Juliet England: My deaf diary – part 2

Read Juliet’s first instalment here!

Friday 06 September 2019

To the local picture house with my friend, C, to watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

“You didn’t say it was an 18,” I hiss as it begins.

As usual, I catch one word in maybe a couple of thousand. Then, when I do hear anything, I feel so excited I spend the next five minutes congratulating myself, missing yet more dialogue.

Still, there’s the chance to catch up on some much-needed sleep when I drop off, which I always do at the cinema. I wake in time to study Brad Pitt in some detail. Hmm, perhaps coming to see this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Spoiler alert – the end is murderous. (Well, this is Tarantino.) But it’s done so well, through tension and what you see in the build-up to the violent climax, that not hearing the speech isn’t actually that disastrous.

Saturday 07 September

Francesca, the splendid Italian director of the local play in which I have a part the size of an amoeba, runs me home from a last-minute rehearsal. I love the way she leaves the car light on above the driver’s mirror for the whole journey, so that I can lipread.

As with anyone with a strong accent, there’s always the guilt that she may think it’s because of that that communication is so challenging. It isn’t.

The hearing aids are still giving me bother. They seem to magnify, to terrific effect, everything, as long as it’s not something I actually need to hear. A human voice, for example.

Monday 09 September 2019

Out on a Monday night (a Monday!) for a scholarship place with a local theatre company on a drama course. It’s impossible to hear the instructions, not least when we’re all expected to lie on the floor for the exercise, not actually an unreasonable requirement in the circs, but the leader’s voice echoes around the church hall, the words permanently lost.

I am useless at the juggling exercise. And when a group singing session kicks off, in the finest journalistic traditions, I make my excuses and leave. (I was banned from two school choirs, haven’t sung in public since 1983, and am not about to start now.)

Unsurprisingly, I am not offered a scholarship.

Tuesday 10 September 2019

Tesco delivery day. Yet again, they phone to let me know they’re at the door, rather than texting. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve told them, or that it’s in my customer notes.

The driver is pretty unapologetic and a tweet to the supermarket is met with a virtual shrug. Oh, and they’ve individually gift-wrapped each individual grape (I exaggerate, but not much) in a little see-through bag, despite loudly crowing about giving up plastic, just to make for an even more frustrating afternoon.

Wednesday 11 September 2019

A good Skype chat about cochlear implant with a friend of a friend. She is charming virtual company, delightful, informative, and helpful and leaves me eager to learn more.

The letter has come through about it, so now it’s just a case of waiting for the initial appointment in Oxford, which should take another month or so.

Sunday 29 September

Feeling unusually at a loose end for a Sunday afternoon, I bowl along to an audition for something called New Voices run by my local BBC radio station. For why should there not be a deaf voice among them? I pitch up at the appointed bar, a venue I have been too young to frequent for decades.

Of course it’s utterly terrifying to face the panel of four judges. One is something to do with Radio 1 (something else I’ve been too old for for decades) and scarily ‘yoof’. My first step is to move the microphone nearer so I can hear them.

I have just 60 seconds to blow them away, and, read excerpts over three sheets of paper from an old monologue, throwing each one on the floor as I go.

I talk about deaf dating, TV subtitles fails, and hear a chuckle when I tell them the old (but apparently accurate) one about Delia Smith’s favourite car brand being her trusty V- yes, well, you know the rest.

I stare at them afterwards, weak with relief, blinking in the lights. Even the stern-looking, super-cool ‘yoof’ producer cracks a grin. Three of them say I’ve got through to Round 2, then a fourth holds up a sheet of paper saying ‘Yes’ and comes over to hug me.

“Pardon?” I say, genuinely bewildered.

Monday 30 September

Watching BBC Breakfast, I’m momentarily confused by the subtitles as one of the presenters asks the Labour MP Jess Phillips if she’s into strychnine. Hasn’t the poor woman had enough to cope with recently without such bizarre questions on live TV? Oh, Strictly, is she into Strictly, the dancing show? Right, ho. As you were.