving my hearing a rest

What a lovely weekend I had. Alone! Apart from a fabulous afternoon walk around Hampstead Heath with Miss K yesterday, I didn’t speak to or see anyone else.

Occasionally I need weekends like this to recharge my hearing batteries and after a busy week of listening last week, that was exactly what I required. I find listening incredibly tiring. At school when I was statemented for what support I needed, they discovered I had the ability to lipread efficiently for 40 minutes before zoning out, dozing off and generally not paying attention anymore. And now I’m deafer than that, it may be less.

It’s not that I don’t like talking, I do, and those who know me will know I wasn’t named a chatterbox at school for nothing. It’s just that these days I seem to have a noticeably diminished listening threshold.

And that doesn’t just apply to conversations. I find it when watching TV, too. There’s only so much I can watch, matching the subtitles to the audio, before I’m fast asleep on the sofa. For this reason I tend to turn the volume right down, so I’m just reading not listening, too.

Anyway, one of the things I did this weekend was catch up on some TV that I recorded over Christmas. The last thing I needed to see was the Top Gear special, where they drove to Bethlehem. Now, regular readers will know that Top Gear subtitles rarely behave themselves. They are usually slow, often nonexistent and at best a combination of both that leaves me scrabbling to follow what is without a doubt my favourite programme on the box.

So on Saturday afternoon, I was slightly nervous about hitting play. But I needn’t have been as by some miracle, the subtitles were perfect. Not just perfect but consistently perfect, 100% completely in time with Jeremy Clarkson’s jabbering perfect!

It was brilliant.

It was a revelation. It made the totally ridiculous ending pale into inSTIGnificance. It made my day of hearing regeneration fabulous.

And so, as I ready my CV to apply for the vacancy of The Stig – think pink racing suit, pink helmet and erm… pink cars? – I’d just like to say ‘Thanks Top Gear; all is forgiven!’

Not hearing in IKEA

Today is Thankful Friday and I am thankful the week is over.

I am also thankful for the most amazing news I got last night. There I was in IKEA with GBman and the Singing Swede eating meatballs – as you do – when GBman broke the news that he and the SS are engaged!

Hurrah!

Honestly, it couldn’t happen to two nicer people and naturally I was bouncing up and down with excitement at this news.

IKEA is a strange place to hangout on a Thursday night I know, but we all needed bits and bobs and it made sense to go together and support each other through the traumatic one-way system, the shock of realising that all those wonderfully cheap bits and bobs add up to rather more than you were anticipating, and me demanding Swedish translations of every single product I picked up!

IKEA is a deafness minefield though – its warehouse setting makes it very hard to hear anything and the multitude of accents of the staff means that even in the quietest of settings, I still wouldn’t be able to hear what was going on.

For example, in the café last night I wanted meatballs and salad. Somehow I ended up with meatballs and chips and no salad. And when I tried to rectify the situation I had no idea what the man behind the counter was saying. So I ate my chips and meatballs and wondered if this was the best way to be starting my new year diet.

Then, at the till the man asked me something and by that point I just decided to answer yes. No clue what I consented to or confirmed but it seemed the right answer given his raised expectant eyebrows.

Even the poor Singing Swede couldn’t interpret for me and she can hear, so this guy must have been really hard to understand.

It’s no wonder that I gravitate more and more towards the self-service sections in shops now. I don’t mind totting up my own shopping as it means I never miss the ‘Would you like a bag?’ question or answer no repeatedly, when they are actually asking me to insert my pin – I did the former in TopShop once and thought the till lady was going to deck me by the end of it.

At my local Sainsbury’s I can do a whole shop without needing to hear a single thing and even better I can’t even hear the annoying voice that ‘talks’ you through what you should be doing that well either.

Modern technology may be making people more antisocial – less ticket offices, paying at the pump for petrol, vending machines for absolutely everything, credit card hotels – but it is making my life so much easier, and for that I am extremely thankful.

I wonder what it’ll be like in 50 years time though. Maybe we’ll be having online consultations with our GPs, shopping will be done only via computers and IKEA will be staffed by multi-lingual subtitled robots. Come on, the last one would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?

Deafinitely Girly and the self-help books

Well, would you look at that: I go to bed in England and wake up to some very helpful comments on my blog about the subtitle situation. Apparently, Apple is not to blame – it’s the film companies I need to get bothering. So I intend to do just that and report back. Although, wouldn’t it be nice if Apple could put its foot down about only allowing accessible content with captions on iTunes? But then I guess there’d be nothing on there and it would be crap for business wouldn’t it?

Anyway, today as I have nothing more than that to report back until I do some research, get some email addresses and get asking questions, I have other things on my mind.

Last night Friend Who Knows Big Words came over for dinner. We had stir fry and cherry pie and chatted about my woeful dating situation. Friend Who Knows Big Words is married to French Boy. They got together 10 days before she was due to go to Central America without him for three months, and after that, well the rest is a happy ever after.

For Friend Who Knows Big Words, it is very simple. No games were played. French Boy liked her and she liked him. Now they are married.

Friend Who Knows Big Words and I were chatting about this last night and we were working out whether there was anything I could be doing to improve my dating track record. I decided it was time to venture to a little visited section of my bookshelf: The Self-Help section.

Now, apart from one exception (Women Who Worry) I have never bought a self-help book – but I have been given rather a lot of them over the years. Quite what this says about me I do not wish to imagine, but the two books I grabbed for Friend Who Knows Big Words to peruse were Stop Getting Dumped and She’s Scared He’s Scared: Understanding The Commitment Issues That Sabotage Your Relationships. The former is quite frankly the crappest book I have EVER read and was given to me by an ex work colleague 7 years ago. When I first got it, I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek look at dating, offering hilarious advice at how to get through the minefield that is relationships. But then I realised it was completely serious, shut it immediately and it’s been gathering dust ever since.

