The Accidental Speech Therapist: A Collection Of Memories And Adventures

By Tess Langton

For those who feel they are content to be working with the cards that life has dealt them – beware!

I was that person – enjoying my work, enjoying the good salary I earned and enjoying considerable job satisfaction. So why would I throw that away and allow myself to be carried along by curiosity and vanity?

This book is the story of what happened next and of the wonderful variety of people I met along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035852314

Book preview

The Accidental

Speech Therapist

A Collection Of Memories

And Adventures

Tess Langton

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Accidental Speech Therapist

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Chapter One: Well, You Know What Curiosity Did!

Chapter Two: I’ve Started but Will I Finish?

Chapter Three: Dissection, Bewilderment and Learning

Chapter Four: Spotters

Chapter Five: I Come Up for Air—but Only Briefly

Chapter Six: A Moving Dissertation and Memories of Sarah

Chapter Seven: Getting Down the Farm

Chapter Eight: I Hear a Confession

Chapter Nine: Mine’s a Raspberry Ripple, Love

Chapter Ten: Never Judge a Patient by His Travel Blanket

Chapter Eleven: Marcel Marceau

Chapter Twelve: Hold the Front Page

Chapter Thirteen: Science and the Cautionary Chocolate Tale

Chapter Fourteen: I Rediscover My Dislike of Confrontation

Chapter Fifteen: My First (and Last) Brass Name Plate

Chapter Sixteen: I Meet an Angel

Chapter Seventeen: The Deflated Balloon Works Again

Chapter Eighteen: Memories-Good, Bad and Almost Litigious

Chapter Nineteen: Beware the Wrath of the WI

Chapter Twenty: Honour and the Hand of Fate

Chapter Twenty-One: It Seems, in a Crisis, I Prefer to Keep Still

Chapter Twenty-Two: Are You Dancing? Are You Asking? I’m Dancing

Chapter Twenty-Three: I Follow the Clues and Uncover the Secret

Chapter Twenty-Four: A School Trip with a Difference

Chapter Twenty-Five: Time to Call in the Constabulary

Chapter Twenty-Six: I Say Goodbye to Teenagers and Hello to a Mystery Dog

Conclusion

Dedication

For Sarah and Gill. Without their friendship and support at university, this book may never have happened.

Copyright Information ©

Tess Langton 2024

The right of Tess Langton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035852307 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035852314 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Chapter One

Well, You Know What

Curiosity Did!

I was doing some voluntary work in a prison when I first learned the view of speech and language therapists from the man in the street—well, the man in the prison.

What do you do, Tess?

I’m a speech and language therapist.

Bloody hell, you don’t get many of them!

It does seem to be quite a misunderstood profession. On learning what I do for a living, the response from most people is usually, blimey, I better start talking proper then, or oh, you work with kids. How lovely. So, my prisoner friend had a point.

My own first introduction, was hearing a radio programme about strokes. They interviewed a lady who had lost her speech as the result of a stroke and was driven crazy by loss of choices—well-meaning nurses and relatives telling her when she should sit up, lie down, bathe and so on, with no ability to argue.

As a chatty person myself, I was shocked at the thought, but now she was talking, so what happened? She began to sing the praises of a speech therapist, who had helped her regain her speech.

I had never heard of speech therapy and I was curious and impressed in equal measure, so I did some (pre-Google) investigation by writing, initially to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and, following their advice, to the nearest university that offered the course, to ask if I could have a chat with them about the training.

I admit, it was done on a whim—like so many things in my life—and as time passed without a response from the university, I filed it under ‘rude’ in my mind and forgot all about it.

In retrospect, I realise that a request for a chat about training must have caused some raised eyebrows at the sheer ‘cheek’ of this woman, but at the time, I knew nothing of how the university system worked.

I was employed as an administration manager for an international computer systems house and I loved my job. I earned a good salary, had an expense account for wining and dining clients, and that most prestigious of perks, a designated parking space. I had no desire to leave the job—no desire at all—but I did!

Six weeks after dropping that letter into the post-box, I arrived home to a telephone message, giving me a date and time for an appointment at the university. My curiosity was piqued again, as I had never been inside a university and any residual offence I might be feeling, at the delay in responding, suddenly evaporated.

It couldn’t hurt to go for a chat, could it and anyway, having asked for a meeting, it would have been bad-manners to decline, wouldn’t it? And so, I found myself driving to Sheffield for a chat.

I was mildly surprised to be directed into a room where six young girls were waiting, each tightly grasping the essay they had been instructed to bring and all looking very nervous. I was relaxed, because I was just there for a chat, but I was puzzled when we were all led into a language laboratory, seated at computers, given head phones and subjected to some extremely difficult tests.

