Deaf Girly and subtitled LIVE iPlayer

OK, so regular readers will know how much I rant about lack of accessible content online. Things like out of time subtitle on a programme that aired two days ago and was pre-recorded – There's No Such Thing As The News – although to be fair, the @iPlayer peeps on Twitter were great at sorting that out.

Or subtitles that quite simply aren't there on some days – which is the case of my favourite Australian soap opera on Channel 5 – on writing to them, I was assured that these were problems that they hoped to iron out in the future.

I've got around the live TV problem at home with a clever dongle in the back of our computer which then attaches to the TV arial and creates a primitive digibox service of sorts (And yes, we have a TV licence). It's good – although the sizing is sometimes wrong and the subtitles start in the middle of the screen and come out the other side, which is really quite distracting and tests your speed reading abilities.

However, the app for this gadget is only available on my log in for the computer so when FJM is logged in, he will live stream the BBC from iPlayer.

The other evening as I was making my salad for the following day's lunch, he had live BBC one on and I was watching along and laughing to a repeat of Mock The Week. I laughed along for about 10 minutes, while washing tomatoes, chopping chicken and putting a pan of quinoa to boil on the hob – yes that sounds unbelievably tw*tty but it's cheap and filling and I'm broke at the moment.

About halfway through the episode FJM and I looked at each other and had a sudden realisation – I WAS LAUGHING ALONG TO A PROGRAMME HE WAS STREAMING LIVE OVER iPLAYER... and it was then we both noticed the subtitles, which I had been reading for the last 15 minutes, without realising.

iPlayer went and got live streaming subtitles and I didn't now about it!

But that's awesome news right?

I had a look on the iPlayer website and sure enough it says:

'We’re also trialling subtitles on our live TV Channel streams. Currently, they’re only available in Flash and on our HD streams (so computer browsers only). We hope to improve the appearance and roll it out further over the coming months. Only our England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales (Nations) streams are HD capable. You can change region from the location selector at the bottom of the page.'

Amazing huh?

I always get incredibly excited about things like this because it means that new technology is arriving, people are finding affordable ways of incorporating it into existing services and hopefully a whole area of inaccessibility will soon become accessible.

So thank you iPlayer – thank you for leading the way. Please now tell all the other channels how you did it and let them do it, too. It's better to share after all, isn't it?

Happy Thursday peeps

DG

x

Deaf Girly and the cinema

Regular readers will know that I love going to the cinema but rarely go due to the lack of times and venues showing the movies I want with subtitles. And I know I am not alone in my plight.

Recently, I've been keeping quite erratic working hours which rather brilliantly means I've been able to attend the 3pm screenings of movies with subtitles, but with my working hours now returning to normal, I'm back to needing evening screenings. And they are rare as hens' teeth.

Like most of us, YourLocalCinema is my go-to website for subtitled showings and when the new movie Absolutely Fabulous arrived on the big screen, I was desperate to go. The first week, there were no showings local to me – or at a time I could make.

I tweeted Vue to ask whether they would be showing any subtitled showings of Ab Fab and to be fair, they were great at getting back to me. They asked me where I wanted to go, and I chose a massive cinema complex, thinking that the many screens would mean at least one could be given over to subtitles for the evening.

And they tweeted back to let me know that there was as subtitled screening at 6.45pm in the evening one day this week. Who goes to the cinema at 6.45pm? Who runs out of work at breakneck speed and legs it, without a drink or any time for dinner to sit through a two hour movie?

Well apparently, cinemas think that deaf people do. But not this deaf person. All I want is to go to the cinema in the evening. About 8pm or later, so I've got time to come home from work, have a bite to eat, buy some extremely calorific snacks and head off to see a movie with FJM. A proper date night. An evening out.

And so, while staking out the YourLocalCinema website, I have finally found a cinema that has put on a showing at a civilised 'date time' – that's not a mad dash from work, and that will hopefully sell calorific snacks in abundance.

Hopefully this week will be the week I get to watch Absolutely Fabulous. More than two weeks after it opened at cinemas. Hopefully it will be Absolutely Fabulous.

• This blog first appeared on the new Hearing Times blogger site. Register for free and check out the other brilliant Hearing Times content at HearingTimes.co.uk

Deaf Girly and the tax man Part 2

I am now in year three of doing my self assessment for HMRC – having never done this before in my life, I liken my capabilities to that of a Year 3 school child, but one that needs extra coaching at every turn.

When I decided to quit my job, rent out my flat, become and au pair and write a book, I didn't envisage that the most stressful thing in all that would be filing my yearly tax return. Oof, the paperwork, oof the maths, oof the organisation of keeping everything in a folder so that you don't drop any figures, receipts, numbers or important details that might risk one of those very stressful letters from the HMRC saying they're investigating your self assessment.

Year one of my self assessment was a complete success. Why? Because I discovered – via one of my amazing Twitter pals – that you can email HMRC and organise a face-to-face appointment with them at a nearby location to your home address.

So this was what I did – read all about that here. And a patient man talked me through all those boxes I needed to fill in, all the things I needed to say yes or no to and then explained why I wailed at him, why I had to put MORE money on account after having just paid my tax bill.

Last year I thought, hey, I got this so didn't bother to organise a one-to-one and tried to answer all my own questions myself, which obviously was never going to go well seeing as those little question mark blobs on the self assessment form are about as much use as a chocolate teapot – only less edible.

I filled in everything and hit send. And I got a tax rebate. Marvellous eh?

Until three weeks ago when one of those very unmarvellous letters turned up saying my tax return had rung alarm bells and they thought I owed them quite a bit of money complete with interest and a rather nice fine for my stupidity.

And it turns out that the tax man is rarely (most likely never) wrong.

So after parting with ALL my money – bye bye summer holiday – I fired of an email to the peeps at HMRC to request a meeting regarding this year's tax return and also so I could ask them just how I stuffed up so incredibly on last years. And also to ask whether they would consider waving the fine – I figured the last one couldn't hurt right?

Within 20 minutes I had a reply. Within one hour, I had an appointment confirmed for just five days later. And yesterday, I made the short 15 minute journey to the serviced office where the HMRC man awaited me... and my file of paperwork, and my slight hysteria over self assessment.

He was brilliant. He checked my file and confirmed that my prompt payment of my outstanding balance meant that my additional fine had been waived! HURRAH! He talked me through just what I'd done wrong. He went through all my many printouts and details and answered all my questions far more efficiently than those little clickable question marks and I left with a near complete tax return and the reassurance that there was NO black mark against my name for last year's stuff up.

And so today, I filed my self assessment for 2015/2016 and parted with yet more money. But hopefully with the confidence that I will not have to part with any more money after this or get one of those letters again.

I can't recommend this service enough. It doesn't take the place of an accountant if you have a complicated self assessment set up. It doesn't take the place of learning how to do it yourself. But what it does do is provide the same support that you'd get at the end of the phone if you were a hearing person. But without the tinny hold music and endless wait to speak to someone, which I think means that deaf peeps have a better access option than hearing peeps don't they?

Happy Wednesday peeps

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and 4th July

Eighteen years ago today, two of my favourite people got married. On Independence Day. The very best date for those two people.

It was amazing. It was hot and sunny. Everyone was happy.

And I played my flute during the signing of the register. It was one of the last times I played my flute in public. And it was definitely the best time.

Sometimes you live specific days and don't realise the significance of them at the time. That day is one of them.  A day where everyone was happy. Even Pa who got more than a couple of parking tickets on his car. Even the happy couple who could have paid for their honeymoon with the bill for the cigars. And even the guests who had to sit through the most insane 15 minutes of interpretive singing ever.

Happy Anniversary you two. I love you.

DG
x

Deaf Girly and the whistling

If there's one thing I know I deafinitely cannot hear, it's whistling. And I know this because FJM whistles a lot and to me, it looks like he's pouting. His tunefulness is wasted on me.

But last night for some bizarre, unknown reason, I decided to try whistling as we were clearing up the kitchen before going to bed. I couldn't hear myself, but what I could feel was the sound vibrating on my lips, so I was pretty sure I wasn't just blowing out air!