This book says things like ‘Get your hair done and look nice at all times’ and ‘To stop yourself from sleeping with someone on a first date, wear skanky pants and leave your legs hairy’ – which one is it? Look great or skanky? Or is it ‘Look great on the surface but skanky underneath’?

It also says that you should never call a man (I don’t but still get dumped), never make the first move (I rarely do but still get dumped), and eat healthily and exercise (what the hell has that got to do with getting dumped?). After 30 hilarious minutes of reading this book last night, it got dumped… in my recycling bin. But the weirdest part is, it promises your money back if you’re not married in three years. What kind of scary marriage-obsessed people are being cultivated as a result of this book? It all sounds like a lot of manipulation to me.

The other book, the commitment one, was given to me by French Aunt. She knows me well. She knows my commitment issues – I can rarely commit to myself, let alone anyone else, and actually this book might have something useful in it. But I can’t commit to it right now, so that is the end of that.

I think the thing is with me is that I don’t take dating seriously, nor do I think that dating should be taken seriously. I mean, the idea of making finding a man a project HORRIFIES me! It goes against every stubborn strain of independence in my body, and that’s from a girl who still has her childhood teddy bear!

I’m not going to actively go out there and seek Mister Right, because if I do, I might accidentally shoehorn Mister Wrong into Mister Right’s erm… shoes. I don’t actively go out looking to make friends and yet, I’ve done OK in that I’ve made some excellent ones, in the most unexpected places. And what’s also interesting was that when I met those friends for the first time, I didn’t instantly decide we were going to be best friends, nor did we share the intimate secrets that we now do. It’s a slow process. And I think the same should apply to falling in love.

Don’t get me wrong though, I have friends who work very successfully from self-help books – I am sometimes envious of the fact it works for them – but these books just don't seem to suit my personality. I want to kick against them in the same way as a teenager you wanted to kick against well-meaning advice from your school guidance counseller – when mine told me to have smaller ambitions on account of my deafness, I certainly kicked against that.

What's more, I don’t want to know why some men can’t love or why men are from Mars and women are from Venus. I am interested in the now – and there’s probably some self-help book about that that I should read – but I am not going to.

I don't doubt that there is most certainly a nice guy out there somewhere who I could probably date quite successfully without freaking out about whether I have enough room in my life for him. And in the meantime? I am here. I have my own life, my own friends, my own ambitions and my own dreams. If he rocks up somewhere along the way, then great – I hope he too has his own life, his own friends, his own ambitions and his own dreams. And if he doesn’t show up? Well I don’t want a self-help book to tell me how to deal with that. I just will.

Lack of captions/subtitles on iTunes

Over Christmas I downloaded an app for my iPhone called The 12 Days of Christmas, which promised a free download for 12 days from Boxing Day onwards.

Great! Huh?

Wrong!

OK, so there have been some good free music tracks but there has also been three unsubtitled TV shows/movies that are useless to me!

I don't understand what the deal with Apple and iTunes and its lack of subtitles. I mean, it's an American company. I thought that it was even more compulsory to be disability aware in the USA than it is here... no?

I have actually written to the iTunes peeps about this several times but have had no reply, which is not surprising but is frustrating.

Google searches tell me that there are ways to now embed your own subtitles into things, but I don't understand how this works and my head starts spinning like it used to do in maths GCSE whenever I look into it.

And the thing is, if the general public are able to do this – technophobe me excluded – then why can't a massive corporation like Apple full of technical experts sort this out?

It frustrates me when companies think they are doing OK in terms of making their services great for people with disabilities and are not open to improvement or change. I'm not saying this is true of Apple, but iTunes is eight years old this year and as far as I'm aware subtitles have been around a whole lot longer so I do wonder why it hasn't done anything yet.

My latest search revealed there was one new release subtitled movie on iTunes – Knight & Day with Tom Cruise in it – and that is it!

Why is it possible to subtitle this one and none of the others?

Apple is missing out on a huge market here. I mean my lack of ability to make conversation in cars and on any form of transport means I often look to my phone for a way of passing the time. If I could download subtitled stuff for it, well I'd spend a whole lot more money and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people would too.

I’ve hit a brick wall with this. I do not know where to go to get answers, or even if there are any. Why aren’t movies subtitled on iTunes? Is it because it’s too expensive?

And that is what I’m going to find out!

Happy New Year from Deafinitely Girly

Today is my first day back to work after the long Christmas break, and the vibration of my alarm clock was the most unwelcome wake-up call ever at 7am.

It's been a strange Christmas – taking the failed ski holiday into account and MPA-boy's departure – but there have also been some amazing times, too.

On Christmas Day, Nottnum Uncle made Christmas dinner for The Rents, me and Gma and we did traditional things like watching the Queen's speech and falling asleep on the sofa.

I also got to welcome 2011 into the world with the Singing Swede, GBman, Guitar Boy and his wife, which for me included making my first cheesecake, of which I ate most of it!!

We made our resolutions and one of mine is to learn how to play the guitar – Guitar Boy has very kindly offered to lend me one of his to get me started – and another is to be true to my heart and go after what I want, not what I think I want.

Then on Sunday, SuperCathyFragileMystic and The Photographer called in unannounced, and after a quick chat they cancelled their plans to drive to the Wild West Erm... Country and we had a veritable feast of roast duck, mashed potato and champagne by the bottleful – three bottles full to be exact!

It was the most wonderfully fabulous evening of hilarity, which made yesterday's incredible hangover totally worth it.

The Singing Swede joined me on the sofa for a SATC marathon and I arranged dinner with Fab Friend for this week and text chatted to NikNak who saw in the new year by giving birth to the very gorgeous Baby K!

All in all, I feel ready to face 2011. Not because I feel particularly happy or joyous right now, but because I feel blessed! Blessed by the amazing people in my life.

A sentimental way to start 2011? Yes. But never fear, Deafinitely Girly will be back in force tomorrow.

Happy New Year peeps!

Merry Christmas from Deafinitely Girly

Today is Thankful Friday. It is also Christmas Eve and this blog should be coming from the snowy mountains of France. But it is not because I am not in France for Christmas, I am at The Rents’ house.

