June's Blog

LIBERTY LAB

2011-02-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

Only someone who has had a guide dog can possibly understand how penned in and imprisoned you feel when you’re between dogs or can no longer have them.

When my lovely old Esme retired I was living in an unsuitable area – Not for dogs but for me. My heels were sore because of flat feet which caused me to have plantar fasciitis which has now gone and I had to wait to move to Surrey before I could even think of having another dog. I moved two years ago this coming May and had to go back to the slow and laborious white cane. My arm ached and my back ached but most of all my heart ached.

When I lost Esme I lost my eyes. I lost a companion and I lost a loyal friend. I pottered about and only went out when I had to. I didn’t want to go out because it’s so hard with a cane and I felt so blind, groping about in the street, bumping into objects and it seemed to take so long to get anywhere.

Then I had the call that I longed for. A GDMI rang me to tell me that there was a dog for me. I was so anxious to go that the three days’ notice I had didn’t faze me though I was a bit stunned. I trained last October with my fourth dog, Rosa. It hasn’t been without its difficulties. As usual the training was very tiring and I do have a back problem.

When I came home I had news of a bigger flat which would better meet both Rosa’s and my needs and I wasn’t given much time to move. As anyone will tell you, guide dog training is exhausting enough but a move on top while undergoing home training after the initial residential stint is very tiring indeed. I left my keys in the fridge, forgot to turn off the cooker ring once and could hardly take in anything my instructor told me. Then I had an accident to my right foot and tore all the ligaments in it so just as poor Rosa was getting used to me and her new home, she had to go again. While she “played away” but not with another dog as she has been spayed, I hobbled around my new flat, still going to the bathroom instead of the kitchen as the flat is like a mirror image of my other one but a little different again as it has a separate bedroom.

In my despairing and tired state, I told my instructor, Emma, that I didn’t want her and would make do with the sighted PA I have. Then, after a visit from my friend and her guide dog which came to me for fuss, I tearfully rang Emma and told her I couldn’t live without Rosa and that I’d not change my mind again and please may I have her back.

On 6th January, having spent Christmas without my dog, Rosa came home and I worked hard to make up for what I missed as a result of hurting my foot.

Now the home training is almost at an end and I have just one more route to qualify on. Today, as on Saturday and a few times beforehand, I went out to get shopping again on my own and yet not on my own. This lovely, gentle two-year-old Labrador, golden and glorious, faithful and dependable, took me unerringly to every shop I needed to go to today. She walked me through the shopping mall I use in Surrey and I know that without her I wouldn’t even bother going to Marks and Spencer.

When I think of how near I was to losing her because I was so desperately tired and in agony with my foot I shudder. I thought I didn’t have enough heart left to share with or give to another guide dog after my lovely old Esme retired but I find it’s true what people say, namely that the more love you give the more you can give. These dogs ask for so little. All they want is a warm bed, regular meals, a bit of fuss and lots of kindness and in return they restore the independence so prized by and valued by us and so taken for granted by those who see.

When I come home, to relieve the tension for us both after the stress of going out in traffic filled streets, I have what I call “waggley fuss”. All this means is that I play with the dog, tickle her and make her wag her tail while saying to her “Wigoty-wag! You’re a good girl aren’t you”, at which point she dashes round the room like a horse at the Epsom Derby and returns with her poor and batter “Flopsy”, a toy made for her by her kind boarder Barbara who looked after her while I moved and when I hurt my foot. I thought today just how much “Wigoty-wag” sounds like “Liberty Lab”. That just about sums it up – Liberty Lab because Rosa has given me back my liberty and freedom just as Emma has for it was Emma who trained us and who has worked hard with me to see me qualify with this lovely dog. A silent army of people, unsung and yet so valuable, from puppy walkers Tessa and Trevor, to Barbara who looked after Rosa to Emma and those others involved in her training, crept up to my door and unlocked the prison bars of blindness so that I may be free – Free again to go out into a world that I have never been able to see. Every penny you put into a box, hour you give to help in whatever way you can and all the time you give to Guide Dogs will do as much and more for someone else who will one day do as I have done and benefit from their very own liberty Lab. It makes going out in the cold and wet, getting covered in mud and waiting for her to “get busy” on a cold winter’s morning so worthwhile. You may be able to stay in with a cane but a guide dog, while giving you no choice but to go out, means that finally and with ease and confidence, you can go out instead.