Then FJM stopped and stared at me. Turns out that even though I cannot hear myself whistling, I can whistle in tune. Amazing eh?

But how can I whistle in tune if I've never heard whistling and I don't know what it sounds like?

I think the answer lies in the fact that I played the flute for 15 years. I took up the flute about six months before I was told I had was deaf. I had been desperate to play the flute since I was about 8, but my amazing flute teacher said I couldn't learn until I was 10 because then I'd have the reach without constricting my breathing... and I already played the violin (badly – now we know why) so my rents were also keen to keep the costs to one instrument for few years longer.

I should point out that at the age of 10, I didn't realise that you were meant to hear every sound that came out of musical instruments. I thought that was part of the challenge. Just like I thought you had to make up your own lyrics to Kylie songs, which might explain the first I got in the poetry module of my degree 11 years later.

From the moment I took up the flute, I loved it. I thought music written for the flute was amazing. Saint-Saens, John Rutter, Reinecke... the list was endless. All pretty and lilting, or telling a story. But I also loved the Bach technical studies. Hell, I even didn't mind scales (that much).

As my hearing took a dip – in the summer after my GCSEs – I noticed that there was a large range of my flute I could no longer hear, which was challenging as I was getting good at that point and many of the pieces had technically difficult high sections, not to mention the three-octave scales required to pass Grade 8.

I did pass my Grade 8 – but it was a pass, which was gutting after the distinctions of the early years when everything was on the lower octaves – and I remember the examiner looking at me with fascination as I did the hard-of-hearing specific aural tests and then belted out a C chromatic scale for three octaves.

My flute teacher was amazing. She taught me to visualise the sound. I knew what middle C sounded like, so I should visualise C three octaves higher and adjust my diaphragm and lip shape accordingly. We played those high notes over and over and over, until my brain eventually knew – from my diaphragm, the vibration on my lips and her confirmation – that sound was coming out. Not a dodgy harmonic, but the pure sound.

Sure, when I did my recital certificate a year later, we modified some of my pieces as I was struggling to hold a high note for more than four beats – partly due to sheer insecurity that no sound was coming out and I was just blowing silently down my flute like a lemon – but for the most part, I learnt to play my flute without hearing the top one-and-a-half octaves.

When I moved to London, I found another amazing teacher and for a while, I picked up my flute again. I was deafer then. More of my flute was out of my reach. And gradually I realised that playing the notes for other people wasn't enough anymore, I missed hearing them. I missed being a flautist. I felt like a mime. And it wasn't right that I was paying £40 an hour to cry about my sadness of not hearing the flute anymore, which was what was basically happening in most of my lessons.

It's been eight years really since I last played my flute. It sits under my bed, next to the pile of treasured flute music – covered with pencil scribbles of BREATHE and pause and DIAPHRAGM. And it will probably sit there for a while longer.

But yesterday, as I whistled, in tune, I couldn't help but feel a little bit happy that deaf old me could whistle in tune, and I think I've got the flute to thank for that. The diaphragm, the imagining the sound, the lip position... it seems it's a transferable skill. Although I don't think I'll be doing my Grade 8 whistling anytime soon.

Happy Thursday peeps

DG
xx

PS. If I EVER get a smidgen of my hearing back, I am totally taking up the flute again. Look out world!

Deaf Girly and the doctor

One day, I am really worried that my deafness is going to kill me.

Not in the 'walking out in front of an emergency vehicle because I haven't heard the siren' kill me – although that has almost killed me on no less than four occasions – but in a 'it's so hard to access the NHS' kill me.

This morning, I went to the GP. I have been thinking about getting an appointment for the last three months, but because the only way to make one is in person – and my working hours don't allow me to do that – or over the phone, which my deafness doesn't allow me to do, I've been putting it off.

Luckily in this instance, it's nothing serious. But with a few days off work, I asked FJM to call up and make me an appointment. And today I went.

I got there and discovered that you can now register to make your appointments online. So I filled in the form and will hopefully get details on how to do this soon. I also booked another non-urgent appointment while I was there, with a nurse, which was then immediately cancelled as 'the nurse is new and not trained in that procedure yet and could I rebook in about a month' – and of course the worry is that I will put this off, too. Especially if my online booking login has not yet come through.

Before I sat down in the waiting room, I let the receptionist know I was deaf. I was very clear about it. I said 'I am deaf. I won't be able to hear my name called over the intercom so can you let the GP know this and let me know if my name is called.'

Twenty minutes later, a very harassed GP appeared and bellowed my name and said, in front of the whole waiting room, 'Why didn't you come when I called you over the intercom?'

To which I replied as loudly as she'd shouted at me, 'I am deaf. I told the receptionist.' and watched as the entire waiting room sucked air through their teeth and the GP searched for a hole in the floor to crawl into.

To her credit, she was suitably mortified and apologised straight away, and honestly, I was happy to accept her apology – I've had much worse over the years.

But it was extremely stressful – I had already spent nearly half an hour sat there worried that I'd miss my name being called anyway – to have that worry confirmed in such a publicly embarrassing way was not exactly fun.

Doctors appointments – arranging them and attending them – have an added level of stress for me. And my worry is, that I will eventually put off something that really shouldn't be put off because I don't want to get someone to call for me to make the appointment, because I'm not feeling up to sitting in the waiting room worrying that I won't hear my name being called, or because I'm not feeling strong enough to withstand the humiliation of a public dressing down for not coming when hailed through an intercom I cannot hear.

And it's not just me I'm worried about. How many other deaf people are in the same position. How many deaf people are already putting their health at risk?

Today I made myself a promise that no matter how bloody difficult sorting doctors appointments is I am never going to put it off because the embarrassment of asking someone to book your smear test for you or not hearing your name being called in a waiting room is not worth dying for.

Happy Monday peeps

DG
x

Meeting Deaf Girly's deaf heroine

For those of you who don't know, I have written a book. It's not there yet – I thought it was, as someone who has never written a book may think, but it's not. Quite a few of the lovely agents who I sent it to have said this.

Actually some of them have turned me down in such a nice way, I've had a little cry at the wonder of lovely words and it's given me hope. Not one of them has said I can't write. In fact most of them have said I can write very well. It's like a glowing school report on a first draft of coursework.

I'm currently in the middle of a massive re-draft attempt. This involves spending most of my time living in the head of my main character, which is quite weird as she's not really like me at all. She has a cat – the lucky thing – and a very nice flat in my favourite part of London. I think she's also got slim ankles (a girl can dream), although she's never mentioned it if she has. And, she's definitely got one hell of a chip on her shoulder. So you see, nothing like me *raises eyebrow.

The one thing we do have in common however, is that she's deaf.

Living in the head of someone else who is deaf means that Deafinitely Girly has been taking a back seat because I'm no longer thinking about my deafness anymore, I'm thinking about my main character's deafness.

It's hard thinking about someone else's deafness, especially a fictional person who you love because you created them, but who you are still desperately trying to find everything about. It's hard knowing whether she'd be annoyed, for example, about someone else writing a blog about her, or whether she'd get upset about the lack of decent subtitles on the Channel 5 catch up website and app – although somehow I don't think she's such an avid Home & Away fan as me so it probably doesn't bother her.

At times, I step around her rather gingerly, in disagreement with her views on deafness and how it should be dealt with in the real world. At times, I think, we wouldn't get on at all. But really, I love her because she's my first ever main character, and hopefully not my last.

The problem I've been faced with during my 2nd draft – before I submit it to my Romantic Novelist Association reader (I'm on the New Writers Scheme this year – HURRAH!) – is that I love her so much that I don't want anything bad to happen to her. I've given her a bit of an easy ride. So for the last two months, I've been getting up at 5.45am to write before work – not new stuff, but tough stuff.

It reminds me of the early days of DeafinitelyGirly.com – back then I was so emotional about things not being right with my deafness. Emotional and hot headed and definitely of the flight, not flight, mentality when the hearing got tough.

But I think I've turned a corner. I hope that there's enough dark to balance out the light. I hope that my character brings deafness to life in a new way. And I hope that when I do round two of agent submissions, someone reads about my character and her rather bonkers journey and says, 'I love it.'