After trying and failing to leave the country twice, and watching in amazement as the other London airports shipped happy Christmas travellers out with little delay, I have absolutely nothing but scathing criticism of Heathrow and British Airways.

Both companies, are in my opinion, utterly rubbish, and the way the snow fiasco was handled was atrocious. I was so vocal about this on Twitter that I nearly ended up on the BBC Breakfast sofa with Sian and Bill to talk about my failed Christmas plans, but honestly, not going skiing pales into insignificance compared with the people who have children stuck in America on choir tours, or those in limbo in the UK with no family at all and just a yellow plastic cot for company on the floor of the airport terminal. The main sad thing was that Big Bro and French Aunt were meant to be meeting us there and obviously that didn’t happen.

*sniff

So with no holiday, that we’d spent a year planning, it was time to think positive. London Aunt and Cousins had lots of parties and Christmas offers in their street, so it was decided that we’d have an early Christmas dinner together on Wednesday and then The Rents and I would return home and spend Christmas Day with Gma and Nottnum Uncle. Hurrah!

Being in my Rents’ tiny snowed-in village also means I get to go to the village Church talent contest, a yearly event held on Christmas Eve. It’s not really a talent contest, it’s actually meant to be a carol service, but it’s usually filled with local kids singing hopelessly out of tune who are secretly thinking they’re at an X Factor audition not a tiny church service. It’s the most unreligious thing I’ve ever been to, and every year I promise myself I won’t go back. But, just as I watch the X Factor auditions with a strange curiosity, so once again am I lured back to the village Christmas talent show.

What we also have planned is drinks with my Rents lovely neighbours, who, on hearing that we wouldn’t be going away for Christmas snuck into our house and put up a fully-decorated Christmas tree. Ma was quite sad that the house wasn’t going to be decorated so it was a lovely surprise for her to find a tree sat in the living room!

So this year Christmas isn’t quite what I was expecting, but it’s still going to be fab. Now all that’s left to do is wish you a very Merry Christmas from Deafinitely Girly; I’m just off to raid the Quality Street tin.

Today, I'm thankful for Muddle

Today is Thankful Friday. It is also my last working day before Christmas.

Today I am thankful that I had a woman named Muddle in my life. I knew her for 24 years this month. Today is her funeral – Ma and Pa are going, but as it’s my last day of work, I cannot be there to say goodbye.

I will miss her, but I’m very grateful she got to see my lovely flat earlier in October – ‘You’ve done well!’ she told me as I gave her the guided tour – and that we shared the fabulous adventure of Big Bro’s wedding, where I commandeered The Rent’s Renault Espace home from the airport after Pa demolished his face on the bar over breakfast and had to have his nose put back together in Clogland.

She was amazing then, and she was amazing right from when I was 6 years old. I remember I used to help her plant the new bulbs in her incredible garden, share endless chats over cups of tea, take walks on the common, and there’s no forgetting the foggy drive up the hill from the school disco with Jenny M. She was also amazing at offering me her kitchen table for exam revision, keeping me fed and watered as I worked in the quiet peace of her house. It became something of a tradition – yearly exams, GCSEs, A-levels, I often found myself at Muddle's house.

For two years or there abouts, she used to collect Big Bro and me from school, bombing up the hills in her little red Peugeot, yelling at drivers who she felt were in the wrong and zooming this way and that. Whenever I find myself refusing to give way on a narrow road, I always think of Muddle, and her gung-ho driving – it was incredible.

It’s strange when someone who had such a big part in your life leaves it. I mean, I didn’t see her as much after I moved to London as she was in the Wild West erm… Country, but she still rang me on my birthday every year and we kept in touch through The Rents, as I found her tricky to hear on the phone.

But then there are the moments when I think, I should have popped in to see her more often on the way back from Jenny M’s, or, if only I had sent out my birthday thank you cards sooner – she died the week I wrote and stamped, but forgot to post her letter. There are so many what ifs, that you could tie yourself in knots.

But then I just remind myself that Muddle was not one for what ifs. She was one for now. She did 20 years without the love of her life and died right beside the little urn she kept his ashes in while trying to break to ice on her pond to let the fish breathe. She died as eccentrically as she lived. And if she knew I was feeling sad today, she’d chide me, give me a stale Jammy Dodger and weak tea and a waist hug, as I outgrew her when I was about 10 years old.

What I wouldn’t give for one more hug from Muddle. One more batty road trip. One more reminisce with her.

Life is short when you meet someone who is already 60 years older than you. So grab those people you love and tell them today. Make that phone call, post that letter, take that road trip, be the person with no regrets.

Be like Muddle, for as far as I can tell, she had none.

Deafinitely Girly and the coatstand part 2

I have sad news. Last night my coat stand took matters into its own hands and threw it’s broken body on the floor, causing irreparable damage.

It was with a heavy heart that I found it lifeless on my hall carpet this morning, its shattered limbs lying beside it, veiled in a cloak of coats. ‘No more,’ it seemed to plead, ‘no more gaffer tape!’

So now I am stuck with what to do with this sentimentally-special coat stand that Pa bought for me from a strange little shop in Uxbridge nine years ago. To throw it out seems a tragedy, but perhaps it’s the coat stand that has decided its fate, not me.

This time, thankfully, I did not hear the bang as it fell, but I can assure you that the coat carnage that followed, means it definitely happened.

Perhaps I need fewer coats, less hats, and less scarves…

But with the weather like it is right now, I need all the layers I can get; even if at times I resemble a badly-wrapped pass the parcel.

Cold weather does other strange things to me – it makes me drink Lemsip instead of tea, chaps my bottom lip to what seems like beyond repair, and makes me anxious about travelling anywhere. One look The Daily Mail website today and I’d be sent flying over the edge into a chasm of insecurity about impending snow storms, terrorist attacks and doom with a capital D spreading throughout the country.

