Looking back Ronnie feels that he was driven by the need to compensate for his lack of educational qualifications and his deafness, both of which he felt were holding him back. Working in retail - and particularly working in retail food - offered him an opportunity to progress and earn a good standard of living without the need for paper qualifications.

With hard work and dedication it was not difficult to get ahead. As a manager he used to go into his own supermarket on a Sunday to fill up the shelves, and by sheer industry and encouragement to his staff (many being the same age as himself) he substantially increased sales. As area manager he taught himself managerial skills on the job, learning how to give instructions to experienced store managers old enough to be his father as well as ambitious young managers who were only a few years older than he was.

As buying/ marketing director he immersed himself in his job and even spent his Sundays reading relevant business and trade journals to keep abreast of developments in the market and educate himself about management. In short his ambition to succeed drove him to spend most of his waking hours working.

Fighting the deafness

His deafness was not an obstacle to this ambition but, on the contrary, one of the key factors which spurred him on. He did his utmost to function more or less normally at work without revealing his deafness. He tried to get the best possible hearing aids for both ears, buying them privately at considerable cost and going back for a new hearing aid whenever he noticed a further loss in his hearing. He also became quite a proficient lipreader without ever taking any lessons.

Nevertheless, with hindsight Ronnie now believes that he did not cope with his deafness nearly as well as he thought he was at the time. In his 20s he found it increasingly difficult to understand what people said on the telephone and in any situation where there was background noise. Often he managed to improvise successfully and to avoid difficulty by doing most of the talking himself. Underlying his determination not to admit to his deafness was his concern that, if the full extent of his deafness became known, this would lead eventually to his dismissal.

Becoming profoundly deaf as a senior manager

In 1975 at the age of 31 Ronnie was headhunted at a very high salary to become the marketing director of the food division of a prestigious Group of department stores. He was appointed despite the fact that, at the company's medical examination, his audiogram recorded very low levels of hearing. The company doctor commented that as he had gained an outstanding reputation in the food industry despite having such poor hearing, his deafness obviously did not matter.

In fact, his move to this high level managerial post marked a turning point in his life. In previous jobs he had adopted an autocratic style of management. He worked out what he wanted his staff to do and told them to do it. This predominantly one-way communication relieved him of the need to spend much time listening to others. In his new company, by contrast, there was a much more democratic environment. Many decisions required detailed preliminary discussion at a very senior level, and he was forced to attend lengthy Board meetings.

Yet at the same time Ronnie's hearing was deteriorating more rapidly to the point where he had become profoundly deaf in both ears. The true extent of his communication problems now became very apparent. He found himself sitting in Board meetings for hours but understanding little of the discussion. He often felt that his attendance was a waste of time.

Another problem was that he could no longer use the telephone at all without help. In the mid 1970s there were not the technological aids now available to help deafened people at work (e.g. loop systems for meetings and Typetalk for the telephone). If there had been, Ronnie would not have used them because he was determined not to draw attention to his deafness.

Gradually he realised that because of his increasing deafness he could not maintain his previous high standard of performance at this level of management. Secondly, he had already started to question his workaholic life style. For example, he now had two daughters and wanted to spend more time with them. Eventually the company, too, became dissatisfied with his performance; so after three years in the job, he accepted severance terms to quit.

Changing his approach to life

At this point Ronnie changed his approach to life in two ways. Instead of pushing his deafness into the background, he decided to take steps to learn how best to cope with it, and instead of looking for another high-powered managerial job, he decided to work for himself and leave time for leisure interests.

Learning to adjust to his deafness

A year after he had left the company, Ronnie went on a two week rehabilitation programme at the LINK Centre in Eastbourne. He found this an enlightening experience in several ways:

• The director (who was also the founder) of the LINK Centre made a great impression on him, convincing him that learning how to communicate more effectively could lead to a much more fulfilled life;

• he met other deafened people and was able to compare their various methods of coping with their deafness with his own;

• the LINK Centre staff introduced him to new strategies and tactics for communicating more effectively with hearing people that he adapted for his own use;

• he learnt about the provision of lipreading classes. After the course he started going to lipreading classes twice a week and found that his lipreading skills improved steadily. As a result he has continued to attend lipreading classes ever since to maintain these skills.

