I cannot lipread in the dark. Well that’s obvious really, isn’t it? But it really posed a few problems recently.
Jan and I are both honing our map reading skills and attending courses on navigating in the hills. As part of the course, I went with a group of fellow students into an unfamiliar wood, and we had to find our way around in the dark using a map and compass. I’m not planning to do any walking at night, but the skills are useful if the cloud comes down and you can’t see where you are.
We were standing around at the edge of the wood and my fellow students were milling around talking to each other and being briefed by the tutor. The wind was blowing and it was dark. So I had not the faintest idea what was going on. Before the Hearing Link course, I would have done some combination of the following: panic, withdraw, go home or muddle along and under achieve. If I had used what I had learnt on the Hearing Link course, I could have anticipated these problems, and thought about them before hand. But I hadn’t. So what could I do?
The most important bit for me was to take a deep breath, and remember that I was here because I wanted to be a better navigator; to think about how people could help me, and to ask for that help. So I found a spot where I was shaded from the wind, called the tutor over and asked him to explain again what the exercise involved. Talking one to one, with no wind, and a bit of light from my head-torch was enough. Problem solved, so off we went.
The main thing was that I coped, had fun and became much more confident map reading in poor visibility. I didn’t want anything else out of the session.
Mission accomplished!