When I left school

When I left school, I found employment as a laboratory assistant at Robinson and Sons Ltd, a local firm that specialized in surgical dressings and boxes.  I enrolled as a day release student at the local Technical College where I found it very tough going.  During the lectures, I found that I could not hear or understand what the lecturers were saying and often did not know what I had to do. I realised that like it or not deafness was a disability and one that is not visible and I felt cut off, unhappy and isolated. Thankfully, a few of the students began to talk to me but I was certainly the odd one out and  I found that I could not depend wholly on lip-reading and my hearing aid and that it was so easy to lose the thread of what the other students were talking about. There was one lecturer who did go out of his way to help me by giving me notes at the end of the lectures explaining what he would be talking about in the next lesson and a list of books that I should get from the library; his help was very much appreciated.  I had to spend many hours studying and making notes in order to keep up with the other students but did complete the course successfully.

 I was very happy living in the Deaf World but on entering the Hearing World, it was not long before I realised that I was not as well prepared as I would liked to have been but I do believe that it was up to me to make a success of the final transition into the hearing World though the ideal situation for me would have been to have deaf and hearing friends. I can say in all honesty that the years at the two deaf schools that I attended was a time that I felt that I really belonged to a “group” as it was and for a long time afterwards very difficult for me to really fit in with the Hearing World.  There were many times when I felt left out of group conversations and it is easy to feel lonely and isolated and I found communication and mixing in the hearing world the most difficult obstacles that I had to face. I realised that using a hearing aid alone was not enough to allow me to understand everything a hearing person was saying but by using a hearing aid and lip-reading at the same time on a one to one basis, I was able to understand most of what was being said to me providing that that they did not put their hand over their mouth making it impossible for me to lip-read them.

Living in the Hearing World

I joined Robinson’s Sports and Social Club and one of my works colleagues asked me to join in with her group of friends. They turned out to be a great crowd and made me very welcome. We went dancing, played hockey, table-tennis and I joined the Music Club that was run by my friend. I did not hide the fact that I was hearing impaired and that I suffered from night blindness, subsequently I was well looked after when out at night but eventually I stopped going dancing because I found it difficult to cope with the low and flashing lights.


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Jean 

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 Jean with hiking friends



On free days which was usually on a Sunday, I went hiking with friends in the lovely Derbyshire Peak District, sometimes there would be just four of us or as many as ten.  We went camping as well; one holiday that we went on was to Pendeen near St Ives in Cornwall. There were four of us. Enid, Yvonne, Mavis and me. People in the village made us very welcome and one very kind lady made us an enormous Cornish pastie which was delicious.  When we went to the local the first night, we sat outside talking to an elderly man who really enjoyed telling us stories about the old days.  The elderly man was very entertaining; he may have been making the stories up as he went along but he was happy and we enjoyed talking to him.  The next night, we called at the pub again and had a chat with our elderly friend and ordered our glasses of local cider. We stayed outside as it was a lovely evening and there seemed to be a large crowd inside.  There were two groups of young men singing songs and attracting a lot of attention, one group was from Wales and we know that the Welsh have a good reputation for singing, and the other was a group of local young men. During the evening the bartender came out with a round of drinks for us, supplied by the group from Wales, the other group not wanting to be outdone did the same.  Three glasses of local cider each was a bit too much but I was not completely blotto and we did find our tent which was about a mile away! The next day, we went to Penzance and sailed off to the Isles of Scilly, we thought that some fresh sea air would do us good!

We went to the local every night and had a fabulous time but we always had time with the elderly gentleman first who looked forward to seeing us and telling us some more tales of the old days. On our last night there, we were invited to the village dance; they would not listen to us when we explained that we had no suitable attire to wear; they would not take no for an answer. At their request, we took our hiking boots off and danced in our thick yellow socks, needless to say we were not short of dancing partners. At the end of the evening, we could not find our boots and were told to sit in the middle of the dance floor, after a few minutes they gave us our boots; four pair of red boots and all size six and all tied together with numerous knots. The crowd of people there cheered and clapped while we tried to sort them out; it was a wonderful holiday and we had a fabulous time.

I decided to carry on playing hockey for as long as I could and at the time I was playing for Staveley Ladies that played in the Sheffield and District League and Chesterfield Frolics, a mixed team that played friendlies and participated in hockey tournaments.  Having retinitis pigmentosa where night-blindness is one of the main symptoms did place limitations on my social life though I still had my circle of close friends and I will always be grateful to my hockey friends.  Admittedly, there have been times when I found it difficult to follow conversations around me when with a group of friends because of the noise in the background. This made it difficult for me to get involved so I would try and start a one to one conversation with someone nearby.  The hockey crowd would often meet socially for a drink or arrange a party and at Easter would travel to Southend on Sea to take part in a hockey tournament; there was always lots of laughter and fun and I always felt at ease in their company.