Craic On

It might be cold but the sky is blue and the sun is out and casting long winter shadows over the landscape. This is the weather for walking, and on Thursday afternoon I bunked off and went for a walk and a talk with my sister. The sister never leaves home without her penknife. I never leave home without a lipstick. She is academically gifted but once put her finger in the blender and switched it on to see if it was working. I was on the floor convulsing with laughter and incapable. She was making a cake at the time. Her solution to this mishap was to put a sign in front of said cake that read “not suitable for vegetarians”. I would not have thought of this. Our walk offers a huge variety in landscape and terrain. The sister thinks that this affords me the ideal opportunity to see what a long cane has to offer. I have tried to explain that it’s not designed for cross country. She has never come to terms with the reasons why a long cane cannot offer you a suitable form of mobility in the undergrowth. I ha

I am a great fan of the bike. I have a bike. It lives in my shed and has flat tyres and never goes out. It’s a sit up and beg bike that I bought when my sister bought a hugely expensive mountain bike and all the gear because she was going to take up serious cross country cycling and offered to come out with me. We went cycling once together before she refused to go again. She refused on the grounds that it was too frightening to see the expressions of terror on the faces of those who had to dodge my unregulated progress. Her bike languished in the garden and finally expired. Lamenting it’s demise she asked me to give her mine. I refused on principle. My son is a great fan of the bike too. He loves bikes so much that not even getting knocked off his bike deterred him. The driver came out of a side turning without stopping or indicating and ploughed straight into my son who was catapulted across Chiswick High Road and landed on the bonnet of an oncoming car. (Hurrah I say!. It was on the car and not under

Banking is a dirty word these days and Bankers have come in for a pasting. Bank Station, with it’s ongoing improvement work, huge levels of public investment and disgruntal travellers is not a bad metaphor for anyone mystified by Banking. It’s confusing. It’s a constantly changing terrain down in Bank tube station, with it’s temporary signage that is like the small print in a loan agreement and just too tricky to read, it’s temporary structures, and all the twists and turns that only served to undermine my confidence in my own judgement because I ended up in Rotherhyde when I meant to go to Tooting. Dave, at Clapham North, has a technique for stuffing me in to the front carriage of the northbound rush hour service so I’m in the right place when I get to Bank. At Bank it’s my fellow commuters I generally rely on. While the ones that tut and complain at my dithering presence assume a greater importance in my consciousness than they deserve, spare a thanks for the people who go out of their way. The bes

I did something rather wonderful this morning. It involved Grand Masters and there was not a golf ball in sight. Golf is a whole other story: I once went for a golf lesson. I have no idea how blind people make a go of this inscrutable game. I found it impossible to line the iron up with the ball and spent a frustrating hour beating the hell out of thin air and terrifying my coach. After the lesson ended and he mopped his brow, he told me not to come back. These Grand Masters would not have been seen dead, let alone alive, in the coveted Masters Green Jacket. It’s a truism of just about all paintings in Charles 1 collection that green doesn’t make much of an appearance. It was an unstable color. You couldn’t just drop a blob of blue into a blob of yellow and hope for the best. Reds predominate. I gave up going to art galleries a long time ago. It’s not that it’s impossible to appreciate the beauty and sentiment of great art. Good magnification can make it worthwhile, but it’s the crowds that do it.

I’m about half way through reading ‘My Brilliant Friend”. I say I’m reading it. I’m actually listening to it as an audio book. There are those that say this isn’t reading at all and that it’s a lesser activity. These people are predominantly people who can see to read a Penguin Classic, which, lets face it, not many of us can do when you consider the meanness of ink and paper involved. Even in the world of sight loss, there are those who share this purist view of reading. They favour the generosity of a braille manuscript, that you need a wheelbarrow to shift. I prefer the audio file. It’s all positional. I agree that the voice of a narrator is a very different experience from the translation of a printed page to a picture in your head, but the audio book, that had its origins in making books accessible to those of us who don’t read print, is in the ascendancy. You don’t have to be blind to appreciate its charms. Everyone is doing it. Back in the day, blind subscribers to the tape library were tre

