Granny’s Best China

For many years, I accepted that if anyone special came for tea, my mother would get the dragon’s breath china out. It wasn’t until I questioned it later, that I suddenly realised that she was actually saying ‘granny’s best china’, or, remembering, when young, learning a poem off by heart which exhorted me to pity mice implicitly when I should have been reciting ‘pity my simplicity’. I did feel a bit simple when I realised that I had been delivering pleas to nurture the rodent population but such is life!

So attending a lipreading class to learn the skill more thoroughly has been a real joy to me. Not only because it has helped me tremendously with communicating effectively but for the support and companionship I have received from other members of the class.

Lipreading is a particular technique used to aid speech understanding by watching the movement of lips, face and tongue when their accompanying sound is not sufficiently loud or clear to hear.

The class is able to share experiences, tips and empathy with one another which helps greatly. Being hard of hearing can be very isolating. Social groups and clubs are an enjoyable way of meeting other people and making new friends but if you are having difficulty in understanding the conversation, it is very easy to find one’s self on the periphery, not being able to participate for fear of not having understood what has already been said.

In terms of inconvenience, there are many disabilities that can plague the human being a great deal more than being hard of hearing but it must rate as one of the most irritating and exasperating at times, in terms of the confusion it can cause. Both for the listener and the speaker too, who occasionally finds the response to their question as barely lucid, never mind fitting.

Embarrassment on all sides, with words and phrases misheard and misunderstood. In my own case, having been born with little more than residual hearing in one ear and the other containing no receptive apparatus at all, it took a few years before I was able to see the occasional humour in the affliction. Even then, it was often not shared by the speaker. The resulting misinterpretation might have seemed a trifle amusing to me but did not necessarily have the same effect on the speaker. Invariably they would either look annoyed with me for causing perplexity or bend over backwards to try and spare me any discomfiture.

Most people who have severe hearing problems probably, without even realising it, try to lipread a speaker’s lips. Even the odd word or two, understood correctly, can give substantive context to what is being conveyed in speech, as can facial expressions....yet another reason for hoping coronavirus or it’s like never reaches again the proportions of 2021/22 - as it is almost impossible to pick up any clues from a face which is protected by a mask.

None of this would have had anything like the beneficial impact that it has though, were it not for the excellent tutor that we have been so fortunate to have acquired. Someone who patiently understands, listens to our needs and who appreciates that different members have differing requirements with varying levels of hearing impairment - not forgetting those who suffer the additional burden of tinnitus (the name for hearing ringing or a buzzing that comes from inside your ears, rather than from an outside source).

Above all having someone who teaches us to lipread in classes that are stimulating, safe and full of interest and which encourage us to share our experiences with each other as she does, with calmness, kindness and good humour, well, its just paramount. We are fortunate not just to have this particular tutor, but to have any tutor. We are in urgent need of new tutors to provide the service to future generations.

The Leslie Edwards Trust (a charity formed in Loughborough in 2009 to help the hard of hearing community learn lipreading) is offering the opportunity to train as a lipreading tutor by offering a professional qualification which involves a one-year distance learning course. The cost of course fees, travel and books will be covered by the Trust. Tutors are freelance and LET pays a generous hourly rate, intended to cover general expenses. Being a tutor is a part-time occupation and generally involves teaching several two-hour sessions weekly, based on a 30 week year.

If you would like to find out more about this very worthwhile challenge, please contact: leslieedwardstrust@gmail.com, jennycluley@yahoo.co.uk or angela.reddaway@talktalk.net or Jenny on 07889 544 997 Thank you for reading this.