(the end)

Pictures taken by a June

2010-06-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

SIMON SAID.

2010-05-26T16:54:00.001-07:00

About fourteen years ago, when I was using an old Brailler, I had what silly people may call “Perkins” pals (penpals to you and me and anyone else who wants to treat blind people as normal and hate phrases which set us apart like touch tours and clock face descriptions of food).

In those heady days before the invention of a technology I can barely get to grips with, I established a friendship with Simon, a young man who now lives in Scunthorpe, north Lincolnshire. Through a friend of mine I have now re-established contact with Simon and this has thrilled both of us for many reasons.

Since age three months I have been blind but Simon, as well as being blind is deaf. Since my days at school and college I have known a few people who suffer this double sensory loss and, knowing how I rely on my hearing to compensate for my lack of sight, I wonder how I would cope were I in their shoes. The eyes and ears are the umbilical cords connecting us to the rest of the world. Without either your eyes or ears you are in an island state – Your body becoming a prison instead of a vehicle for mobility and social communication.

Many people have decided, from their positions of ignorance and stupidity that it is worse to either be blind or deaf. What I say is that it is worse to be both for then you suffer the problems of both and, just as the mixing of two colours make a third, so do the mixing of two disabilities make a third one, distinct from either of the other two.

Simon told me he had been in hospital – A scary and unnerving experience for anyone. My first thought was:

“How did the nurses communicate with you”? Or

“Did they even communicate with you”?

Hardly anyone knows the manual and the plight of the deaf-blind is never discussed on radio or TV. Where is Simon’s privacy when he needs typetalk to make a phone call?

My last thought as I drifted off to sleep last night was:

“How can I make Simon’s life better”?

The answer isn’t by tut-tutting and saying it’s a shame. The answer isn’t to cry into my pillow thousands of sentimental tears of pity. Today, Simon himself provided the answer and suggested I write this article, telling my story or should I say our story – The story of how we re-established contact, thereby publicising the problems of those doubly handicapped in this way. Words are my business since I am a writer with a blog who has won a short story competition. I love language and words, music and poetry and I cannot imagine life without them so I agreed to do what Simon said. He, from his position of darkness and silence has spoken loudly and clearly to me:

“Help me tell it like it is”.

That was an offer I just could not refuse. His courage, fortitude and sense of humour, displayed from a position of unrelenting adversity, gives me courage and inspiration of my own so let’s all do what Simon says – Namely make the world of those without hearing and sight a more bearable and deaf-blind friendly place.

(The end).

JOURNEY TO THE LYNNE DISTRICT.

2010-04-27T14:15:00.001-07:00

The train bound for the Lynne District is the 1406 from Loggerheads, calling at Upper and Lower Mandible; Stapes and Malleus. Those wishing to travel to the beautiful Islets of Langerhans must take the digestive express, leaving at 0800 AM, calling at Epiglottis; Upper Respiratory Tract; High Dudgeon; passing tnear the Lumbar Region to Upper and Lower Backache; Femur; Tibia and Fibula. Those bound for the phelanges must travel via Clavicle, through the carpal tunnel.

The mid-day train from Braintree also departs from Loggerheads but goes straight through to Meta-tarsals with only a short stop at Rear End.

Those departing for Cilia and Alveoli must go via Sternum and Upper Respiratory Tract.

All trains, including the through train toMeta-tarsals eventually must terminate In Extremis. Passengers are requested to make sure that they do not block up corridors or leave luggage unattended. Have a good trip. Thank you.

AS THE TWIG IS BENT.

