Here comes cider season

I work in a pub, I have done now for 8 months, at this pub at least, and something that always strikes me about the Summer season is the varieties of people it brings with it.

Today I served a deaf and dumb man. Thankfully it was at quite a quiet point in the day so I could dedicate my time to him fully to understand what it was he was trying to order.

He is not the first deaf and dumb person I have served, at this pub or at others I have worked at, and I very much doubt he will be the last.

Each time I serve someone like that, or see someone in a shop being served it pains me a little and I occasionally get annoyed at myself.


I wish I knew sign language.

One of my oldest friends little brothers is deaf, he has been all his life. When he was born I remember starting to learn bits of sign language with my friend and his Mom, sadly no where near enough to be able to form a sentence or understand someone else's.

When I think about a life with no sound, I feel as though I would be missing the most vital part of myself. To live in a world with no music. To live a life where you would never wake up to the sound of birds singing, or hear a baby laugh for the first time. To not know when someone is calling you. A life like that seems quite empty to me somehow.

A life with no speech equally fills me with the same sorrow. To never sing a lyric of my favourite song, or tell my best friend the stories of my day. To never be able to voice my anger at someone in a blazing row in the middle of the street.

I think we all take things far too much for granted sometimes.

And every time I see a person who cannot voice their own joy or happiness or pain, who cannot hear the joy or happiness or pain of others, saddens me. I try to imagine what it must be like for them, to put myself in their shoes.

They are shoes I would not like to travel very far in to say the least.

And each time I think these thoughts I give myself the same, never materialising task, learn sign language.

If one day I could ask a deaf and dumb person what table number they are seated at, or if they would like ice in their drink, in a way they could understand, I think that would be an amazing gift.

So here it is, in writing, my want and why to learn sign language. Lets hope maybe this time I mean it!