Having lipreading collisions

Wow! Wasn’t the weather marvelous this weekend? Penfold and her husband Dangermouse came to stay and we had a fabulous time.

I do love sun – even if I am under a hat and in Factor 30 suncream, there’s nothing like the warmth of the rays on my skin, especially my feet. I love having warm feet.

And on the subject of feet – this weekend my feet got a bit of a hammering, as I spent the whole time walking into things while lipreading Penfold and Dangermouse instead of looking where I was going.

Firstly, I walked into a road sign while on the way to the tube and stubbed my toes. It was eye-wateringly painful. Then, on the way home, I did the same thing, on the same sign, to the other foot. This left me yelping with pain and hobbling the remainder of the way home.

The in-between bit of this day out though was very fun, as we went to Ealing Jazz Festival and soaked up the sun and a three-litre jug of Pimm’s…

*hic

The jazz was indeed marvelous – what I could hear of it – and the food and drink accompaniment made the whole occasion a lovely lazy day in the sun.

Then, on Sunday, I was a woman on a mission.

Penfold had given me the task of replenishing her work wardrobe. Rather less specifically, she had asked me to find her a shirt that went to a pencil skirt.

I found her this – plus another three shirts, and four pairs of trousers and a jacket to go with it.

I provided her with a capsule wardrobe that Gok Wan would be proud of…

But in one store, while lipreading Penfold as we browsed the rails, I came a cropper with a particularly sharp-edged display rail, which took a chunk of skin out of my foot and turned the leftover skin a rather fascinating shade of blue in places.

Once again, I was hopping around in pain, this time with sore toes, sore top of foot and a bruised ego to boot.

*sniff

But being deaf and walking into things is pretty much a way of life. It’s something many of us have done. Indeed, I have a collision CV of a couple of lampposts, a low concrete wall –this one actually dented my shin and hurt so much, as I hit it at speed while running, that I almost threw up, and I’ve even walked into quite a few people.

The latter is by far the worst collision you can have, as unlike a lamppost, humans are normally quite annoyed when you walk into them for no apparent reason other than you’re deaf.

And then yesterday, another human got their own back on me. She was in an electric wheelchair and had apparently said ‘Excuse me’ to me, but I didn’t hear. So giving up on the polite tactic, she simply rammed her chair in the back of my legs. It hurt. I have a bruise. I kind of wanted to remind her that while she had a visible disability, I had an invisible one, but H&M changing rooms is not really the place to start getting mad about stuff.

And do you know what, why should I get mad? She didn’t know I was deaf. She probably thought I was rude. So the next time I walk into someone while not looking where I’m going, I hope they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and think to themselves, ‘I wonder if that girl just nose-butted my shoulder because she was lipreading instead of looking where she was going…’

And would you look at that…

A pig just flew past my office window.