2010-03-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

My gran had many wise proverbs which she used to quote to me, one of which being: “As the twig is bent so the tree shall grow”. This was what she used to say to me when she needed to discipline me for something or when a public scandal or horrific story, such as that concerning Venables and Thompson and little James Bulger was in the news.

While there can be no doubt that what these children did was horrific, there can also be no doubt in my mind that their parents should bear an equal if not greater responsibility for their crime. Yes it is undeniable that ten-year-old children know the difference between right and wrong but only if they have been socialised. I know the difference between pepper and sault when they are in identical pots, and sugar and salt but only because I’ve been told the names, introduced to the sweetness of sugar and the saltiness of salt. The point I make is that these children’s consciences were not honed or even allowed to form.

I remember from my own childhood how one of my siblings (the older one) was not encouraged to be loving and considerate to me. To be loving and considerate; caring and kind to the blind sibling was considered sissy and not particularly macho. As a result the sibling concerned thought it great fun to laugh at me; to tell me my eyes are ugly; to ridicule me as my mother did and to this day has nothing to do with me. What is puzzling though is that my other sibling, younger and more sensitive than the older surviving one, was caring; looked out for me and was protective and kind and I have fond memories of him though we grew apart; he took to drink and is now dead as a result.

What all this tells me is that each of us has a greater or lesser capacity for good and evil within us. My dead brother defied his upbringing to the extent that for much of his childhood he did not adhere to the practise of ridiculing and shunning the disabled one whereas our older sibling did despite having a supposed increased maturity and what should have been an ability to know better. Had we all come from a less dysfunctional family, doubtless we would have all been close and now the final surviving two of us would have been able to take solace in each other’s company and shared past and support one-another into our future.

Had Venables and Thompson, who have carried their own genetic make-up and nature with them, for good or for ill, from childhood into adulthood, been given the stability they needed then it may be that they wouldn’t now need false identities and a poor little boy wouldn’t be dead, leaving behind forever grieving parents.

All those who are quite rightly angry and outraged that these people are now free to possibly do the same again or commit other crimes of equal magnitude should surely, as I am, be outraged that the adults who gave birth to them are not themselves being made to undergo rehabilitation and are not also being subject to intense scrutiny. If they have had other children what has become of them? Have social workers been involved in keeping an eye on their other children and if not why not? How much have they been asked to financially contribute to their offspring’s upkeep and rehabilitation? Most pertinent of all though is, in my view at any rate, why is everyone not equally disgusted and appalled at what their parents have done in terms of damaging these people so much as to make them capable of doing what they did to little James?

When you have a child who is bad at maths or English, he has to work harder and you have to work harder to make him as good at it as he can be. When my older sibling showed an unkindness greater than the sum of their kindness, harder work needed to go in to minimise and frown upon that unkindness and teach that it was unacceptable. Had that happened to Venables and Thompson at the age they needed it – When the twigs they were started to grow the wrong way, maybe the trees they grew into wouldn’t now be so poisonous. I fear that now at least one of them is far too damaged to ever live outside in ordinary society but I hang onto the hope that Robert’s kinder self, if he has one, proves to be like my brother’s was and he becomes able to overcome his damaged past. What I know for certain is that if these children had been parented properly, James would now be the adult he was born to be and Denise and Ralph, his loving parents wouldn’t be forever mourning his loss as they are now forced to. While our sympathies and thoughts should always be with them, our anger and revulsion should maybe begin with Thompson and Venables but shouldn’t end there but instead should end with the apologies for parents that these children were saddled with.

(The end).

DEADLY DENIAL.

2010-03-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

I don’t know how many children will have to be cruelly treated before we accept that evil exists and that some people are personifications of it. Here we have yet again the tragic story of a poor little girl of seven who was starved to death in her own home. She was one of five children who were cruelly treated by walking organisms who hardly deserve the title “people”.

I find it very odd that however many do-gooders make excuses for these apologies for humanity, nobody ever asks the question: “Why is it that despite being depressed their equipment below their waists works very well”? It works so well in fact that they can turn out child after child and not be the slightest bit adequate or humane when it comes to treating any or all of them properly.