So today I will not be reading that website. Instead, I will be reading Damnyouautocorrect.com to cheer myself up, and chortling and chuckling away to myself at the wonderful text messages created by the naughty iPhone auto dictionary. Take a look yourself. From a dad telling his daughter he and her mother were going to divorce next month (the iPhone changed it from Disney) to a guy telling his mom he got arrested – instead of a rescue dog.

It’s the opposite of doom. It’s the perfect place for a spot of winter denial.

I’ll see you there, yeah? Otherwise, I’ll be on Habitat’s website looking for a new coat stand!

Not hearing song words

These days I tend to buy songs I like in dribs and drabs from iTunes, rather than purchasing whole albums.

It's the modern-day equivalent of rummaging in the singles bin in Woolworths hoping to find the one track you'd fallen in love with but was playing on the Top-40 countdown on the radio as you were recording it and your tape ran out.

I remember those days. I remember buying Fast Forward magazine and Smash Hits so I could learn the lyrics to Kylie songs, and my first ever favourite song: I Am The One Only by Chesney Hawkes. The latter lyrics were pinned up on my bedroom cupboard door for weeks as I learnt them off by heart.

Now I rarely go in search of lyrics. However, I do have a handy iPhone application that finds the lyrics of the song that is currently playing on my iPod. This is great because when I like a new song, I can discover whether I like the lyrics as well as the melody.

But recently, something very odd has been occurring. I keep liking songs for the melody and then discover that they actually have relevant lyrics, too.

Take last night for example, when I downloaded The Only Exception by Paramore and discovered that I liked the lyrics more than the tune. To put it fluffily: they spoke to me.

Is this how it has always been for hearing peeps?

Until modern technology made lyrics readily available to me, I had no idea that lyrics were relevant at all. I used to make up my own – especially to Kylie – or just hum along to the base line of the music.

Being moderately musical when I was at school, my music teacher gave me the job one term of choosing songs for assemblies. But like I said, at that age, I had no real concept of lyrics, it was all about the music. So I happily played the strangest songs infront of the whole school and teaching staff, with some including swear words (my brother’s INXS album) and goodness knows what else.

Needless to say, this job did not last the term and I was relegated to putting the hymn numbers up on the board. And after a very unsuccessful day where they all fell down one by one during the assembly leaving everyone desperately thumbing through their hymn books looking for One More Step Along The World I Go, I was further relegated to cataloguing the music departments CD collection – something that I actually, in all my geeky splendour, enjoyed.

People who write lyrics I like are still few and far between. Regina Spektor is one of my favourites – her dry take on the world, coupled with her fabulously throaty voice is quite something to behold. While Manu Chao, on translation, gives me lyrics that befuddle my brain!

And then, not long ago I found a recording of a song that I had written as part of a week-long drama project I took part in when I was about 16. It was about a blind optician. It was terrible. It was also slightly bizarre that as a deaf person I wrote a song about a blind optician – an optician who cannot see, that’s surely as strange as a deaf songwriter isn’t it?!

The best deaf table in the house

Last night Fab Friend came to stay with me and we had a pre-Christmas catch up over a Tunisian supper. It was brilliant to see her, and I miss her lots now she doesn't live in London anymore.

As I said, we decided to try a Tunisian place for dinner that has very good reviews online. We got there and it was already quite busy and we were asked if we had a reservation. We didn't but were seated at a table in the candle-lit section at the front of the restaurant.

Five minutes later the owner came over and said that two people with a reservation had specifically requested a table at the front of the restaurant, and would we mind moving to the back.

We duly did and found ourselves in a better lit, quieter area, right by a radiator! This was perfect for us, as it meant we could both hear a lot better as there was little or no background noise. We then got to feast on tagine with chicken and apricots (Fab Friend) and a lentil one for me while nattering away in peace and quiet.

Hurrah!

It’s funny how what most people love for a night out – dimly lit, intimate places – can be tricky for deaf peeps like Fab Friend and I who rely largely on lipreading. As a result, we both have an impeccable knowledge of well-lit bars and restaurants in London and are adding to it all the time.

And the next time I go to this Tunisian restaurant? Well, I'm requesting a table at the back! It's the best deaf table in the house as far as I'm concerned!

Deafinitely Girly's (un)smashing time

Deafinitely Girly had an even scarier awakening this morning when I found that during the night, someone had thrown a potato though my window, smashing it to smithereens. Naturally, I heard nothing!

Bleery eyed, I walked into the lounge to find the offending spud sat on the carpet, in several pieces and glass everywhere.

*sniff

But the weirdest thing was, in my morning haze, I had no idea what to do. Was this a matter for the police? Who mends windows? Was there an intruder in my house? With a little help from texting people in the know, I answered these questions – the last one by looking at the size of the hole and realising that if there was a burglar that size then I could surely take him on, with or without my hot water bottle – and got to work sorting out the mess.

This unsurprisingly required a whole bunch of phone calls. The first one saw me hanging up in horror at a quote of £220, to simply board up my window. The second saw me hanging up when I couldn’t understand a word the person at the other end was saying, and the third, well that saw me speaking to a lovely man who came around 15 minutes later and fixed the whole thing in under an hour for £100.

OK, so that’s £100 I really could have done with spending on something else, but at least I sorted it out – I just hope they don’t come back tonight with the rest of the sack of spuds.

It’s amazing how one bout of thoughtlessness has led to me being out of pocket isn’t it? I wonder what the person was thinking as they sent the potato hurtling towards my house – was it intended to smash the window, or just wake me up?

All pointless questions in the grand scheme of things, but it’s something I can’t help wondering.

But onto bigger things – tomorrow I have another day off as Jenny M is coming to stay. Chic Chick is getting married and Jenny M asked me to go as her plus one! It should be a fabulously chic affair and I can’t wait.

The wedding is in central London, too, which I think is great. The last London wedding I went to was London Aunt and Uncle’s and we all went from the church to the reception on a double-decker bus! I’m very excited to see what Chic Chick has planned for her big day.

