Last spring if you’d asked me what I was doing at the weekends, I don’t think this would be high on the list. Nonetheless we prevail.

So deaf club is the National Deaf Childrens Society’s West London Branch monthly meet up. It’s in the non-posh part of Fulham and Chelsea are playing at home, but heyho. So whilst the boys enjoy the cinema and sticky ribs, Alice and I head off into the unknown.

It’s a small group around 20 people and the first thing that strikes me is none of them are signing, they are all sitting around glueing stars together and talking amongst themselves. The group is extraordinarily welcoming and I set about chatting. After a couple of hours we’ve met loads of people at all stages, some with implants, some with 2 implants, the rest are aided for their varying degrees of impairment.

We’ve found a group that meets weekly in Shepherds Bush and had amazing references on AV in Oxford and Christopher Place.

We also meet a little boy called Jake, who is around 18 months older than Alice, but was also a late diagnosis. His mum was very kind and said how Jake told her earlier that day how annoying she was. An unusual dream but one that we hope will be realised…

Hope springs eternal, we eat our cake and come home.