By the time I realised what was happening, it was too late to protest and certainly not fair to make a scene in front of these stressed girls, so I obediently did the tests and we all returned to the waiting room.

An energetic young student bounced in to talk with us about the course and, oh boy, could she talk. I thought her a strange choice to sell the virtues of the course, because she told us that she was about to begin her third year as a first year at the university having started a Chemistry course, didn’t enjoy it, so transferred to Medical Science, failed that and was starting again, having fought against being struck off the course, by threatening to involve the Race Relations board.

The girls seemed to find her annoying as they struggled to rehearse their interview lines in their heads, against her incessant talking; I found her friendly and amusing, because I was only there for a chat.

One by one, a name was called and a girl disappeared until finally, there was just me and I was summoned to the room of one of the senior lecturers on the course. I was an administration manager, suddenly confronted with the most appalling mess of an office I had ever seen in my life.

Every flat surface, including much of the floor, was covered in piles of papers. The bookshelves harboured volumes in both vertical and horizontal form and the lower shelves were obliged to make room for festering coffee mugs too.

I itched to roll up my sleeves and get started on sorting it all out and I had to force myself to listen to her questions—of which there were many. Not much of a chat, I thought.

Have you ever been in a speech therapy clinic? She asked.

No, I said.

Well, don’t you think you ought to? She said with ill-concealed irritation.

Yes, I said, pondering the two filing cabinets and wondering if they had any space or indeed, any kind of system within. More questions came, one of which was telling me that the course involved human dissection and asking if that would trouble me.

No, I said, knowing I couldn’t be troubled by something I had no intention of doing.

Then I heard it, We would like to offer you a place, starting in October; do you accept?

I stared at her in amazement, realising that I had just been interviewed and had been successful! Now what? Then I heard a voice that sounded like mine, saying, yes, thank you, and I was dismissed, with orders to contact the speech therapy department at my local hospital and arrange to do some shadowing and to enrol on a further education course to update my study skills.

Damn my British, people-pleasing politeness. Where was the voice that said, actually, I only came for a chat and I don’t have the least intention of giving up my well-paid job to spend four years at university.

I drove home in a daze, but planning my escape. A letter (a phone call would take courage that I didn’t have), thanking her for her time and the offer, but declining. However, I also heard her voice telling me that they only had twelve places on the course and two hundred applicants.

Wow, I must be special, I thought and so vanity, the precursor of so much human downfall, took over and I decided to go for it. Me, at university, doing a Medical Science degree; who’d have thought it? Certainly not I.

Chapter Two

I’ve Started but Will I Finish?

On my first day at university, a car ran into the back of mine at the final roundabout. It was rush-hour, with lots of traffic and the offending car was a gold-coloured Mercedes. The driver stayed put, as I asked for his details.

He stared ahead, windows firmly shut and refused to speak. Realising I didn’t have time to call and wait for the police, and after some further anxious unsuccessful attempts to sort it, I wrote down the car registration number and drove to the Faculty of Medicine, feeling as if I was on the edge of vomiting with fear and stress.

There, I met the ten girls who might be my ‘peers’ for the next four years and the first thing I noticed was that none of them had been with me that day, when I had come for my chat. The verbose Asian girl, Priya, was on the list but not present—a situation that became the norm, as she constantly missed lectures, then begged notes from us and never returned them.

It was difficult to keep patience with her, although we understood and tried to accommodate the cultural pressures she had endured and continued to endure, including an arranged marriage and then pregnancy, while trying to complete a degree. She disappeared again in the middle of the second year to have her baby and we never saw her again.

My nerves didn’t settle at all in the first term, as I discovered that lecturers feel no obligation to be pleasant to students. Indeed, at times it seemed as if they actively disliked them and merely tolerated them as a necessary evil.

One of the course subjects was Statistics, which was a whole new confusing world to me and served to convince me that I wouldn’t be back for long after Christmas. There was to be a statistics exam, five weeks into the post-Christmas term and anyone who didn’t pass was off the course.

We lost one girl but amazingly, I passed. At my first psychology tutorial, two weeks into the course, the lecturer asked us to tell him a little about ourselves. He looked at me with pity when I said I had a family and would be commuting every day with a hundred-mile round trip.

I’ll give you six weeks tops, was his encouraging response!

There were three other mature students on our course and one was a very studious and serious girl, whom I shall call Molly—partly to protect her identity, but mostly because I can’t actually remember her name.

She had severe epilepsy, which she had not disclosed to the university. She was desperate to complete the course