In the meantime, I'm going to try and get back into my own deaf head. There's so much I want to write about – from new words I've learnt to pronounce – 'eyot' is 'ait' – WHO KNEW?! to what bees are in my bonnet and why.

Happy Tuesday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and the vibrating alarm clock

Recently I've been getting up at 5.45am to write, bake and generally fit more into the day. And I'm loving the difference it's making to how much I achieve.

However, FJM is loving it less. You see, my iPhone vibrate isn't loud enough to wake me up. So that means, every morning at 5.45am, my phone goes off, I keep on sleeping like a baby and FJM has to wake me up. Poor guy.

When we first moved in together I had this alarm clock and I loved it. In fact, I had three of these over the years and they were always amazing at waking me up.

Problem is, they are also good at waking FJM up and anyone else who can measure tremors on a Richter scale. Now, I didn't mind waking up to this alarm clock shaking my head into the middle of next week (I was pretty used to it as I'd had one since my late teens), but FJM did, and I honestly don't blame him. I could see that it affected him in the same way that other people are affected by hearing fingernails being run down a blackboard, or that squeak your teeth do when you're chewing on celery. Even just writing the above has me shuddering and I can't hear either of those.

So the alarm clock had to go. And the pathetically bad vibrating iPhone got alarm clock duty.

But it's got me thinking, what other alarm clock options are there out there that aren't so horrific for the other person that they start their day feeling stressed? There have to be other ways of waking up a deaf person without the other person being massively disturbed? And I want to know what they are.

Answers on a postcard... or over Twitter please! :)

Happy humpday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and Jeremy Paxman (again)

Ok, so it's been more than a month since my last blog – bad DG! But in my defence, I've been rather busy with my day job, eating my way around Edinburgh and getting stranded in Dorset with a broken car.

Anyway, back in February, I blogged about a talk I went to by Jeremy Paxman about British politics. It was a very good talk, but I didn't hear very much of it, which made me sad. And gave me horrific flashbacks to just why I did so badly in my last few years of education.

Two days after that blog went live, while sitting in bed reading next to FJM one evening, my phone buzzed with a new email.

I blinked at the sender. And blinked again before bursting out laughing, much to FJM's alarm.

'I've got an email from Jeremy Paxman!' I yelled – losing my volume control to the extent that I think our next door neighbours probably heard.

FJM looked at me like I had lost the plot.

'Jeremy Paxman has emailed me,' I said again, my eyes reading the content in disbelief. And there it was, an email from Jeremy Paxman. And in it, he offered to email me his talk. The one I had only heard bits of. The one, I had still enjoyed so much in spite of this.

I emailed him back and thanked him for his offer. He emailed me back, too. I then emailed him back and made a joke about Zac Goldsmith's mayoral campaign being 'Back Zac' and how that made me want to add 'and crack' every time I saw it. 'You said what?' FJM asked in disbelief as we both prepared ourselves never to hear from Mr Paxman again. But I did. And he's very charming.

When his emails arrived, I read them with his voice in my head. You see, as well as having a photographic memory, I have a weird audio memory where I store (or make up) sounds to give me 3D hearing when I can't hear.

When a cat meows, I rarely hear it but if I see it meowing, my brain fills in the gaps. Or when the subtitles on the TV tell me a phone is ringing, my brain makes up a phone ringing. It's usually a really old-fashioned 'brrnnng, brrnnnng' noise, which is probably completely inaccurate.

With Jeremy Paxman, years of hearing his voice on University Challenge in the quiet of my home means that I can recall how he speaks, the edge of mirth that catches his sentences, the way he slows down ever so slightly when he's making a point.

And so yesterday, when the talk arrived in my inbox, I read it with his voice in my head. Grinning.

I can't share this talk with you – it's his talk and he shared it with me only because I'd heard (some of it) in the first place. But I can tell you that it's as brilliant on paper as it was in spoken word – except more brilliant, because this time around I'm getting all the information not just some.

Hearing from Jeremy Paxman and him sending me his talk made me incredibly happy. It made me happy because it means that my writing got somewhere it's never been before. It was read by someone who has never read it before. And that person was able to fix the situation for me.

In the early days of this blog when I was ranting about lack of subtitles on iPlayer (now fixed) and subtitles at stupid times of day in cinemas (not really fixed) and lack of ways to hear your name being called in NHS Walk-In Centres in London (fixed by me!), I used to wonder if anyone who could actually change things actually read my words. In the early days actually, the only people who read my blog were Big Bro and the Rents. But thankfully a bit's changed since then.

When I wrote about my sadness of not being able to hear Paxman's talk, I never in a million years imagined that I would end up with it saved on my desktop (password protected, don't worry Jeremy), with me being able to peruse it again at leisure with my audio memory, hearing the highs and lows in his voice, recalling the evening when he had given the talk, when the voice was there but the words were simply unintelligible to me.

Happy Wednesday peeps
DG
xx

Deaf Girly's 'deaf question'

If I am truly honest with you, I've been in a bit of a confidence slump since the 'too deaf for this job' set back in earlier in the year. It really upset me. It made me question not only my professional capabilities but also my personal qualities.

In short, I've spent a large portion of the first part of 2016 thinking pretty negative thoughts about myself. The problem with feeling crap about yourself, is that it's very hard to sometimes to put into words what you feel crap about.

I mean, I feel crap because my deafness is an issue for someone when it shouldn't be.

I also feel crap that I eat more calories than I burn off and all my clothes are currently too tight. But is that related to my confidence slump regarding my hearing? Who knows.

Anyway, yesterday I turned a corner of sorts, in that I really didn't want to go to the gym. I wanted to get under a duvet and watch 'Sand Sluts' AKA Home & Away and forget that I was in cold, rainy England with a disability that certain employers can't seem to see beyond and a book edit I am well and truly stuck on.

But instead, I went to the gym. After eating some Ryvita and peanut butter to take the edge of my 'back from school' hunger, I put on my gym kit and went for a run on a treadmill, allowing the machine to propel me forward as I listened (on full volume – it's the only volume I can hear at) to a Spotify running playlist.

And it helped. A lot.

Then today, at my lovely temping job, where they don't give a toss about my deafness – in a very good way – it came to light that my pager system for the fire alarm is missing a crucial component... the pager. I have absolutely no idea where it is. It's been mislaid. And it's most definitely my fault.

But it's also coincided with a health and safety assessment at the office, so there's been a lot of chat about what to do, and checking with me about whether I've found it. These people are just brilliant.

Earlier, as I was going to lunch, one of the lovely office managers, who I have spoken to many times over the year I have temped on and off in the building stopped me and said, 'Are you really deaf?' in a way that made my heart sing. It was a tone of admiration and disbelief. She was astonished that she had never noticed. And I was thrilled that she hadn't. Not because I want to hide my deafness, or because I am ashamed of it, but because to her, it obviously wasn't enough of a big deal to be the first thing she noticed about me.

And in those few seconds, I felt the confidence that was obliterated by the rejection email I'd received earlier in the year gradually start to creep back. And I hope that it will continue as I remind myself that it really was one person who had the negative opinion and a whole load of people who have the positive.

Happy Thursday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and the hearing aid batteries

It's been 25 years since I first got a pair of hearing aids. I've worn them on and off since then and finally every day (except when I've had enough of noise) for the last three and a bit years. 

During that time, I have changed the batteries more times than I can remember. Sometimes I change them using free batteries I pick up from my audiology clinic, but mostly (because I forget to pick up batteries) I end up buying them – at great expense – from chemists in a mad panic when I'm out somewhere and get the ominous 'Beeeeeeeep' followed by the death knell 'Beeeeeeeeep' 10 minutes later and a muted silence.

This happened this morning. I was at work. I searched my desk drawer frantically. It revealed several pens, a pencil, a lipstick, sticky notes and no hearing aid batteries. 

I then searched my handbag and found TicTacs, lip balm, tissues, a hairbrush, several hundred hairbands (that's where they all are) and a dusty Fisherman's Friend. And then, sitting at the bottom of the side pocket, was a pack of hearing aid batteries with one remaining new battery. The sight of that little orange tab made my day and prevented a mad panicked dash to Boots for a new packet of batteries.