However, the most important general outcome of his experience at the LINK Centre was that, for the first time in his life, he felt able to accept his deafness.

Later he took classes in British Sign Language (BSL) at Stage One and then joined the local Deaf Club. He found an affinity with people who were born deaf as well as deafened people and often prefers their company to that of people in the "hearing world". He also saw the need to improve employers' awareness of the needs of deaf and deafened people at work and studied to pass the Deaf Awareness Certificate of the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People.

In addition to taking these steps Ronnie continued to search for better hearing aids. By 1997 he had no useful hearing in his left ear so that a hearing aid was no longer of any value; but after an infection had been cured in his right ear, he had a powerful hearing aid fitted which helps him to detect environmental sounds and still to hear some speech on a one-to-one basis.

Finally, after losing all the hearing in his left ear, Ronnie learnt of the possibility of recovering some hearing through an operation for a cochlear implant. He went to Addenbrooks Hospital for tests and was found suitable for an implant in his left ear. Although he was nervous about the operation because of his bad experience with the operation on his right ear as a teenager, he decided to apply for it. Funding for the implant was approved, and at the time of my last contact with him, the operation was due shortly.

Working for himself

Ronnie knew that he had to make a success of any business he started because he had substantial financial commitments, including the cost of two daughters at independent schools. Although by the time he resigned as marketing director his wife had gone back to work part-time as a dental hygienist, he still needed a substantial income to make ends meet.

For the first three years after his resignation he worked mainly as a consultant in the retail and wholesale food business for several clients, including food manufacturers who wanted information from him about how best to market their products to retail outlets. In launching his consultancy Ronnie benefited from his previous contacts in the industry; but demand for his services fluctuated over this period.

One of Ronnie's clients was a famous London Department Store, which attracts many wealthy foreign customers. With the active support of the Store's senior management, he developed an idea for a new company to provide sightseeing tours in London. He launched the company with a fleet of coaches displaying the London Store's livery, and since then the tours have been provided in many languages including, on a few occasions, BSL.

To run the tours Ronnie recruited 15 staff; but he developed a distinctive style of management to take account of his deafness. He always started by explaining to new staff that he is deaf and what the implications of this are for his methods of working. He avoided dealing with his staff as a group, preferring to work directly with individual staff on specific issues. He has also made extensive use of technological aids such as his fax and, more recently, email, as well as speech-to-text aids such as Palantype at meetings. However, when he has needed to use the telephone, he has arranged for another member of staff to be present to repeat to him what the caller is saying; but it is his own voice and message which goes back to the caller.

Developing a new social life

With his third daughter still at university the financial success of his business commitments is still important to him; on the other hand he finds it essential to pace himself at work. First, he has no inner ear balance. This restricts his mobility and makes getting to and from work a major challenge. Secondly, to lipread colleagues at work requires sustained concentration over many hours. If he did not pace himself and take breaks, tiredness would give way to exhaustion, and he could no longer work effectively. Consequently Ronnie has progressively delegated more tasks to his staff so that he can take time off to recuperate after concentrated periods of work.

Since he became self-employed, Ronnie has also made time to enjoy a fuller life that is no longer dominated by work. He has developed leisure activities such as playing golf and undertaking voluntary work to help other deafened people. Recently, for example, he has become a volunteer on the outreach programme run by NADP and the LINK Centre, which is designed to help deafened people take advantage of the local and national services available to them. In addition he has joined the Board of Trustees that oversees the work of the LINK Centre.

These developments in his social life have culminated in Ronnie selling the London tours business to a much larger company in July 2000, although he is still involved as a part-time consultant.

Ronnie's reflections on his experience

Overall Ronnie is satisfied that he has found the right balance between work and leisure, and that working for himself has proved to be the right solution since he became profoundly deaf. Moreover, his experience has taught him that to make the most of life as a deafened person it is necessary to accept and understand one's deafness and to learn how to adjust to it, both at work and in one's social life. It is also important in his view to take the initiative to show people who can hear what they need to do to communicate effectively with deafened people.