But for now, it’s time for lunch. And I quite fancy a jacket potato with tuna, rather than a side portion of shattered living room window this time!

Deafinitely Girly and the coatstand

Deafinitely Girly had a very scary awakening this morning. While lying in bed, hitting snooze on my alarm clock for the 30th time, I heard a thud, and my bedroom door flew open.

Naturally I jumped out of bed and grabbed the first weapon I could find to defend myself – a hot water bottle – and saw the assailant peering around the door: my beloved antique bentwood coat stand.

Ok so hot water bottle versus coat stand, who would win?!

Seriously though, I have got to get better at this DIY lark, because I fix and fix that coat stand and still it breaks, falling over, coats akimbo, like a drunken idiot.

This latest repair job, I admit is not one of my better ones. After it broke last week – on me, while I was vacuuming under it – I lost patience. Once I had scrambled out from under a snood or three, I kind of taped it together with some extra-strong grey tape Blanco had bought when we ripped up my floor, and added some metal brackets for what I now realise was pointless measure.

This repair job on my coatstand, as I discovered when it rudely burst into my bedroom this morning – possibly in protest to being taped together with wall brackets – was not going to work very well.

Anyway, today is part of a very short working week for me. I had Monday off and I have Friday off, too. My last long weekend was a wonderful mixture of lots of my favourite people including SuperCathyFragileMystic and The Photographer who came to tea with my favourite dog in the whole world, Blackberry, and then Gingerbread Man and the Singing Swede, who came for roast dinner on Sunday night.

This was coupled with celebrating London Cousin 1’s 11th birthday and buying a Christmas tree. It all got a bit Little Women as the five of us: London Aunt, London Cousins 1 and 2, Miss C and me marched down the street with our tree, before decorating it to the sound of Christmas carols.

And then on Monday, after a busy day of writing for Superdrug and doing not very much, I saw BIL (MPA boy) whose blog name is still work in progress. Suffering from the effects of a very energetic stag weekend, he was in a bit of pain, but we had a most fabulous catch up. And I’m very much looking forward to the next one.

One giant leap for Deafinitely Girly

Yay! Snow has descended on west London with gusto, and I was greeted by a winter wonderland scene on peeping through my blinds this morning.

So far, everything seems to be working too. My bus worked this morning, the main roads are clear and even the underground is chug chug chugging along.

I do love snow – for me, it is the visual equivilent of silence. OK, maybe not London snow, but country snow seems to mute everything visually. There are no cars to see, no birds to watch, people are huddled indoors, and right now, very few planes are in the sky either. It’s visually silent.

That’s one of the reasons I love the mountains. They are quiet too – both visually and aurally. I am not missing out on anything. And when I need to hear things, I can, because they’re not drowned out by anything.

I also have a very exciting update – my day of stressful phone calls paid off yesterday and I have sorted out my travel insurance/endoscopy issue, all by myself. Well, nearly by myself anyway. When the hospital phoned back last night, I had to hand them over the Gym Buddy so she could take down a phone number I need to call – yes another phone call – but I nearly did something completely on the phone.

This is a massive achievement for me, and it’s proof that my ‘Be brave and use the phone when you absolutely have to’ resolution is actually working. While I know that the phone is not something I can use all the time, it is nice to know that I can get better at using it. And because I am panicking less, I am able to piece together the sounds I can hear more calmly and therefore take a better guess at may be occurring at the other end.

It’s like I used to be doing a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded, but now I am doing a jigsaw puzzle without my glasses on… does that make sense?

Hmmm probably not. But to me it does.

It also makes me happy. Making a successful phone call might be a tiny step for hearing peeps, but it’s a giant step for Deafinitely Girly, and I feel quite proud of myself.

*hums happily and heads out to lunch

My day of phone calls

Phew, what a compulsory phone call headache today has been.

You see, I need to buy some travel insurance for my Christmas holidays, and until last year, this was as easy as 1-2-3 on Boots.com and hello Advantage Cards points.

Throw Crohn’s into the mix as well as (gasp) surgery and suddenly I’m more expensive to insure than a prize racehorse travelling by land from England to Australia, unrestrained in the back of a pick-up truck, via every war-torn country possible.

I kid you not – it costs more to insure me for my holiday than it does to insure my house for the whole year. And my house is over 200 years old!

This does not seem fair.

So anyway, I tried doing it online, but in the end, I had to bite the bullet and lift the phone. This was alright, until the complicated questions, when the poor lady at the other end literally had to say each word in her sentence 20 times until I got the gist of what she was saying.

And then, I made the mistake of declaring that I had not had the results of my capsule endoscopy.

*Ping

That’ll be another £40 please.

So, to try and get rid of this, I had to lift the phone and ring my hospital. This involved lots of options and a recorded voice so high it left my frequency frequently. But honestly, I think only dogs could hear her at the point anyway.

Eventually I got through to the probably very busy endoscopy department and had to sheepishly ask them to find the results of my capsule endoscopy so I could go skiing. Honestly, I felt like such a princess, but they were absolutely lovely about it, had no clue what the results are, and are calling me back… I hope.

I honestly do not know how people make phone calls all the time – it is so stressful and half the time I come off the phone with little or no idea about what just happened, which when it comes to insurance, is never a good thing.

In an ideal world, one day, all these companies would have an instant messenger service for people like me, so that we could chat easily about what I wanted and it would all be there as instantly as a phone call would be for hearing peeps. But then you have fraud issues and what not, so I can understand why this doesn’t exist yet.

It seems however, that the obvious thing is to simply not get anything else wrong with me – especially not something that causes those online health questionnaires to crash the moment I type my condition into them. So, Body, if you’re listening, ‘Crohn’s and deafness are quite enough for the moment, thank you. That will be all.’

DG

Deafinitely Girly's rant

It's 7am and I've just got on a bus to go to work, because the tube strike means if I don't leave now, I risk being late on the busiest day of the year at work so far. It's deadline day, there's so much to do, and something like a tube strike could put a complete spanner in the works.

