Chocolate martinis, subtitles at the gym and a lipreading light

British Gas emailed me this morning to remind me that they needed my electricity meter reading.

They will not be getting it. Regular readers will know that the reason for this is that the meter is in the basement of the old house my flat is part of. This basement has a winding staircase thinner than a supermodel doing a somersault and more spiders than the scary wood in the grounds of Harry Potter’s school.

Paying a bit more for my electricity is just a price I will have to pay until I find someone willing to head down there while I guard the door as given the tensions in my block right now, I would also half expect to find myself ‘accidentally’ locked down there by persons who shall not be named.

Anyway, the last two days have been something of a revelation. Firstly in the form of chocolate martinis – oh my, these are quite something – and secondly in what my gym offers me as a deaf person.

So the martinis – chocolate, tasty and quite refreshing – were sampled yesterday with The Cameraman. We went for a drink before he embarked on a work trip to Samoa and it was lovely to finally meet him properly, chat about random things and discover that the anonymity of my blog makes me comparable to Superman! Hurrah! Although the deciding of this occurred after several of the chocolate martinis had been consumed.

And now he is in the sky, possibly dodging volcanic ash en route to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean…

I wonder if I have any readers in Samoa?

So the second revelation occurred when I attended the gym today in an attempt to burn the calories of first revelation off! There I was on the bike, which has a snazzy TV screen built in, and while on a hill climb, I started pressing buttons – this revealed a channel list – hurrah for the tosh on E4 – and also…

…drum roll please...

A SUBTITLES OPTION!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe it? I could actually watch TV, on the exercise bike, in the gym, with subtitles!

It’s when things like this happen that I am reminded about how technology really is developing when it comes to making life easier for deaf people. But while this is all amazing, the real challenge is convincing big companies to make these changes available to us. Cinemas that offer subtitled films every night of the week, DVDs that always have subtitles – even on the special features – and subtitles on films available to buy on iTunes… the list is endless.

And it was while I was thinking about this that I remembered I actually got one of my recent wishes granted last night… by The Cameraman. There we were talking about how I needed a lipreading light for nights in back gardens, BBQs at dusk, camping, and that sort of thing, that didn’t blind my friends, and he suggested downloading a ‘Torch’ app on my iPhone. Most of these are famous for not being bright enough to be torches and just being a white light on the screen, but as a lipreading light, they are perfect… I would highly recommend iPhone peeps downloading a free version of one to try.

So there you have it – three revelations before Tuesday’s out. It really is all good.