We filed into the chilly chapel and took our seats. We were aware of those beginning the ceremony approaching the microphone.Those of us with hearing aids pressed our 'T' setting so that we could hear.
Nothing happened: there was complete silence into our aids. I should explain that one can tell if an induction loop circuit is defective or whether it is not working at all. In the former case one can often hear some "electronic noise" or a hum with no speech intelligence.
If one hears complete silence it means that either the induction loop circuit is not working (or perhaps there isn't one at all) or that the microphone is not switched on. The latter case reigned that day! We hearing impaired people could hear a speech murmur so someone was talking but obviously the microphone was not switched on or connected the the amplifier (or both) as no sound was coming out of the loud speakers.
In a small venue like this, hearing aids users can often make some sense out of the sound from a normal loud speaker but on this occasion we couldn't do that.
There was some live singing (Vera Lynn etc.) which most of us could hear well and when the music played we could enjoy that. Some people don't realise that many hearing impaired people can appreciate music even if they miss some frequencies although it is very difficult to make out the words being sung. In my own case, I can sometimes hear words if they are not "drowned" by the backing music. There is a well-known song by Bob Dylan that begins "the ants are my friends..." but some hearing impaired people hear this as "the answer, my friends...".
Now, I'm quite a bold person but even I didn't have enough brass to stand up in a funeral service to say that we couldn't hear. Even if I had done that, I know that no rectification would have happened because there were no staff present and they wouldn't even have known how to connect the microphone. So we HI people sat there with very little idea of what was being said in this never-to-be-repeated ceremony.
There was no possibility of complaining afterwards because no staff were visible and although it was now dark other funeral parties were arriving to use the chapel.