It makes me cross when the tube peeps strike. So cross that what sympathy I could have had for their plight has evaporated in a 5.50am alarm call and freezing cold morning. Do they think they're alone in facing hardships and unfair working conditions right now? Are the people being asked to pay back their bonuses striking? Are the people who've seen no payrise for three years striking? No! Are the people facing redundancies as a result of the natural evolution of technology striking? Yes it would seem so. Because that's what they're striking about isn't is? The oyster card rendering their services obsolete? Technology will always win, no matter how hard we try and fight it. I mean, I sure do miss bus conductors... but it would be a waste of money if we still had them now, wouldn't it?

This is not a good way to start what was always going to be a hellish Monday anyway. Even the promise of a party tonight isn't cheering me up, as I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get home from it.

Its Christmas soon, everything is going to break because of the snow this week anyway. Couldn't they have just given us some respite for one day?

Perhaps I should have some sympathy, perhaps I am being selfish in wanting London to actually work for just one day. But really, life is a bitch. Bad things do happen. Not everything can be exactly the way we want it to be.

Of course, I have never had to walk in the shoes of the people who are striking, so perhaps I don’t know the full story. But what I do know, is that London cannot continue like this. From the top to the bottom, people need to get the acts together. Things are changing. People need to change, too. Economically, climately, and socially. Something needs to change, or we’re just going to become a pointless mass of people clinging to how things used to be, and forgetting that the way things used to be didn’t work either.

I don’t have the power to change things myself, but I do have the power to keep working, keep paying my taxes, keep being a decent human being, and if we all do that, us little people at the bottom, and then the people at the top do the decent thing too, maybe it could work…

And maybe there’ll be a flypast of pigs this afternoon, too.

Just maybe…

Me and Deafinitely Girly

I’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t had time to write my daily updates – I miss it because it’s strangely therapeutic. I also love it when people leave comments on my blog, letting me know they’ve been in similar situations to the ones I’ve written about.

One of my recent favourites has been from Dee, on my Quackers post here. She let me know that she once vacuumed the driver footwell of her car with her head pressing against the car horn without realising and caused the whole neighbourhood to come dashing out and see what the ruckus was…

This made me chuckle lots, and I also realised that walking down the street with a clucking handbag is not the end of the world. Neither is being too busy to blog every now and again, but I just worry, that if I don’t, I will miss this wonderful interaction from people across the world.

It is amazing how through Deafinitely Girly, I’ve encountered so many new people. From Speak Up Librarian, who I actually met when she was in London on holiday to a guy who emailed me this week to ask if he could include my blog in his college essay. It always makes me realise, when I feel isolated or alone because I miss out on general group chitchat or long gossipy phone calls, that I’m really not. There is this whole world out there that I can communicate with daily through Deafinitely Girly, email and text.

I love being Deafinitely Girly because she’s helped me learn to love me – the real me. The me, who before I started to blog, would have a 6-monthly wobble about being deaf, accompanied by lots of feeling sorry for myself and sentences beginning with ‘If I wasn’t deaf…’

She was the girl that often used to say either out loud or in her mind, ‘I can’t do that because I’m deaf’ and quite often that was just an excuse really. And she was the girl that wasn’t quite sure of her worth as a person in relation to her disability.

When I look back at how I was pre-Deafinitely Girly, I barely recognise myself. I was a different person.

I have a lot to thank this pink-mad, girly, ditzy, and quite frankly a little bit bonkers alter ego for really, because she brought me back to life.

My hearing's gone QUACKERS!

Last night, I went to Gym Buddy’s for dinner. In the car on the way there, she said to me, ‘I’m sure I can hear a buzzing noise coming from your bag…’

As I was holding my iPhone at the time, I was at a loss as to what it might be. ‘I don’t think I have any other vibrating things in my bag,’ I replied.

The taxi driver raised an eyebrow.

Over the course of the journey, the noise continued (inaudible to me) and Gym Buddy seemed more and more baffled.

On arrival at hers, it was so dark she couldn’t see the keyhole, so I pulled out my keys as on them is a little torch in the shape of a duck…

When you squeeze it, it lights up. But it also quacks – inaudibly to me!

‘That’s it!’ said Gym Buddy. ‘Thats the noise! I thought I was going crazy as I did think it sounded like a duck quacking!’

‘Did you think you were going quackers?’ I asked, finding the whole thing very amusing.

Until...

...I had the realisation that this duck torch has been in my handbag for at least two weeks!

That’s two whole weeks of wandering around with a quacking handbag I can’t hear.

What must people have thought as I quacked along the pavement, on bus journeys and eek, everywhere?!

*cringe!

So moving swiftly on, I also have some other extremely exciting news. I bought a digital radio. Now, radio is not much used to me in terms of hearing voices and wotnot, but I do love listening to Heart, Capital, Classic FM for the music side of things. I don’t know what I can’t hear, but deafinitely enjoy what I do.

So anyway, I have never really used a normal radio before as people always complain that I’ve not got it tuned in and they can hear loads of crackling, and while this doesn’t bother me, it’s just meant that in the past I have naturally gravitated towards the safety of CDs.

But the lure of an Orla Kiely Digital Radio was too much for me, and so I gathered together all my birthday money, shook out my piggy bank and got counting until I had enough.

And last night was my first night with a radio in my house for ooh, about 20 years… and I LOVE IT!

The digital tuning means I have a perfect reception without and fiddly knob twiddling(!) and I also have more cheese available to me than I could wish for… with a little bit of Arrow Rock thrown in for good measure.

OK, so there’s a lot of talking that means nothing to me, but then, in every day life there’s a lot of that, too. And seeing as my radio is incredibly pretty, I vote it can stay!!!!

A very busy weekend…

Well, well, what a lovely weekend I had with Onion Soup Mate!

On Saturday we got up early and headed to the Natural History Museum, where we spent two hours looking at things that were so old, it was almost incomprehensible. My favourite non-extinct thing was the Pink Fairy Armadillo – a very cute fluffy thing. Onion Soup Mate reckoned that if I was an animal, that’s what I’d be – tough on the outside, soft on the inside… not far off I guess!

