The most difficult decision you will ever make in your life is what to eat with your custard!
My wife became a supporter of a local theatrecompany. I thought it would be of little use to me so I just waved her off each
time she went and listened to the reviews when she got back. That is, until she
informed me of the Pudding Club! Now, I thought, you don’t have to listen while
you eat eight puddings in one evening do you? All the comments would be mmmm! and oh my! or something
else perfectly understandable in the circumstances. As it was a members only
club I eagerly sign up too. When the long awaited day came I had made a raspberry, pear and apple pudding with pecan nuts on top.
I lovingly carried it in and placed it on the table alongside several others and
weighed up the competition. They all looked good but who cares about that, it
was all in the taste and we were going to sample something from everyone.
The company was friendly
and obviously knew each other very well. They talked and drank around the bar
making the usual noisy background chatter that gets to me after a while and
raises my tinnitus in competition. All the sounds blend in together and it makes
even small talk impossible. Greeting are easy, I can lip read them and give a
confident nod and smile in response knowing that is all that is required. There
was my wife, like an obedient hearing assistance dog for the deaf, explaining
my situation and I could see the responses of understanding and sympathy. I was
wearing my ‘deaf badge’ and some even tried to communicate with me. Otherwise I was left to enjoy my, very good
and cheap, beer to myself.
Overall the evening
was a pleasant success without any problems beyond what was expected. I was
able to take my dish home empty, so it must have been appreciated, even if I
didn’t catch the complements. What I did notice was that some of the people I
had met spoke with good diction and expression which made lip reading much
easier. I was happy enough to want to come again (not just because of the
beer!) and so the next opportunity was a Christmas lunch.
A little advanced
planning was needed this time. The problems would be the same, lively
background chatter, announcements from afar and conversation with people I did
not know. This is the very thing I would normally avoid like the plague. Only
with family that I knew well and had an understanding with could this normally
work, though it would never be totally without its problems. At home I could be
busy doing something else or when visiting I could pick up snippets here and
there of the conversation. I could place myself in a position to hear more if I
wanted to or there would be a face to face word when it was specifically for
me. The Christmas lunch was very good, it was a three course set menu and proceeded with
everyone doing more or less the same thing, I could join in with some
confidence. What I could not do is hear. So, like my children with their
colouring books and pieces of paper in French restaurants, I went armed with a
notebook and pen for my wife to write down messages for me from across the
table. Either I received very specific questions asked of me, a note of the topic for
context or a comment on the content of the conversation. I also tried out my new
Nexus 7 with Google-translate picking up the spoken words and printing them on
screen for me (in Spanish too if I wanted it!). It worked rather well but got
baffled by the background sounds just like me. It needed the speaker to use the
built in microphone close up. It did manage a half garbled announcement from across
the room when all was quiet. This technology obviously has some benefits and I hope
it can be developed in the future to make it more sensitive to use with
competing sounds. It needed to be held like a Dictaphone which removed the spontaneity
of it.
At the table I was
sat next to a lady, now a retired GP, who had worked in London at the same hospital I had done but a few years earlier and knew the people I had such fond memories
of. It was not until we had left the reception and were going to the car that my wife told me
those details. Another chance to have a good interesting chat about old times had
gone passed and I couldn’t be part of it.
After this very
pleasant lunch we decided we should do this more often and so returned another
day for a Sunday lunch and I was persuaded to have a look at the theatre
auditorium. I was very impressed by the comfortable quietness of it and its cosiness.
The whole theatre was only the size of the ground floor of my house. I tried out the sound reception by listening
to words spoken from the stage area. It was good enough to want to attend the
next performance of their amateur dramatics, Flowery Shirts and Strange
Relations.
Ifield Barn Theatre
On the evening of the performance our arrival in the
foyer was once again met by the expected hum of conversation filling the room and so we
took up our seats in the stalls early. Because we had booked our tickets late
we could not sit together and decided to swop seats at the interval to compare
reception. The best seat was centre stage and a little above to make viewing
very comfortable. Soon the theatre was full, it holds eighty people. The carpets on the floor and soft furnishings of the seats with wooden
walls damped down the echo and made the sounds soft and gentle without making
them too quiet. I was sitting some twenty feet from the stage which was much
further than I would ever expect to hear from. There was no T-loop system
installed as there were no microphones being used. I was aware of my surroundings, the
shuffling, the coughs, the murmurs and felt I was a part of the audience. There
were no overwhelming distractions or competing background noises.What a surprise I got! When the narrator started speaking I could hear what she was
saying! Throughout the performance the words were assisted by first having the scene
set by a commentary to provide me with a context and as they were performing actors they
spoke, not just to each other, but to the audience as well. That is, me.
They had all the
things I need to hear well. Proper diction and expression, directed at me and
without any extra noises competing added to which was with good lighting directed on the speakers. When they did
talk over each other, for normal conversational effect or mood music was
introduced in the background, the distraction was minimal. Even though they did
not use microphones in such a small theatre the natural voice, not always helped
with amplification, was loud enough and clear enough for me to follow the plot
with about sixty percent full understanding supported by context, physical expressions
and actions for my lip reading. By ‘hamming up’ the acting a little (it was a
comedy performance) the gestures and pauses allowed the speaking to be done
clearly in individual isolation. My only complaint was that because it was a
comedy the audience laughed or pre-empted the punch lines sometimes. This takes
away all possible understanding but being a live performance the players
responded to the audience reaction and waited for the laughter to pass before
continuing. If it had been a television show the dubbed ‘canned’ laughter would
have been inserted afterwards and over the words as they were spoken.
I was so impressed by
the experience that I could not help but give my opinion to the director when
we left. Next day the theatre company comments on their social media site
included;
“Complimented by a deaf member in the audience,
we must have been good!”
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