Ishould have been prepared for it, I suppose — the silence. But it strikes me immediately. And, to begin with, I find it difficult. Here is a family behaving exactly as every other family in the country behaves every morning — having breakfast, getting ready for school, putting the wrong shoes on the wrong feet, not wanting to put coats on. But someone has hit the mute button, and it is all happening in silence.
Well, not quite. After a while other, non-conversation sounds — the hum of the fridge, birdsong outside, the crunch of cereal being munched — begin to emerge out of what I originally mistook for silence. All that is missing is the conversation, the talking, whining, yelling that normally goes with such a family situation. It is like a song with the lyrics removed.
Of course, there is exactly the same kind of conversation going on as any other family would have every morning. It’s just that the words are being signed instead of spoken verbally. I don’t know sign language, though. That is why I am here: I don’t really know any deaf people, have never been exposed to deaf culture. I am in at the deep end, the deep end being a smart house on a new development on the edge of Swindon, in the west of England.
This is where Ramon Woolfe lives with his fiance Louise Fitzgerald and their three children — Jasper (4), Layla (3) and Spencer (15 months). There is another on the way. All of them are deaf. They have invited me to stay, to get a glimpse into their lives.
Later on, Ramon tells me about the first time he spent time alone with only hearing people. He was in his early 20s, and he went to Thailand to act in The Beach, the film of Alex Garland’s book, a part that didn’t make the final edit.
Anyway, as someone whose family is all deaf (they have been for eight generations) and who had always been surrounded by deaf people, this was his first experience of having no other non-hearers around him. He found it hard to begin with: He was lonely, excluded, bored.
It was the first time he properly realized that he was deaf, he says. But then he saw that he just had to get on with it. And, to be honest, looking at his photos of his Thailand trip — surrounded by glamorous movie stars at glamorous parties, in a matey embrace with Leonardo DiCaprio — he seems to have coped quite well.
My situation here is hardly the same. Ramon was a long way away for three months; I am an hour or so along the M4 motorway for 24 hours. But it is the first time I have spent only with deaf people, the first time I have really thought about not being deaf.
But for now, the correct shoes are on the correct feet, coats are on and it’s school time. Red Oaks primary school is just a five-minute walk away, with two small roads to cross. As Jasper and Layla scuttle about the place, Ramon and Louise, unable to get the audio clues to their whereabouts, probably have to do more meerkating than hearing parents would. Jasper, the dreamer of the family, is reminded to look both ways before crossing the first of the roads. At the second, there is the lady who helps the children cross the road safely who signs “Good morning.”
Red Oaks is about as good as it gets for deaf children — a new school, with an open-minded headteacher, who was especially welcoming to ideas about how to make school more inclusive for deaf kids. A lot of the impetus came from Ramon and Louise.
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