Then, after a chilly lunch on a bench in Hyde Park, we decided to go to The Museum of London, which is over near St Paul’s Cathedral – but to make it a bit more interesting, we opted to walk it, with me giving Onion Soup Mate a guided tour on the way.

We wandered through Mayfair, stopping to watch an anti-war protest amble by, through Soho, which included the folly house in Soho Square, along Holborn, which was so quiet and past Chancery Lane, before finally arriving at the museum.

I have to say, this place is amazing. It documents London from before there was a London, and there was even the fossilised skeleton of a woolly rhinoceros, which apparently used to be a native!

But best of all? I found Gma’s lifts! You see, aged 14, Gma worked in Selfridges and I love hearing about her experiences in London then. The other day when we were chatting and she asked me if Selfridges still had the amazing gold lifts. After a lunchtime check, I confirmed they didn’t. And the reason why is because they’re in the Museum of London, and rather amazing they are too – kind of Egyptian style with beautiful illuminations.

Although I did feel a bit sheepish reporting back to Gma that I had indeed found her lifts, but in museum!

By Saturday night, Onion Soup Mate and I were exhausted, so Sunday was a more sedate affair of coffee and cake in an unwisely chosen cafe full of children. When I loudly exclaimed about the noise they were making, Onion Soup Mate cracked up, recognising that if I thought they were loud, then they must be.

Then last night I had a lovely time with BIL. We went to a little pub on the river and caught up, chatted and stuff…

…and now it is Monday. Yesterday seems a week ago and tomorrow seems a lifetime away.

Better just get on with it, eh?

Working on my phone manner

Sorry I've been a bit quiet this week peeps, it's been a mental one if I'm honest that's seen me so tired I actually forgot to set my alarm clock yesterday…

But, today is Thankful Friday and I am very thankful that Onion Soup Mate is coming to visit from the Wild West erm… Country. Although she came up for my birthday, I don't feel as though I really saw her much so it will be nice to have a good girly gossip together.

I am also thankful for people in my life who are honest with me. I mean, let's face it, there's a lot of times where people just aren't. This frustrates me, particularly as my grip on body language means I can often tell if someone is lying.

A random example is yesterday in my dance class. A new person was there who claimed never to have Zumba'd before. Bit while claiming this, her body language screamed out fake shyness, and she proceeded to nail routines left, right and centre.

At first, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but when she was asked a second time if she was a complete beginner, her smugness gave her away.

Jealous much? Well, seeing as, after four months of Zumba, I still resemble a drugged-up newborn foal, perhaps. But honestly, would it have been so hard for her to tell the truth?

Anyway, the third thing I am thankful for this morning is my growing confidence on the phone – although that doesn't mean I'm hearing any better! But I have decided to be bold when my mobile rings and answer it.

And yesterday, I got that chance. But before answering, I googled the number to make sure it wasn't one of those terrible market research companies. It wasn't, but it was a Glasgow number, so I braced myself for a Scottish accent.

Naturally, there was one, and so I listened to the guy’s spiel for a few minutes, picking up one word, Halifax.

Now, I have a mortgage with Halifax so I therefore wanted to make sure all was OK.

Once he had finished jabbering away, I explained my deafness and asked him to repeat what he had just said slowly and more clearly. He took a deep breath and started again, at exactly the same pace as before.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘can I just stop you there. Is this about my mortgage?’

‘No,’ he replied

‘Are you trying to sell me something?’ I then enquired.

‘Yes,’ he answered, almost sheepishly.

‘I'm terribly sorry,’ I responded. ‘Being deaf, I never buy anything over the phone. But thank you so much for calling.’

And just like that, he was gone. How easy was that? No stressing all day about who that unanswered call was from. No worrying that it was something to do with my mortgage. And no getting frustrated. I felt so good about the whole thing, that it was almost as though I wasn’t deaf.

After 30 years, I’ve finally realised that I too can work on my phone manner. Work out how best to decipher exactly what is going on at the other end of the phone so I can get rid of them as soon as possible.

However, seeing as my phone only rings about once a month, it would appear I have rather a long time until I can practise this again. Ah well…

The alarm on my bus goes Wa-Wa-Wa

Wow, today the bus I am travelling on has an alarm on the doors to signal that they are closing.

Tell me, do all buses have this?

I have no idea if all buses have this because I have never heard one before.

Today, however, I am sat on the top deck directly above the back doors of the bus, and sure enough, I can hear a kind of low siren thing whenever we stop at a bus stop.

It's most odd to be able to hear it. In fact, I nearly got up to leave the first time I heard it as I thought it was some sort of emergency alarm.

It never ceases to amaze me how I hear things the randomest of things sometimes and yet when I pick up the phone, all I hear is gobbledygook... I guess this alarm must be just the right frequency for me or something.

I wonder what else I will hear today...

Fingers crossed it'll be something good.

Not hearing children

Today, it's absolutely freezing!!!!

I look like a Michelin Lady in all my layers, but I don't care, I'm warm!

Anyway, I had a brilliant weekend in the Wild West erm... Country with Penthouse Flatmate and First Uni Housemate. It was an early Christmas celebration, and, as Penthouse Flatmate now has three children, it was a very excitable one!

The eldest is my goddaughter and it was lovely to hear about how she's getting on at school and what her favourite things are... albeit with some translational help from the hearing peeps, as her lip patterns aren't quite there yet.

As I was struggling to understand her and her little brother, it made me wonder about how I will manage if I ever have any little people of my own...

I can't ask random strangers in the street, if I am out alone, to translate what my children are saying. But I guess, they'll only ever know me as being deaf, so they, and I, will accommodate that – most probably with signing.

On a plus side, I can't hear moaning and whining... so they will both be pointless tactics to try on me, and my clarity of understanding body language means I can tell a toddler who needs the loo a mile away!

But that's quite enough of that.

