Teresa Garratty: November can be a terrifying month for a deaf person

November can be a terrifying month for a deaf person. You’ll be quietly minding your own business one evening and then… strange things begin to happen.

At first you might notice the cat dive under the sofa and then the dog will start barking aggressively at thin air. What do they know?!You’ll probably check the front door…but no one will be there….How very odd. You then decide it’s best to forget it and climb into bed (because you’ve hit 30 so you’re old and boring now) to get a good nights sleep…but then….

Did you just hear something? And if so, what the hell was it? Is someone in your house stealing all your cool stuff?!

Once you’ve checked the house thoroughly (with a weapon of choice in hand) and decide you’re definitely not being burgled, you settle back down into bed…but there it is again, only this time it’s much louder.

You quickly grab two of the nearest rectangular objects and hold them up together, wishing that you were currently in the company of an old priest and a young priest.

Then a huge flash of light from the window catches your eye and as you slowly roll the blinds, anticipating the inevitable alien abduction (you’ve seen The X-Files, you know what goes on)…

…You suddenly remember….remember…that day some bloke tried to blow up parliament.

We might be deaf but Guy Fawkes/Bonfire/Fireworks/whatever you want to call it night can still be just as (if not more so) terrifying. We don’t need rockets that explode in similar fashion to the atom bomb to feel part of the festivities…no matter how cool they might look.

So next year, try to remember, it’s not an intruder, it’s not a ghost and it’s not aliens. It’s just people having a bit of fun…maybe I’ll join them…probably not.

Teresa is a freelance film maker, photographer and full time cynic. At school, she was voted “Most likely to end up in a lunatic asylum”, a fate which has thus far been avoided. Her pet hates are telephones, intercoms and all living things.

The Limping Chicken is the UK’s deaf blogs and news website, and is the world’s most popular deaf blog.