Fingers do the talking

Regular readers of this column probably start the day, like I do, with bran and some prune juice ( well, there's no better way to stay regular).

Those readers will doubtless be aware that I've become mildly obsessed with the way that PR companies are relentlessly colonising the calendar with dozens of increasingly absurd "National Something-or-Other Days," and my collection of offenders continues to grow.

I've recently spotted National Amnesia Day, National Sausage Day, National Dyslexia Yad, National Amnesia Day, National Spastic Colon Day (during which you try to give it just as much love as a normal colon), National Constipation Day ( presumably sponsored by the British Bowel Movement, who have colon-ised the calendar), and National Amnesia Day.

But how should my irregular readers celebrate National Constipation Day, I wonder? Should we abstain from our bran and prunes? Should we hop everywhere with our legs crossed? Or should we just not give a shit?

I don't know if a National Deaf Day has yet been declared, but last December I staged an unofficial National Deaf Week of my own, thanks to a nasty infection of the inner ear.

It was a salutary experience too, because my side of every conversation soon began to consist primarily of "what?" and even gormless supermarket checkout staff started to assume they had an intellectual superiority over me, as though the hard of hearing must inevitably also be hard of thinking.

Fortunately, the problem cleared up after seven days, but the humiliation I underwent made me feel profoundly sympathetic toward the profoundly deaf (far more so than paying 50p for a little flag ever could), to the extent that I've even begun learning a handful of words in sign language.

And I often tune into BBC2's See Hear slot (where signing is used throughout), even though I think the title of this programme for the deaf is something of a cruel misnomer. After all, it should really be called See Can't Hear.

Saturday afternoon's edition was subtitled "The Evolution of British Sign Language," and featured presenter Clark Denmark simultaneously grinning and grimacing, while winding invisible wool around his hands (as all signers do), as he whisked us off to "a long time ago" (indicated by an elaborate over-the-shoulder gesture).

Back in the eighth century, he told us, the Venerable Bede had already developed a system of hand signs ( thereby allowing monks to exchange ecclesiastical gossip while still keeping their Trappist traps shut), but evidence of arthrological communication is scant before the 16th century, because sign language has no fully written form.

However, there were references to a deaf Cornishman in the 1590s who used two systems of signing (a polite one for his boss, a coarser version for his friend), to deaf spies in the civil service who would lipread conversations and sign them to colleagues, and to a signed wedding ceremony in Leicester Cathedral in 1576, which was duly re-enacted for the cameras.

It was simple yet moving, although it's a pity that back then they didn't know my own sign for the word "marriage", which consists of a single left-to-right horizontal movement of the index finger directly under the chin.