When these individuals are sentenced I sincerely hope, though I fear I hope in vain, that they will be imprisoned for life and that life means what it says. Under no circumstances should they ever be in a position to reproduce again and neither should they be allowed ever to care for their remaining children or stepchildren.

If animals had been treated like this poor child was there would be an outcry audible from one end of the UK to the other. Neighbours must have had their suspicions so if they didn’t speak out why didn’t they? Maybe they thought nobody would listen to them and I daresay they are right. With society’s emphasis and sympathy being on and for the perpetrators of crime and wickedness instead of the poor souls who are survivors and victims of it, probably they thought it was better to turn two blind eyes since it’s likely that everyone else would turn deaf ears.

If it wasn’t so tragic I’d laugh – Not at the little girl’s appalling suffering but the emptiness of the hollow words: “We must see that this never happens again and must learn lessons from it”.

Until we acknowledge that there is pure evil in some people just as there is an overwhelming amount of good in others, we will carry on misdiagnosing their wrongs, thereby leaving the field clear for others of their ilk to do as they did.

I’ve known people with depression and suffered it myself. What I know of it is that I didn’t want people near me. Banging out child after child whom I was going then to abuse didn’t figure in my thinking. Ill treating any of my lovely guide dogs didn’t either. Walking around in tears; drinking too much; worrying when I hurt other people by accidentally opening doors into their faces because I couldn’t see that they were on the other side of them did and so did acknowledging that I needed help and going alone to my doctors to get it, carrying a white cane. It must be in you to do what these monsters did to this child. It’s all about the abuse of power, being thick and inadequate and unable to make a success of the life you’ve been given and seeking to get your kicks by causing another’s suffering. If these walking examples of pure evil and wickedness ever get the chance to reproduce again, we’ll be hearing about them on the news once more when more of their poor unfortunate children have been murdered at their ruthless and barbaric hands. Mark my words, what you do you’ve always done and what you’ve done you’ll do again. Surely I can’t be the only person intelligent enough to understand this. If I really am, then God help the children of the future because it seems very clear to me that human beings in what passes for authority in this ramshackle society most certainly won’t. There’s a string of names in my memory, going back to Maria Colwell; Jasmine Beckford and many more to prove that. No wonder Pete Seger asked the question “When will they ever learn”?

Banged Up by June Bowden

2010-01-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

"Thoughts on being blind at sixteen"

SHARED FEATS.

2009-11-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

I have just found a programme about the world famous blind savant Derek Paravacini who is, by anyone’s standards, a musical genius. How I’d love to be able to play half as well and more interesting still, would be to have a private audience with Derek. I know he couldn’t have an intellectual conversation with me about what motivates him and how music makes him feel or what thrills him most about playing to large audiences or small groups of friends. I also know that he couldn’t understand my written stories and articles and yet Derek and I share something not only with each other in terms of blindness and its cause because in our case we were both prem babies placed in too much oxygen which ruins the retinas but we share a deep and lasting love of that at which we’re good and the burning desire which drives us to want to communicate with others and share our abilities.

In no way do I see myself as the literary equivalent of Derek. However, the sheer joy and enthusiasm I get regarding writing and knowing someone has read and enjoyed that which I have written never wanes and remains the driving force which makes me want to write more, share more and interest myself in the written work of others.

A lover of music since I could first hear it and a pop music enthusiast who knows the words to loads of songs but can only pick out a tune one-handed on a keyboard, I can only marvel at Derek’s special abilities. When I’m not writing I’m listening to music for pleasure and sometimes wonder if the writer and musician are drawn to one-another because they recognise the creativity in their fellow artist. I can remember when I was a pupil at the same school as Derek. Another really good musician called Stephen, played his guitar and I sat in silence (a rare thing for me) at his feet as an eleven-year-old, begging him to play Beatles records on his guitar. Years later and not long before his tragic death, I sat with him again and he played James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” to which we both sang the words.

