On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:38:09 +0100, tony sayer wrote:
(what I do find extremely difficult are things such as hearing someone
talking when there's a lot of background noise)

Thats a symptom of some hearing loss. Try this test on the RNID website.
A sequence of numbers are read out and you enter them on your keyboard.

Interesting! That claimed my hearing was within normal range, which
anyone who knows me well would tell you is ******** ;-)

I found myself automatically making educated guesses at some of the
numbers, though (similar to the way it's possible to read very blurry
letters by shape clues I suppose) and maybe I wasn't supposed to be doing
that - I don't think the test really said.

I suppose the background noise doesn't really change for that test,
either - it's just hiss, and maybe that doesn't cause as much problem for
me as some things (e.g. put me in a room with background conversations
going on, or a radio playing in a car, and I have problems making out
what someone's saying right next to me unless they talk quite loudly).

cheers

Jules