When my mum and dad realised I was deaf, they were sitting in the cinema with their hands covered in popcorn grease watching Mr Holland’s Opus – a film about a music teacher with a deaf child. They realised that I probably shouldn’t have slept through Mr Holland’s grand orchestral bangers. That trip to the cinema was followed by multitudinous hearing tests, hearing aid fittings and many trips to Taralye, which is the oral language centre for deaf children.