I am sure that Derek’s extraordinary abilities, Stephen’s abilities and my own writing ability does something very special both to us and for those with whom we share our work. I am equally sure that, were I to meet Derek, sit with him and sing the songs with him or just listen to him play, I would come home feeling better, more fulfilled and on a greater high than anyone drinking or drug taking.

Derek’s life is a life which is giving pleasure to millions. It answers the question as to whether people with his tremendous problems and enormous disabilities have a place in our world with a resounding “yes”. There was also a wonderful moment of serendipity when Adam Ockelford came into Derek’s life. Once more, this theory of mine that you need luck, ability, determination and help, comes to the fore since without Adam, so the programme presenter said, Derek’s talents would not have been realised. You would wonder perhaps where the luck was in a life so badly affected by the damage to Derek’s eyes and brain. The answer surely has to be that it was present in the meeting between Adam and Derek – A meeting which may never have happened. Just like Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller, Adam and Derek have pooled their abilities – Adam’s as a teacher and Derek’s as a musician and brought forth the extraordinary musician that he has become into a world which otherwise wouldn’t have given him a second’s thought.

I make no secret of the fact that I am waiting for my “Annie” or “Adam” but for now I am pleased that I have come far enough along the path of success to have been able to share my writing with those kind enough to log onto the Guide Dogs volunteer site in order to read it and am thrilled to get feedback from those who do. It’s hard and probably unwise to contemplate what others may be learning from me as a blind writer but I know what Derek can teach us as a society and me as an individual and hope that what he can teach you is that our lives are worthwhile, that we do have abilities and that we need help to succeed. My personal lesson, derived from this talented yet damaged man is that I must keep going and not give up and not for the first time I realise that the human mind is mysterious and that the workings of the brain are complex. Derek may never be able to explain how he does what he does but in one sense perhaps that doesn’t matter except to scientists. What is important and very real to me is that he knows why he does what he does and it’s for the same reason that I do what I do – Because he loves it. I hope that if you get to hear him or have done so, you love it too and likewise with my writing when you read that. That is good enough for me, even if I never meet my “Annie” or my “Adam”.

THE SYMPHONY OF LIFE.

2009-10-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

“So here I am with it all before me. Screeching like a discordant cello in my own symphony. I took my cue too soon, making my entrance in a fumbled, flailing flurry which meant I lost the picture which now is not my privilege to reclaim.

‘Cindy oh Cindy’ Shane Fenton sang and so did I. By then I knew that I was different but not how or why. I liked the name so much that I got everyone to call me it and then, just like Mary Mary, quite contrary, insisted that my own name be used by all again. I was a pain!

School started to ‘Jailhouse Rock’. How apt for I felt I was in prison. The food was bad but discipline was good. ‘Johnnie Remember me’. I bet he doesn’t. We used to call him ‘melon’. We were cruel. One decade and three years had been lived by the time Radio1 replaced the pirate ships in the North Sea. I’d screamed to the Beatles. Ah! But that was ‘Yesterday’ and I still could not go out alone. I was getting the ‘Moody Blues’ and had met them too.

My college days were spent with Elton and not Elvis. I never thought for one second that mine were the sweetest eyes he’d ever seen or that ‘Your Song’ was or would ever be meant for me. I wanted to be Free – Free and ‘’All Right Now’ – To walk with both hands empty – Unencumbered. I didn’t want to be someone else’s ‘Stairway to heaven’ or their good deed for the day.

Work and widowhood came very close together and there were indeed Tears for Fears and tears and fears that I would be alone. Even the Police couldn’t rescue me and ‘Every Breath you take’ was one more than I wanted to back then. However, like bread, I was, with Gabrielle to ‘Rise Again’ and dance in my clumsy, maladroit fashion with all my dogs – Two Labradors and a Retriever, to Ce Ce Peniston and others who have almost made me feel as if I’m the ‘Lark Ascending’ instead of being in my own personal Spandau. I’d learned to do my very own Spandau Ballet and not to bump against the bars.