I have a busy week ahead. I am seeing Knows My Secrets and Friend Who Knows Big Words, and then on Friday, Onion Soup Mate is coming for the whole weekend. I can’t wait and am already planning lots of fun things we can do together.

But for now, it is Monday, and I have my day job to be getting on with… so I had better do just that!

Deafness in an emergency

Oh boy, Deafinitely Girly is tired today.

You see, last night, after unsuccessfully attempting the pub quiz with GBman and The Singing Swede, I returned home and settled down with a cup of tea and the contents of my digibox for half an hour before bed.

There was a weird noise occurring somewhere that I could just about hear, but I couldn’t pinpoint it, so I just carried on watching TV. Then my living room floor began to shake and I heard more strange noises… there was deafinitely a commotion coming from somewhere, but not hearing very well, I couldn’t work out where from. In fact, I really only had the vibrations of the floor to go on, and that wasn’t very helpful.

Then, I heard a serious of massive bangs – no mistaking these for anything else – and so I got up and looked out the window. There were two police cars, lights flashing and coppers jumping from them. The banging continued. My windows started to shake.

I came to the conclusion, given the noise, that they were battering next door’s front door in, so kept looking out the window, wondering what was going on. Another police car screeched down the road, followed by another, then another and another, until nine police cars littered the road – men in uniform propelling themselves from them before they’d even had a chance to come to a standstill, and then dashed to the house next door to mine.

By this point I was more than a little worried. And once the fire engine joined the melee, I decided I should probably go down and find out what the hell was going on. Terraced houses mean that I shared at least one of my walls with the commotion that was going on, and if they were going to have to start battering down anything else, I wanted to know.

Once outside in the dark, I flagged down the most gorgeous policeman and asked him what the heck was going on. He sheepishly admitted that, on account of it being a quiet night, every bored copper in the place had responded to the call, which is why I had the entire Met police force in my road, and that no one was dead, but there had been a commotion.

You don’t say!

Two hours later, the final police car finally manoeuvred its way out of my street and it returned to its leafy quiet suburbia once again.

But it got me thinking about just how much I don’t hear and whether this is a help or a hindrance. I mean, if I had been able to hear the voices from next door, which almost certainly formed part of the commotion, would I have been more or less freaked out?

If I had been able to hear the nine police sirens descending upon my road this would have deafinitely freaked me out. But instead, I got to watch it all unfold in almost silent wonder, feeling only the vibrations of the door being kicked in and the low rev of engines.

It was like I was watching TV with the mute button on, with BBC-quality subtitles – meaning I had no clue what was going on.

And speaking of bad-quality subtitles – the other day, BBC Breakfast described Waterboarding as a form of totter and informed me that nine male passengers travel on the Eurostar every year!

Hmmmm, maybe I should give Daybreak a chance for a change…

Explaining my deafness to a toddler

Well, I had the most amazing weekend with the Family Clog and The Rents…

*signs wistfully

It was brilliant to see them all, and Mini and Micro Clog are both absolutely wonderful.

Mini Clog’s English is incredible and he had people on the bus aghast as he chatted to me in English before switching to Dutch for Maxi Clog and then back again.

Big Bro wanted to explain to Mini Clog about my deafness, too, so that he knew to look at me when he was talking – it’s frustrating being 3 years old and having a grown-up ignore you, after all.

And Big Bro came up with the most wonderful way of explaining it. He of course told Mini Clog I couldn’t hear, but then he also explained to him that I could tell what he was saying without him having to use his voice – he could just mouth things to me.

Mini Clog was very excited about this, and at the first opportunity he tried it out on me, and I passed with flying colours, with Mini Clog in fits of giggles about his Aunty DG knowing what he was saying. And of course, he wanted to try it for himself, so I mouthed something to him.

He replied a load of gibberish and there were lots more giggles all round – I was very impressed with Big Bro for his idea, and will deafinitely be using this explanation for other small children, as it really works – Mini Clog always made sure he faced me when he spoke from then on.

Now the Family Clog are back in Clogland, I miss them lots – I miss being called Aunty, I miss the toys decorating my carpet, and the amazing smiles that feel like they were just for me… I also miss Big Bro. We have so much to talk about – I need his Big Brotherly advice, and it works so much better in person. I hope to see him soon again soon…

*sniff

And in the meantime, I finally have a new iPhone (HURRAH), so once it’s synched with iTunes tonight and charged up, I will soon be reconnected on messenger with Big Bro and Tigger, back on regular email access, and tweeting about my bus journeys!

Bet you all can’t wait!

The Family Clog are coming to visit

Today is my first Thankful Friday as a 30 year old, and I am thankful that my first week of 30 has been OK!

Mostly, however, I am thankful that I have today off work to get my flat ready for some VIPs!!!! The whole Clog family are coming over from Clogland to see me: Big Bro, Maxi Clog, Mini Clog and Micro Clog – and I am very excited.

Mini Clog and Micro Clog have never been to London and apparently Mini Clog wants to go on a Double Decker – that of course can be arranged, and I have a whole lot of other transport ideas for him up my sleeve as they seem to be his favourite thing at the moment. Looks like I may have to conquer my fear of the tube if I’m going to show him that!

I am also excited to hear/lipread Mini Clog speak English – even though he’s only little, he’s fully bilingual in Clog and English, and Big Bro says he’s getting better all the time. It’s amazing to think that he’s growing up speaking two languages so efficiently.

When I think about Big Bro and his lovely family, I burst with pride. Although they live far away and I don’t see them that often, I find it so exciting that the person whose front teeth I once kicked out while doing a handstand on the stairs, the boy who crashed our joint car before I even learnt to drive, and the ultra cool kid in my school who all the girls in my year fancied, now has this incredible life and family.

And, while it’s incredibly different from my life, I can’t wait to show them all my flat, my London and what I get up to – minus the partying til dawn and dropping my iPhone down the loo. And even better? The Rents will be here, too!

Should be a good weekend...

Bring it on.

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!