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.

What’s your goal for Alice ??

This is one of the most common questions we are asked by the professionals. Stupid question we think, its obvious, then you start to articulate…..

We want Alice to be normal, we want Alice to have everything she wants and needs, we want Alice to never know the tears shed and the stubborness of her parents.

In short, we want (in a Martin Luther King moment) Alice not to be defined by her ears but by the fact that she’s funny, cute and good to be with.

We want her to go to the pub with her friends (deaf or otherwise), to have whatever career she wants and not to in anyway ever be restricted by some horrible bit of bad luck. We know and accept that she is deaf, but we will never accept that this is her defining characteristic….

So in short dear professional, please understand that i will do everything in my power to make sure that her ears do not put any restrictions on her life, her family is a hearing family, our world is an oral world so why would I want anything different for her.