Have you noticed the days drawing out yet?

29 December 2011

No, neither have I, but it is a bit too early just yet.  Towards the end of next month and we will see a difference.

So what are your plans for today then?  For me, I won't be doing much at all seeing as we have Kile for a few days.  He's a good lad and no trouble at all although his mum says he can be a real horror at times.  That's the beauty of having grandkids; you can have them and spoil them rotten and give them back to mum and dad to sort out later ;-)))  Actually, we don't spoil him really.  As much as we can we take him out in the car and usually go where we don't have to spend a lot of money, simply because we don't have a lot.  He loved the air museum at RAF Cosford.  Those sort of days are for summer time, or at least when it's nice and warm - today it's raining hard here in Dorktown.

I began reading David Lindo's The Urban Birder last night.  It's a nice easy read and so far I'm enjoying it.  Birders use their eyes to ID a bird obviously, but a lot of them also use their ears too.  Bird song and call is a certain way of deciding which bird is which in some of the more difficult species to ID.  It was the difference in songs that caused the split between chiffchaff and willow warbler in the 19th century.  The point is, David Lindo caught mumps when he was a kid and it has left him nearly deaf in his left ear.  That means of course that he sometimes has difficulties in hear bird song when he's out and about.  

The question now raises, "What has that to do with Dorktown?"

Dorktown was a mining town in years gone by.  By their very nature coal mines are very noisy places so a lot of the older men in the town with some degree of hearing loss.  So when you speak to them they might not be being ignorant by not replying, they just didn't hear you. 

Personally, I have tinnitus which can cause problems at times.  During 12 years in the army I used to go out on the ranges for shooting practice and to 'classify' every year.  That means that I was able to carry a firearm basically.   

The army issued ear plugs for use on the ranges but I always used to forget mine with the end result is that after a shooting session I would have ringing ears.  Now it's permanent.  Normally I don't notice it seeing as there is plenty of back ground noise going on but when it's quiet, like now - even with Kile here, I am very aware of it.  All of this has reminded me of something from 1996.

My OU career began in 1996 and at that time when you registered for degree program you had to complete a summer school.  Seeing as I was reading An Arts Foundation Course (A102), I of course did the summer school that related to the course.  Off I went to Manchester for a week and I really enjoyed it.  Anyway, in our group we had two guys with special needs.  One named David was almost blind.  He used to be a quantify surveyor for a civil engineering company.  The other was Arthur, another ex-miner who was almost totally deaf.  David was able to join in most things but Arthur always felt isolated from everything simply because of his lack of hearing.  Therefore we rarely saw Arthur at any of the socials that were put on.  It is situations like that which really bring home the problems that so many people face on a daily basis.

Nothing much happening in Dorktown at the moment other than rain and getting wet if go out in it!  Kile is happy playing on the Wii in the front room while Jan is playing games on her lappy.  I'm sat typing this and will move on to something else soon enough.  I might even try to get some writing done today.  That would make a change, I've not any interest in it for some time now.  Perhaps NaNoWriMo has written me out!  I hope not, I enjoyed writing.