Julie

Out with friends today.

Julie is a friend of a friend, but because she's been that for many years, she and Matt are our friends too.

I snapped this today while trying to capture her and hopefully it works.

There she is leaning forward, deep in conversation with someone, doing what she always does, looking you in the eye (not strictly true), making sure she's listening to you (again not true either), but holding a conversation.

She's actually deaf, so she's using her cochlear implant, she's lip reading, but if you didn't know, you wouldn't.

She lost her hearing over 30 years ago, and has used her disability or superpower to set up a training company to highlight the issues that they can help with.

https://www.hearfirst.org.uk/julie-ryder-my-story

Pretty amazing really.