Some boroughs provide assistance with the cost of taxis to their blind residents. It gets people out and about and if you can’t use public transport it can be a lifeline. The idea is that the taxi comes to you rather than you having to find the taxi. Much like an Uber. I’ve never tried the Uber but given the alternatives, a light went on in my head and I thought I’d give it a go. My current taxi hailing technique is to stand on the side of the road with my arm outstretched, sometimes for half an hour, in the vein hope that a taxi might come along and stop and transport me to a glittering party at the Ritz or late night shopping at Morrisons. It’s always a vein hope, not because I never get invitations to glittering parties at the Ritz or go late night shopping in Morrisons. I often go to Morrisons. There will always be someone who positions themselves between me and the oncoming much longed for taxi. Now that really is the ultimate in queue jumping and the height of bad manners and I have no idea that i

A couple of days ago a friend of mine invited me out to Lunch last minute. She’s always to be relied on to pick a good place to eat. Thursday was no exception. The choice was not an easy one. Should we go for a starter as well as a main course? What was the difference between the kind of chicken we normally eat and a black one? Should we try something with truffle? Should I be really self disciplined and stick with lettuce salad? We had just got to the point when we thought we knew, but were giving the menu one last check. I normally get my friends to read the menu to me but I had my reading eye pressed to the page. When I say pressed, the right side of my nose was flat against the surface of the menu. It might not look comfortable but it gets the job done. “Madam,” a voice said. “I have something for you.” “Oh good,” I thought, imagining some delicacy to tickle my palate. How wrong I was. I looked up to find the suited restaurant manager standing next to me proffering a silver salver on which was

It might have been Joseph Heller who said something along the lines that just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Call me paranoid: It was the middle of the night and it was a desolate bus stop at Luton Airport. I was alone. There was just me, my red suitcase with huge white spots on it that is easier to see than a more restraint style of luggage, and there was my cane of course. Then came the man in the Aaron jumper, (never best worn with mourning dress), who asked me if I needed any help. I was polite but firm. I did not. It was kind of him to offer. It was a long cold wait, after the second delayed night flight in three days, and little chance of getting home. Aaron jumper and I had just missed the bus. He made me feel as if I was being watched. Luckily we were not alone for long and with each new member of the queue he mouthed and pointed at me. He had got there before any of them and he was first in the queue to ensure that I would be helped and they would be in no do

The young are all blessed with beauty. I admit that beauty is a subjective judgement. I think that my god daughter, who is keen on an orange skin tone, is a great beauty, although I have not, until now, been a great fan of orange. I wish I had known all of this when I was young and not at all bad looking. Now I have to remind myself that I will never be any younger or better looking than I am today, so I had better make the most of it, and making the most of it means shopping for clothes. The challenge is how to shop if you cannot see to do it. A blind woman I know is always impeccably presented. Surely it cannot be her husband who supports her in this. Left to the choices of the men I know I would be the owner of a double breasted mustard coloured blazer with epilates and half sleeves, a selection of synthetic zip up Scandinavian knitwear and some remarkably ambitious underwear. The trouble with my female friends is their tendency to impose their tastes on me. What they know with certainty, becau

The older we get the more common the experience of meeting people that you have met before and then having the same conversation with them that you had last time you met them. One, or both of you, cannot remember that you have ever met. I once delivered a training course in the Europa Hotel, Belfast, with a super friendly participant.  At the end of the day he asked me if I remembered him. I did not. It turned out that fifteen years earlier we had enjoyed a kiss at one of those wild South Belfast parties I used to go to in the early eighties. Funnily enough I don’t recall what we talked about but I do remember the kiss. Parties are a challenge if you can’t see much. These days I often find I can’t tell the difference between furniture and people let alone men and women, but I have a technique: I slowly circle round the room until I settle on the vibe that says I can join in. This is a tried and tested approach that has served me well. Recently I went to a party which seemed to me to be populated by p

A few new young voices in this special episode! From explaining your sight to new friends, to starting secondary school and big hopes for the future - we've lots of chat about driverless cars, words of wisdom for anyone recently diagnosed with sight loss, and all about accidental trips to Newry and realising your childminder has a face! We think they did a fantastic job, if you think so too, leave a comment and share with a friend! #RealiseYourPotential #RNIB