But then I remembered something I had read and forgotten on the back of a pack of batteries about six months ago. The instructions clearly state that you should remove the tab and leave the battery for at least 1 minute before using it. 

I have NEVER done this. It has never occurred to me to do this. I didn't know why I should do this. And there was no more information about it on the packet either.

So I asked Twitter and several people came up with suggestions and also noted that they too don't leave their hearing aid batteries for 1 minute before putting them in their hearing aids.

And then I decided to drop the lovely Twitter peeps @HearwithRayovac a line and guess what, they came straight back to me and explained the reason for leaving hearing aid batteries out in the air. They also gave me a link to their online FAQ, which gives more information and is pretty interesting reading. I've also included their explanation below:

'A zinc air battery uses air outside the battery as a source of power. The factory applied tab seals the air holes in the battery and ensures freshness until you are ready to use the battery. Do not remove the tab until you are ready to use the battery. To activate the battery, you simply remove the tab. After removing the tab, wait about one minute prior to inserting the battery into your hearing aid. This allows sufficient time for the air to enter and activate the ingredients. Replacing the tab when the battery is not in use will not extend the battery life.'

'The reason to let it sit is because the air needs time to get into the battery. If you take the tab off and immediately put the battery in the hearing aid, you limit the amount of air it is exposed to. This could cause the battery to seem “dead” because the voltage could not reach the necessary level to power the device. If this happens when you first put the battery in the device, take it out and let it sit. This allows air to enter the cell and increase the voltage. After 1 minute, put the battery back into the device.'

SOURCE: http://www.rayovac.eu/uk/faq

So there you go! I've learnt something new on this sunny Monday that means next time I am juggling hat, gloves, scarf and several bags on a busy bus and my hearing aid battery goes flat, I will also be the girl balancing a hearing aid battery on her knee while counting to 60!

Look out for me yeah?

Happy Monday peeps

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and Jeremy Paxman

The other day London Aunt asked me if I wanted to go to a talk with her. It was a talk by Jeremy Paxman and it was almost sold out.

Usually, I shy away from going to talks as I find them so difficult to hear, but after considering it for a moment, I decided that if anyone was going to be easy (ish) to hear it would be Jeremy Paxman – indeed, I often find myself not really reading the subtitles on University Challenge, so clear is his delivery of questions.

For some reason though, I completely forgot to ask London Aunt to request that we have seats reserved near the front to enable me to lipread, too and so, when we got there and found a massive queue and first-come-first-served seating arrangement, I realised that I lipreading from 20 rows back would not be an option.

And it wasn't. But I was able to understand maybe 50% of what Jeremy said. Although, after discussing it with London Aunt afterwards, I realised I had missed far more than I erm... realised. Partly because, if you don't hear something, how can you possibly know that you haven't heard it?

So anyway, sitting there in the hall, I had a sudden flashback to my school years. Of struggling to hear on subjects I was fascinated in. I was a super geek at school... I loved information and facts and when I had better hearing, used to absorb them all like a sponge. But as I got deafer, I remember that the effort of hearing the information seemed to prevent the absorption of it.

That exact thing proved to be true at this talk. I know that I heard full sentences that Jeremy Paxman said. I know that I laughed when he made a joke. But I cannot tell you a single thing that he said. Not in an informed, learned way anyway. I can tell you what he was wearing, and that his hair is longer in real life than in the current series of University Challenge. I can tell you that he does speak exceptionally clearly and eloquently, but that's not enough any more. It's not enough for me to simply hear someone. When 'listening' (lipreading) for long periods of time, I need the written words for support. Otherwise, my brain quite simply goes into overload.

As the talk neared the 80 minute mark, I started to feel that same desperation feeling that used to creep up on me in school and university lectures. The desperation that said, 'I'm done trying to listen. Please stop the noise. I need to sleep.'

Indeed, I had permission to nod off in my A-level and post-grad lessons. I was allowed to put my head on my desk and sleep. But truthfully, even if I hadn't had permission, I would have done it anyway.

Listening exhaustion is like no other exhaustion I know. It's not like jet lag, or a bad day at work. It's not like a hangover or being woken for an early journey somewhere. It's totally consuming. It takes your eyes, your ears, your entire face and your brain. It makes me want to cry with the realisation that useful information is still whizzing past my ears but that I quite simply cannot access it.

And as the talk drew to a close, all I could think about was going home, taking out my hearing aids, getting into bed and turning off the light. I was craving complete silence.

And that's what I did. At 8.45pm.

And looking back, that's what I did for much of my A-level years and post-grad (my degree was basically self taught with 2 hours of lectures a week so I didn't really ever get listening exhaustion).

It made me thankful that I rarely have to do that anymore. But slightly sad too that if I want to access the interesting opinions of people like Jeremy Paxman, this is what I have to do. Unless it's one of the marvellous talks that have live subtitles done by Stagetext.

One thing I wish I'd done is somehow requested the copy of the talk that Paxman gave. So that I could have read it at my leisure after my nap – a captioned afterthought on the evening.

Next time I might just request it in advance.

If my ears (and addled brain) allow there to be a next time.

Happy Wednesday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and the sirens

A few weeks ago I wrote about blog about the fire alarm at work and how, when it went off, I couldn't hear it but that everything around me sounded muffled and quieter.

It was a new thing I've noticed, and I found it kinda fascinating.

Anyway, last night FJM and I were walking back from the gym. It was quite late and the roads were fairly quiet. There were no loud, low buses thundering by for me to hear. As far as I was concerned, there was no noise.

So imagine my surprise when FJM, who was mid-sentence, started yelling at me. Not yelling in a mad way, but yelling the rest of the sentence that five seconds previously, he'd be saying at a normal level.

'Why are you shouting,' I asked him, a small part of me secretly hoping that by some miracle I'd got my hearing back and he wasn't shouting at all. 'What?' he yelled. So I repeated myself, but shouted this time, and he gestured to a police car hurtling by. The lights were flashing but to me it made no sound.

'I was yelling,' FJM explained after it had vanished into the distance, 'because that thing was making such a noise.'

'Not to me it wasn't,' I replied, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I mean, it's kind of brilliant and weird all at the same time when you think about it. I can hear better in high-frequency noisy situations, because I don't hear those high frequency noises. So on Saturdays in busy cafés filled with screaming children, people don't have to raise their voice to speak to me at all. In my ears, the children are not there.

And the same with sirens. They don't alter what I hear at all. Amazing huh?

A small part of me loves that there are situations when I can hear better than hearing people. I love that my ears, while not working brilliantly most of the time, are able to block out the most antisocial of noises. Sirens, alarms, kids. That even if all hell breaks loose on the road outside our flat at 2am and there are police everywhere (it has happened before) I will be a regular sleeping beauty(?) blissfully unaware.

And on that lovely and thankful note, happy weekend peeps.

DG

Deaf Girly and the hearing test

Back in June I went to get my hearing aids spring cleaned. While there, the audiologist suggested that I should have a hearing test booked as it's been a while. But instead of being able to book one directly with the clinic, he needed to send a letter to my GP who would then refer me back. Or something bizarre like that.

And then I completely forgot that this had happened. Until yesterday, when I thought I'd drop my audiology department an email to check whether there was just a bit of a long waiting list for hearing tests. They got straight back to me to let me know this wasn't the case, it was simply that my GP hadn't done anything about the letter the hospital sent out. So eight months later, I still haven't had a hearing test.

On reflection this could be partly my fault. You see I moved house and, with the only way of getting in touch with my surgery being by phone or going in person, I haven't got around to telling them I've got a new address, which means they were probably baffled by the conflicting addresses for me and put the letter to one side.

So deciding to finally sort it. I googled my GP to see if I could get the phone number for someone else to call up and change my address and it would seem they now have a website, where you can fill in change of details forms and book appointments online. I know!!!! My GP has finally joined the 21st century. It's very exciting.

Disbelievingly, I filled in the change of address section and downloaded the form I need for registering for online appointments and hopefully it'll all be sorted soon.

Being able to book GP appointments online will quite frankly be life changing. I don't think it'll make me go any more than I do right now, but it will mean that I can finally take charge of this aspect of my life.

