A trip to the Movies!

This might look like a slightly confusing photo, so perhaps I should explain quite quickly exactly what's going on. The equipment my friend and soon-to-be colleague Sam is holding up for show is not some weird bugging device found on his person, an ASBO tag or worse, some kind of instrument of electronic torture.

Rather this is the equipment London's cinema's regularly hand out to deaf customers to help them better hear the movies they're paying £8.50 to watch (+ the extortionate popcorn, deafies love their popcorn y'know - maybe because we don't hear the rustling of the corn so well as we pop it in our gobs!).

Sam and I were off to watch a film called 13 (which was excellent by the way, excellent and gory) and decided we'd find out whether we could improve on the level of hearing we'd get from our NHS hearing-aids. {When the manageress saw us taking this snap, she actually started to try and help in any other way possible, even giving us a brochure on how to operate the equipment! Which was nice... I think she thought we might be from Watchdog or something...}

This loop system scanned straight into our hearing-aids - giving us what was supposed to be a superior level of hearing.

A couple of problems though. The box lost frequency if you moved even an iota (which happens pretty easily) which was very annoying indeed. Also, it was slightly tinny. So it was that Sam and I removed the box just as the trailers were ending and the film was about to start, and went back to our normal states, using our plain hearing-aids to get by. Typical.

The film was subtitled, so it didn't make too much of a difference in terms of our understanding of the film. But it was a shame that not even this once did we find equipment that actually helped make our experience better.

Still, it's a great snap, eh? Sam looks very meaningful as he holds the box aloft. Good stuff, Sam, even if it didn't help us at all - you've got a future as a consumer affairs reporter if you ever need it!