Words in Hand

Yes! Do you mean? Oh yeah. Oh, it was fantastic, a beautiful story! A deaf man was telling me and I just couldn't believe it, it was fantastic. What had happened was, he was telling me himself, that he had been at the deaf club and he'd been drinking, having a great time, drinking heavily and drinking many pints and then he was drunk. And he waved farewell and walked down the road to George Square in Glasgow, and you can get a late bus there. It was, he was really staggering all over the place, falling down and getting up and anyway he wanted the last bus and he was peering through fuddled eyes. And anyway, the driver looked at him and said 'Okay' and he probably knew him and he went upstairs and sat down. And he was feeling quite ill and he collapsed, he blacked out ... he'd blacked out. So, I looked at him and said 'Tell me more, tell me more!'

So anyway, time moved on and he woke up and there were lights flashing across the top of his head. He said 'What are they?' Anyway, they flashed again and I looked at him again and said 'What's it about?' So he woke up again and he was in bed, lying in bed. Last time I was on the bus, then the next thing I can remember are these lights flashing across my head and now I'm in bed. Then he recognised straight away, he was immediately, that he was in a hospital. The smell of a hospital. He said 'What is it?' a doctor came, he said 'Are you alright?' He said 'I'm deaf.' Doctor said 'Oh no! You're deaf?'

'What is it about?'

'We thought you might have been unconscious, or ...' And then they found out what really had happened. When he collapsed in the bus, he might have fallen, somebody had tried to resuscitate him and spoken to him and he'd just lay there and they'd panicked, so they might have thought he was in a coma or something like that, so they quickly rushed him off to hospital. Just imagine if they'd put intravenous injections in his arms! What would have happened?!