There's still one thing I am worried about though. You see, I have a suspicion that I am now out of my GP's catchment area – so when they get around to seeing my change of address request, I will probably be told to register somewhere else closer to where I live now.

And this will mean going through the whole palaver of a new GP needing to see me to check that my deafness isn't caused by wax in my ears – IF ONLY IT WAS – in order to get a referral to the hospital for a hearing test.

In the meantime however, I am going back to my audiology clinic to sort out my hearing aid moulds. The ones I have are now three years old. I have had two new sets since but the first ones were those tiny in-ear ones, which I hate, and the second ones were made by a particularly enthusiastic person who shoved the sponge so far down my ear canal I yelped and as a result the moulds are so insanely uncomfortable I refuse to wear them.

Time for a hearing overhaul I think.

Happy Wednesday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and hearing the weather

Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva, Frank, Gertrude, Henry, Imogen...

It might sounds like an alternative version to the Beautiful South song or a poor attempt at NATO phonetic alphabet but it's the UK storm names – makes you sit up and notice the weather a bit more when it's personified I think.

Hearing weather has always been a bit hit and miss for me. I've always heard the low, loud rumble of thunder, but when it comes to rain – the first time I heard that was when I got my current Phonak hearing aids, which you can read about here.

Without my hearing aids, I don't hear rain – so last night as Storm Imogen arrived on British shores, I lay in bed blissfully unaware until FJM told me about it and I took a peek out the window at the amazing volume of rain bouncing off the road outside our place.

Last week it was Storm Henry – and we had the pleasure of encountering him on holiday in Cornwall. The wind was fierce and on one of our walks, FJM asked me if I could hear the noise it made as it whistled through the wires between the telegraph poles. I couldn't. I could only hear the sound it made as it rushed past my hearing aid microphones. It sounded like a jet engine at take off.

Tucked away in our little cottage, FJM also told me about the wind whistling around the walls at night. And of the amazing rainstorm that occurred one evening when we were sat on the sofa watching TV with a G&T – all of them ignored by my ears.

But then on the last day, as we packed the car and got ready for the long journey back to London, I opened the front door to the most spectacular noise of torrential rain. With my hearing aids in, I loved it. Rain bouncing off FJM's car roof, gushing down the street, smashing into the pavement. Loud and clear.

I always find it thrilling when I hear that kind of thing. It reminds me how lucky I am to have what hearing I do have. Although I was less thrilled about being soaked to the skin after just the five-second dash to the car.

And then let's not talk about the unclassified road I directed FJM down – through flooding, breached rivers and fallen trees – en route to a donkey sanctuary that wasn't actually open when we arrived.

Once Imogen has done her thing, we'll be sitting tight for Storm Jake – and when he arrives, I'll be keeping my hearing aids on my bedside table, ready and waiting for the noise he brings.

Happy Monday peeps

DG
xx

Deafinitely Girly 'hears' a fire alarm

It's Friday. I'm thankful. Mainly because it's Friday. But also because I've discovered something rather marvellous about the place I'm working at the moment....

Earlier in the week, the fire alarm went off. It was a planned test. I knew about it in advance. But the strangest thing happened.

You see, I can't hear things like fire alarms. Not even with my posh Phonak Nathos hearing aids in. Not even, if I stand right under the alarm. I hear nothing. But today, in the small office where I am working, where there's a radio playing that's loud enough for me to hear, I did notice that the fire alarm was going off.

How? Everything else got quieter. Namely the radio. While the alarm rang for 30 seconds (I'd been warned this was how long it would ring for) everything else sounded like it had been put on mute. Muffled. Like I'd turned off my hearing aids but left them in my ears.

OK, I reasoned, so things like the general hum of conversation would die down during the alarm as people struggled to hear over it, but the radio? The voice of the person sat right by me? That was more unexpected.

And I think it's great. You see, what I've started realising over the last few years of wearing hearing aids is that it's not about getting 'conventional' hearing back. It's about getting anything back.

It's so different to my ultra short-sightedness. I mean, if I left the optician with mediocre vision that sometimes meant I could see things I had never seen before, I'd march straight back in and demand they did something about it. But it's different with my ears.

I know that I will never have perfect hearing. That no matter what I do, I will never be able to make out conversation without lipreading, listen to the radio and catch more than the odd word and hear things like babies crying at a distance, phones ringing and indeed, fire alarms ringing.

But if my ears can give me a clue that this is happening. If I know that when the office sounds muted, then the fire alarm is going off, then that is most definitely better than nothing.

And that makes today a very thankful Friday.

Have a good one peeps.
DG
xx

Deaf Girly's working it out

I've been thinking about a lot about what happened last week with the whole 'your deafness means you can't do this job' rejection email.

I've been thinking about it in a way that took me back to when I first moved to London and was struggling to work out how to explain my deafness to new employers. Back then, I made it seem like it was nothing. I tried my hardest to use the phone. I was terrified that if I didn't, I wouldn't do well. I wonder now if I was basically right.

Back then, I never relaxed. I was always on edge about being deaf. Ready to spring into action to hide any evidence that I was struggling. This meant most nights I went home exhausted and miserable from pretending to be someone I could never be.

Maturity and a need to be less exhausted, meant that I grew out of that habit and relaxed more about my deafness at work. I tried to hide it less. I asked for more help. I acknowledged my limits but offered my employers my ways of working around them to get the same results as hearing people. I dropped my guard.

Until last week. Until dropping my guard meant getting overlooked for some work I should have been given a fair shot at.

The thing is though, deep down, I know that someone with hearing who can pick up the phone and communicate effortlessly and instantly with people at the other end, is technically a more attractive candidate that me. OK, so I can offer alternatives, but as someone once said to me, as she picked up the phone and dialled the number of the person I was waiting for an email from, 'Things are so much quicker by phone' as she smugly trumped me to get the much-needed information, leaving me red-faced and humiliated.

Since last week, my head has been full of questions. Things like: What makes me better than the person with the perfect hearing? How can I demonstrate that on my CV and in person? Is this going to happen again? How can I stop it happening again?

I've began wondering whether I should be 'trying harder' with the phone. But I'm not sure how to.  I've tried amplifiers in the past and the t-loop hooks for my hearing aids, but they don't really help. I still don't get that clarity of speech. Without lipreading, I get nothing but noise. Without lipreading, I feel like I am the least attractive person in the CV line-up for work.

'So what are you going to do about it?' a nagging voice has been saying in my head all week.

And honestly, right now, I don't know. But I'm on the case. Whether it's finding a new bit of technology that magically makes using the phone easier (all suggestions welcome) or working out a new way of explaining that I don't use the phone without it sounding like a massive negative, I will work it out.

Because I am determined not to let this happen again. I am determined to show that I am as good as that person with the identical CV who can use the phone. That I am worthy of the jobs I am more than qualified to do.

Happy Monday peeps.
DG
x

Deaf Girly's employment issue

This year, it will be thirteen years since I stepped out of my post graduate course and into the big bad world of work. Thirteen years of working my up, in and around a career I had dreamt of doing since I could talk.

Recently, I decided to go self employed to enable me to pursue my own stuff – writing mainly. I've written a book you know, it's not perfect yet, but it's coming and maybe one day, someone will publish it and yay, that'll be great.

In my thirteen years of work, I've been pretty lucky. I can count on one hand the number of times I've felt that I probably missed out on a job because of my deafness. And until today, I could count on one finger the times I definitely knew.

But today, the second time occurred and I was totally unprepared for it.

You see, I'm lucky enough to get most of my work from one amazing company. A company that has always supported me and my deafness. Who makes no issue of it. Who knows that I can do my job with or without ears. But I thought I should probably put myself out there a bit more to ensure all the days of the month were filled with paid work. Or as many as possible.

So today, in response to me sending in my CV for work, a company contacted me and requested a short phone call pre-interview stage after noting I had all the skills they were looking for. I had scrutinised the job advert for any mention of needing to use the phone and there were none. So I wrote a quick, polite reply explaining that I was 'hard of hearing' – I felt less likely to scare them than 'deaf' – and could we do it over email.

'It'll be fine,' I thought confidently. 'This is 2016. People don't discriminate against hearing loss when the job description makes no mention of phone use.'

'It'll be fine,' I thought less confidently some time later, when I'd had no reply.

'Maybe it won't be fine,' I thought sadly, as I realised that someone somewhere was working out how to get out of telling me I fitted the requirements of the role.

And then a few moments later I was put out of in to my misery.

It wasn't fine. I wasn't suitable for the role.

But the thing is, how – from the description of 'Hard of Hearing' I gave can that person who has never met me know that I am not suitable for the role? How, without asking how I've very successfully made a career over the last thirteen years – all visible on my CV – can that person possibly judge my efficiency of communicating without the conventional telephone call?

I would understand it if I'd applied for something massively outside of my 'hearing' limits. If I'd applied to work as a receptionist, PA, call centre person, or any of the other roles where hearing is kind of essential.

I mean, I would secretly love to be a personal assistant. If I had hearing, it'd be the job I'd do for fun. Organising, sorting, making things happen. But I would NEVER apply to be one as a deaf person because I just don't think without hearing I'd make a very good one.

That is however irrelevant because I chose a career where hearing shouldn't be an issue. With careful guidance from an amazing person early on, I chose a section of my industry where I would face the least discrimination. And until today it's worked marvellously.

Earlier, as I was having a cry in the toilets, I realised how lucky I am to have got this far and faced so little discrimination. How lucky I am to have had amazing support from amazing employers. And how lucky I am that I won't have to work for the people who today deemed me not acceptable for a role I could have definitely made work. If they'd just given me a chance.

Sometimes that things that aren't meant to be are definitely for the best because they leave us free to pursue our proper dreams and the things that are true to who we actually are, rather than just earn us money.

Happy hump-day peeps

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and the noisy car

Well, I had a marvellous weekend visiting Penfold by the seaside – missing out on the snow but definitely not missing out on an excellent selection of gin, conversation, food and shopping.

However, on setting out for London last night, I realised that one of my headlights wasn't working. It was not yet dark. I had one hour of daylight left. The journey was more than one hour.

This put me on edge. Not least because driving with one headlight in the rain and twilight is less than fun, but also because it brought one of my biggest 'Things I can't hear' worries to the forefront of my mind.

My car.

Yep, my car has always been something that I can't hear. Sure I can hear the engine, but I can't hear the revs that well, which has resulted in me driving on the motorway for considerable distances in fourth gear, before my rapidly decreasing petrol gauge alerts me to this.

And I can't hear beeps or any of the strange noises that people say they hear their cars making shortly before they break down. I have never been privy to the sound that a tyre makes when it's going down or flat and the only thing I did hear in my old car was when the exhaust fell off, in the middle and started grinding along the road until I could pull over.

So last night, I was on edge. And, I decided that rather than just driving straight into London on the road I was coming up from the seaside on, I took the M25 to drive around to the road I wanted. I don't often do this. In fact, I don't think I have ever driven on this stretch of M25 in my car.

It's that weird orange/brown colour instead of black tarmac, which I know can be noisier than traditional road surfaces but as I pulled on and accelerated, my ears almost had a heart attack.

'Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,' came the noise from my tyres.

'What the heck is that?' I panicked, slowing and pulling over in to the slow lane. The banging continued. It echoed through my little car. I opened the window, it didn't get worse. I checked the balance of my steering (as much as you can on a largely straight section of road with cars whizzing past in all directions) and whether the breaks worked evenly – hoping that all this would indicate whether I had a flat tyre.

But nothing except the banging seemed to indicate anything was wrong.

For the next 8 miles I barely breathed. I gripped the steering wheel. I considered pulling over to check everything – but I didn't want to die and the hard shoulder on the M25 is not exactly a safe haven. So instead, I muted my 'volume 58 on the car stereo' music and I strained my ears to try and decipher this sound I had never heard before.

And then the road went back to black. And the noise vanished. And as my ears searched in vain to hear any clue of something being wrong with car, there was nothing.

It was simply the road surface. A road surface that made my car so unbelievably noisy that I thought it was broken.

In complete disbelief I checked my car on arriving home and found all four tyres alive and well.

Still, at least now I know what this road surface sounds like in my little car. At least next time I find myself on an orange road, I won't panic and wonder if my car is about to fall apart like the ones in the cartoons.

Happy Monday peeps

DG
xx

Things Deaf Girly can't hear

So, last week I wrote a blog post about things I can't hear, which the launched a discussion on Twitter about all the things that made a noise that I couldn't hear and that others couldn't hear.

It was a revelation! So many things beep, whistle and chime that I never knew about before. Things like contactless payments in shops and Oyster barriers. The latter was my absolute favourite discovery. The fact that if there's no money on your Oyster, the barrier beeps more angrily rather than just beeping you through.

Since I went a lot deafer in my teens, I've retained a kind of audio memory bank, so that when I know a noise is happening, I can imagine it. I use this a lot when listening to familiar classical music that I once heard more of. I simply imagine the violins, flutes, oboes and other such high-frequency instruments and add them along to the bass that I can hear.

This is not always successful with music I don't know though. FJM remarked the other day that I will often sing a completely different tune to what is playing on the TV, but that works perfectly with the bass – I kind of do an accidental vocal mash up on TV theme tunes.

This also translates weirdly across lots of music. I will often think that two completely different songs sound alike because of their similar bass or beat. It's like my head is a DJ mixing desk – a deaf one, that can't sing in tune and that isn't privy to about two thirds of useful sound.

So anyway, like I was saying, I've got quite good at imagining sound – so now that I know that Oyster card barriers beep when you pass through them, I've started imagining it in my head. And when my card didn't work and I barged through the barrier without realising the other day, much to the embarrassment of FJM, I imagined an indignant beep.

This morning however, I was reminded that there is just some things that you cannot imagine. Such as an announcement on my bus that I couldn't hear. I tried to work out if the bus driver was telling people to move down inside the bus, or not stand on the top deck, but none of the sounds sounded familiar.

'Oh well,' I thought, 'No one is running from the bus screaming so it can't be that urgent. What's the worst that can happen?' and settled back into reading FJM's Economist that I nicked for my journey this morning – it's very interesting and nice change from my terrible guilty pleasure that is The Daily Mail. Ten minutes later I looked up from an article about North Korea and realised that the worst that could happen was that the bus driver was announcing a diversion and driving in completely the wrong direction to the one that I needed.

But what I don't understand is why the driver didn't press the computerised announcement for this that sets of the scrolling subtitles. I know there's one that goes 'This bus is on diversion, please listen for further announcements' because I've read it hundreds of times. If he'd just put it on this morning, I wouldn't have been the crazy woman running in heels, bobble hat bobbing to get to her desk on time.

I did however cheer myself up on arrival to work by imagining the lift pinging as it arrived on the ground floor and pinging again as it deposited me on the right floor.

So thank you for getting involved and letting me know all about the things that make a sound.

It's made my week.

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and the train doors

I have gone through a large part of my life not realising that certain things make a noise.

When I was first told about my deafness, I discovered that green men beeped when you crossed the road at crossings and that birds – other than pigeons – sang. I found out that people could actually hear whispers and it wasn't about guessing what was being said.

But even after 25 years, there's still things I am finding out make a noise. For example,  the LED lamp that I use for my gel nail manicures apparently beeps when the light goes on and off. There was I thinking I'd chosen something quiet to do while FJM snoozed on the sofa.

Then at last year, NellyMac told me that supermarkets played music. Actual music. Who knew?! I certainly didn't.

Another of the things I really didn't realise when I first moved to London almost thirteen years ago was that most public transport has noises that are out of my frequency. When you press the stop request on a bus, that makes a sound. The tube doors make a sound just before they close. And apparently bus doors do this, too.

I first discovered the tube doors one after jumping on a tube and watching as the doors closed on my friend who was half a step behind me. When we met up at the next station, she asked why I'd got on when the door closing signal was sounding.

'There's a door closing signal?' I marvelled, and suddenly the time when a tube door closed on my head as I looked out to check the destination of the train finally made sense.

Since then, I approach tube doors with caution. I rarely dash for a train that's already on the platform in case the doors are beeping inaudibly and I get taken out by them as they close.

But then the other day, while sat on a snazzy new Circle Line train, I noticed that just before the doors closed, an orange light, about eye level by the door flashed. Unsure if it was just coincidence, I watched it for the next few stations and sure enough, just before the doors closed, this light flashed.

'Amazing,' I thought. 'That is truly amazing.' And the very next day I got to test it out with my Ma – who also can't hear the door closing signal. There was a train on the platform, a new snazzy one so we made a dash for it. But just as we got close, the orange light flashed and the doors closed inches from my nose. Without that light, they would have closed on me. It was brilliant.

Now though, I need to go on the older trains and see if it's just something – in my tube-avoiding world – I've never noticed before.

It's fabulous how much TFL have done to make things easier for deaf people on tubes – the captioned announcements were the first thing that I loved. No more sitting listening to unintelligible chat from the driver. Just a clear scrolling text about red signals or waiting for platforms. Obviously that system doesn't cover people on the track and other emergencies but usually in those situations someone is more than happy to enlighten you.

So now I'm on a quest to find new things that make a noise that I didn't know about. Do lifts make a noise when they arrive on your floor? Do the doors ping when they open and close?

All enlightenments welcome.

Happy Friday peeps

DG
x

Deaf Girly and pronunciation

Ok so you'd think by the grand old age of 35 my pronunciation mishaps would be getting less frequent.

You'd also think I'd be able to tell the difference between clear and black mascara before applying the latter to my eyebrows but that's a whole other story...

Anyway, yesterday while looking at the different countries that visitors to my blog come from, I remarked that I'd even had a hit from South Korea – from Seoul (that's See-owl when it leaves my lips by the way).


'The what now?' FJM enquired.

'See-oll?' I tried again, more nervous this time and having flashbacks to the whole Versailles and Marseille fiasco which you can read about here.


'Soul,' FJM replied. 'Like the bottom of your foot.'


'Soul?' I checked, amazed that no one had ever pointed this out before but also wondering whether I'd ever said it out loud before... But whether or not I'd said it, I'd definitely heard it.


But not correctly, it appeared.


And then I twigged. It began with an S – my lipreading and sound nemesis. Impossible to lipread in normal speech and also usually higher pitched so out of my frequency.


I kind of have to imagine s's when I hear a word with them in. And it appears that I imagined an audible 'e' too.


So there you go. That's my new word for the week. Seoul like soul. And if you're my single reader from Seoul, 
'Hello, and thank you!'


Happy Wednesday peeps.


DG X

What if I had never met Deaf Girly…?

Recently I've been thinking about this a lot. You see, when the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve and hailed the arrival of 2016, over the next few days, it wasn't just the messages from friends and family over text I received, it was messages from my Twitter peeps, too. People who without Deaf Girly, I would never have the wonderful pleasure of knowing, meeting and calling my friends.

After all, what if I had never met Deaf Girly... or to be more accurately, what if I had never created Deaf Girly? Yes, my phone would have chimed with texts from family and friends, but my Twitter feed would have been silent... or non existent... all those marvellous Twitter peeps would have been wishing other people Happy New Year, not me.

It's such a horrible thought, I don't often dwell on it. But what if, after that job interview where I was asked to write my ideal column, had I taken a different turn. What if I had chosen not to write about my deafness for the 2nd around of interviews? What if I had written about whatever was playing on my mind the most in April 2008, eight years ago, and a whole lifetime away now?

In all honestly, back in 2008, it was mostly my deafness that was playing on my mind. The world was a lot less deaf aware then after all. Smartphones were finding their feet, social media was for the savvy and companies were only just coming around to the idea of communicating with customers in ways other than the telephone. I had quite a lot to rant about, write about, cry about, get angry about and most of it was deaf related.

As Deaf Girly approaches her 8th birthday, I can't imagine life without this slightly mad alter ego, who I can blame all my quirks and weirdness on, when in reality I know she is me and I am her. She's given me so much more than a coping mechanism for my deafness. She's given me so much more than a platform to ask for equality in NHS Walk-in Centres (DONE), captioning on iPlayer (DONE) and find out why the company who released Dr Quinn Medicine Woman – I never said I had intellectual taste in TV – on DVD didn't subtitle any of it... not one jot (THEY COULDN'T JUSTIFY THE COST). Deaf Girly has given me friends. Amazing, wonderful friends who get a part of me that even I don't sometimes. From interpreters and audiologists to writers and people who I just somehow ended up chatting to in 140 characters – some who are deaf, some who are not.

I've met some of them in real life too – after discovering shared enthusiasm for writing, museum exhibitions or afternoon tea and it was great. There was always a nervousness that the real me might be somewhat disappointing. That DG might be better online, blogging or ranting on Twitter. But so far everyone's been far too polite to let me know.

And let's not forget Country Writer, who took me under her wing and introduced me to a whole world of people who might be able to help then next stage of DG's journey get off the ground.

So what are my resolutions for 2016...

Well, I am going to try and blog more. I'm going to start going after the things I am passionate about again. Subtitles on Catch Up TV and at the cinema for example – asking for answers all the time, because while I know that someone has asked these questions before, the more people who ask, the more the people who can make things better, will wonder if they should.

And I'm going to get Deaf Girly on a bookshelf... where she'd quite like to hang out, tell her story on paper for a change rather than on screen.

Yep that's the plan. Wish me luck folks.

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and subtitled Star Wars

HAPPY NEW YEAR PEEPS!

Feels like ages ago that I was getting ready for Christmas and now it's all over... *sniff

One of the best pre-Christmas things I did was go and see the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie with subtitles.

However, before I was allowed to go and watch it, FJM insisted that I watch the first three Star Wars movies – he's banned me from watching the Prequels – so that I would understand who everyone was and note all the references.

And so we devoted a rainy December day to ploughing through them one by one. I have to admit, I was a bit worried I'd hate them... but actually I loved them. It was great seeing a young Harrison Ford and mercifully, most of Luke Skywalker's moaning was out of my frequency (God, he's annoying in the first movie isn't he?). Sadly one other character who was out of my frequency was R2-D2 – the cute droid. I couldn't hear any of his bleeps and whistles and, although the captions showed when he was making a noise, it obviously couldn't convey the frequency or rhythm of them. And FJM felt that this was important.

So he did something amazing. He interpreted R2-D2 for me, in all the movies. He transposed the bleeps and whistles to a frequency I could hear and let me know when he was sad, nervous, happy or angry. And it was brilliant. It brought what would have otherwise been to me a silent character and really made the movie. It was also highly entertaining watching FJM do this *beams.

In the new movie, there's BB8 and FJM had promised to do the same, but amazingly BB8 had a much lower 'voice' so I could hear him alright – but hearing him nervously go somewhere, or bleat angrily made me realise how much FJM had helped me in the first movies by giving R2-D2 a voice.

There's more – according to FJM, the subtitles in the new Star Wars were also very informative. They told you who was speaking. Helped you identify characters easily and even made one section of it – giving nothing away – much clearer than it would have been without them.

I enjoyed it so much, that I am going to see it again at a showing this month. And this time around, now I know the storyline, I will be able to relax a bit more and enjoy the general feel of the film rather than staring transfixed at the subtitles. I'm intrigued to find out if I will notice anything I missed last time.

There's just one thing more worth noting about the new Star Wars movie and that's how many cinemas showed it with subtitles and how many showings there were... LOADS!!

I honestly had my pick of local cinemas – and it doesn't seem to be too difficult to go and seeing it again.

If only cinemas would do this with more movies. OK, so the demand was obviously much higher for Star Wars as seemingly the whole country went to see it, but if they can do it with Star Wars, then they should do it with other films.

Here's to 2016 and hoping they do...

DG
xx

Deaf Girly and the Baby Monitor

With the madness, the parking wars and the tubes full to the brim, I'm a big fan of online shopping at Christmas. Sure, I support local shops where possible, but sometimes it's all about a glass of mulled wine, a Christmas movie and the endless possibilities of what I can buy for friends and family on the worldwide web.

The only problem with this is the delivery. You see I live in a block of flats. With a buzzer. That I can't hear. I used to be able to hear it with my hearing aids in, but recently I haven't been able to, which means I'm missing deliveries.

Yesterday, after Amazon rang for the third time to say they had been unable to deliver my package – luckily SuperCathyFragileMystic was there to take the call – I finally got confirmation that they would be delivering a package that afternoon. Stressing about the door buzzer, SCFM suggested I download a baby monitor on my iPhone and iPad and set one up opposite the door buzzer to pick up the noise when it went off.

Genius eh?

And so that's what I did. For £2.99 I bought Cloud Baby Monitor and installed it on my tablet, phone and main computer. And it's great. OK, so the flat is so small, it picked up me coughing from the other room, but that also reassured me that it would pick up the tiny bleating noise the buzzer makes that I can just about hear it I press my ear to the intercom system when it's going off.

And so I sat in and waited. I worked on the 2nd draft of my book. I wrapped Christmas presents, drank tea and watched The Gilmore Girls on Netflix. The buzzer didn't go.

I sat in some more. 

And then I decided to check the status of my Amazon order online. 'Delivered to Hall' it had declared, some two hours previously. And while I was happy that after a third attempt, I finally had my Amazon package, I felt a bit cheated that I'd spent hours waiting in for it and rigged up a baby alarm and I didn't get to 'hear' the door buzzer.

The same is not true for my new Nest fire alarm however. I had the pleasure of 'hearing' that – as did my entire building – last week. It's so sensitive to steam that on coming out of the shower, it decided to go off, shouting something intelligible but I presume about the fact it was about to go off and then letting out what I believe must be a piercing alarm. It was so loud that I could feel it. Panicking, I grabbed a chair so I could reach the 'stop going off' button and bashed it repeatedly until the Nest lady stopped talking. It was only then that I looked down and realised that in my panic, my towel had come off and I was stood on a chair, completely naked in front of a big window overlooking a busy street smacking a fire alarm with a shoe.

It's when I think about things like this that I realise there may be another reason Amazon don't want o ring my door buzzer – Fear of the Crazy Lady.

Happy Humpday peeps

DG

x

Deaf Girly and the FaceTime fear

Ever since the summer disappeared, I've been in full-on hibernation mode. I'm like a squirrel that won't see food for the next six months – snaffling peanut butter-themed things that FJM and Big Bro sent me, all of which you can imagine are tremendously low in sugar and calories!

So anyway, yesterday after seemingly forgetting I was actually a member of a very expensive gym, I decided to go and pay it a visit and actually work out. It involved getting in my car and driving somewhere. It was cold and getting dark. The traffic was on the cusp of becoming murderous. I almost wavered as I locked the front door. But I didn't.

One minute into my cross trainer workout I was wondering if I'd done enough to work off the three peanut butter cups... but then my phone rang.

Well FaceTime went off to be exact and it was Big Bro calling me on his way home from work. My knee-jerk reaction – probably stemming from my forced-phone call days is to reject any call to my phone. Sometimes I forget that I can actually follow FaceTime.

I looked around the gym. It was basically empty. So sod it, I thought and hit connect. And there was Big Bro and there was I, sweating it out on a cross trainer. After he'd finished laughing his head off, we had a great chat. Me getting more and more out of breath and red in the face, him finding it more and more amusing. Although I have to confess, it is quite hard to lipread while striding along like a mad woman on a cross trainer.

But what was amazing was that by the time I'd found out how he was and told him how I was, 30 minutes had flown by and I'd actually done enough to work off about one quarter of a peanut butter cup, which is better than nothing right?

Obviously, I'm not going to make a habit of FaceTiming at the gym. I don't really want to become the most hated person there, after the ridiculous person who does handstands at the top of the only staircase to get in and generally makes a complete nuisance of themselves while putting the whole thing on Instagram, probably with a scowling me in the background. But it was reassuring after yesterday's blog about not communicating well with kids, that I can keep in touch with people. Not in the email and text sense (which is easy), and all very well and everything but there's nothing quite like hearing (kind of) someone's voice and seeing their face to make you feel connected.

I need to remind myself to FaceTime people more. To ring up the people I miss and love and see their faces rather than relying on text messages and email. OK, so it's not as simply as just picking up the phone. Outside of the big cities, you need a reliable wifi connection to FaceTime and you can't just pick up when you're out and about if you want a reception good enough to lipread on, so yes, it takes more planning. But I need to make that effort.

It's so easy sometimes to sit back and go 'Woe me, I can't use the phone, I can't listen to podcasts, the radio is no good, cinema is only good once a week in July at 4.30pm on a Tuesday,' but the reality is things are so much more awesome than that.

I think I just forget it sometimes. And if I'm honest I am a bit nervous about the whole phone thing. The idea that you're not disturbing people if you call them unannounced as I've always had to plan FaceTimes and have never really used the phone.

Silly really.

So in December I've decided to FaceTime someone once a week (aside from my rents or FJM who I do talk to more often) and keep in touch with the people I miss and love. Be spontaneous...

First on my list is my 93 year old Gma who has just got an iPad... she's not that keen on it, and I've been putting off FaceTiming her in case it's not switched on, or she gets stressed out... but I'm just going to give it a go. After all, this is a women who sends text messages in text speak and can beat most people in the completion of The Times daily crossword... so if she's up for it. So am I.

Happy Tuesday.

DG
x

Deaf Girly and the children

Do you know there are two things that almost never reach my ears when they're undressed:

Cats meowing and children.

Cats are just silently opening their little furry jowls at me – except when I have my hearing aids in and then they make low meowing sounds that I find quite fantastic but no one else hears the same way – but children, while I can hear the noise they are making, it very rarely makes sense. 

I noticed it greatly this weekend – FJM and I met with friends who all had children. There were double figures of children. All under 8. And I personally spoke to none of them. 

I realised as we drove home that I've almost stopped attempting to interact with children as they are so hard for me to hear. And this makes me a little bit sad.

It's something I've thought about before. In fact, when Elle magazine ran a competition for a 500-word piece on Relationship Goals, this was what I entered with. It wasn't selected. But that was OK, because what these 500 words do is remind me that the children who are important will be heard by me. Now and in the future.

So here it is:

DG on Relationship Goals

It’s 4pm on a Saturday and I’m surrounded by a gaggle of children (four to be exact) in the country kitchen of one of my best friends. My boyfriend is busy playing catch with the three boys as they chat about Minecraft, spiders and farts. At least that’s what I think they are talking about, because I can’t hear them. My nine-year-old goddaughter is quizzing me on whether I’ll let her design my wedding dress. I am not engaged. I’m hoping my boyfriend can’t hear her.

But in truth I can’t really hear her either. And it’s not because she has a lisp or talks fast. It’s not even because she looks down to fiddle with her loom band bracelet or that the conversation bounces from one unpredictable subject to another. It’s because I am deaf.

Having lived with my disability for much of my life, I don’t often feel sad about it anymore. I’ve learnt to get by with lipreading, clear explanations to others about my needs and an almost bullish determination to get what I want. When it comes to relationships, it takes me longer to form them. I can’t get to know people easily in a group setting. My best friendships are formed over dinners for two, chats with coffee and cake, FaceTime and text messages. This works very well in the adult world. But with children it’s different. You can tell them you don’t hear. But expecting them to understand what that means is quite a tall order.

When I look at my nine-year-old goddaughter I am filled with terror that I am missing out on getting to know her, that I could be a better godmother and that my deafness is causing me to miss out.

This weekend was no different. Watching my boyfriend effortlessly interact and seeing the kids chase after our car when we left yelling how much they loved him, I felt both a pang of pride for him and heartache for me.

With children you get back what you put in. So I just have to find different ways of interacting with my goddaughter, of getting to know her. This includes giving her an old phone of mine that works over wifi, so I can ‘What’s App’ her and say hello at no expense to her mum. That way she can keep me updated about her world and then the next time I see her I’ll have the right questions and a better ability to follow her quirky, intelligent train of thought.

I know as she gets older, so her understanding of my deafness will get better. But I want to make sure that the promise I made, to be there for her always is honoured. I want to make sure she can talk to me about anything. But most importantly, I want her to remember that just because I don’t always hear her, doesn’t mean I’m not listening. And certainly doesn’t mean I don’t care.

Happy Monday peeps

DG 

XX