Now the fifties are back! That’s not quite ‘True’. That’s just where I’ve got to in my symphony of life. A fan of Coldplay and the Fray; modern jazz and folk, I now walk with “Nimrod” and find that life is indeed an enigma with many variations. My Nimrod – My metal rod that’s bound with rubber – Is painted white. Will another Labrador help me dance to the music of time?

And ‘Finally’ as Cece sang, when my ‘Surrey with the fringe on top’ has thinned (it is already grey you know) and my steps have slowed right down, I shall walk sedately to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings but until then, I hope I will still have enough optimism and hope to say to the someone who may be special and whom I could be special too, ‘I just haven’t met you yet’ and hope that I am in the hands of Michael who is gentle as he rows my boat ashore.

They have been choppy seas. I’ve been disorientated and lost in turbulent waters but still have enjoyed my symphony of life. ‘Me and my Shadows’ were my dogs who stopped me falling from life’s Cliff. They say the pictures were good and are better on radio. Although I’m sure that’s true, and although I cannot play a note, ‘music is my first love’ if you discount my friends, writing and dogs ‘and it will be my last’. What a shame I won’t get to do an encore! Or will I”?

THE COLOUR PROBLEM.

2009-10-23T17:16:00.001-07:00

I could wade in up to my neck about the rightness of the leader of the BNP’s appearance on Question Time. I could but I won’t – Well not now anyway. Instead I want to draw your attention to another colour problem. I, as a blind person, do not understand the confusion surrounding colours. For one thing they obviously blend into one-another so that on each colour’s border, they become or are seen to become another one. Baige being referred to as “off-white” or even biscuit coloured.

I have reached the grand old age of fifty-five and until the other week I did not know that bluetits are not blue! They may have bits of blue in their feathers or even they may be half blue. If so I don’t know what other colour is mixed in with the blue. I found out about this because of my SAVI volunteer who has a blind boyfriend who asked her once: “Are bluetits blue”? She replied: “No” and I once more opened my blind eyes wide and said: “Oh god no! Don’t tell me there are yet more things in the visual world I still don’t get”! I’m afraid that there are. Long ago I learned that black people aren’t black, white people are pink, I’ve not yet dared asked about those with almond-shaped eyes. Are the Chinese yellow and was Esme really yellow with a pink nose or was she really green with an indigo hooter! More pressing now is this question: Will my washing come out of the machine the same colour as it went in? Unless I go and do it I’ll never know and it’ll be a very long time till I find out afterwards anyway. What is for certain is that I’d much rather stay and chat to you via my blog. However, needs must and I don’t want to go about in smelly clothes and sleep in smelly sheets so the colour problem will have to wait. If you leave a comment in the comment’s section, you can ask me if I knew about some other weird and wonderful aspect of the visual world of which I remain blissfully ignorant and painfully curious and you know something? I won’t mind if you’re black, brown, pink, yellow or opaque. It’s all the same to me and so are you which makes my excuse for prejudice absolutely invalid as it ought to yours for at the end of the day, we’re all the same under the skin so there.

A DOG IN THE DISTANCE?

2009-10-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

This will be my one-hundredth piece for the blog. A lot has happened since I started it. I’ve retired my lovely old Esme; had physio for plantar fasciitis which has all but gone; I’ve moved home (thank goodness for that); learned my way in a new area (but not the whole area just where I’ll need to go); started giving talks on behalf of the Surrey Association for Visual Impairment (SA-vi); got a short story regarding the help I’ve had to find my way without a dog placed on the BBC website; lost the ability to access the music site where I started to correspond with my friend in the States who puts up these blog entries for me and who told me that ninety-nine were now up; taken photos with her camera, which she sent me and now there’s the possibility of having a new guide dog. Someone from Guide Dogs for the Blind in England, will come and see me this coming Friday.

The change in the last five months has been phenomenal and all for the good. I’ve made new friends and new contacts and somehow I still find the time to write. Soon we’ll be at the end of another year and I don’t know where the time has gone. I’ve also written for the Guide Dogs extranet volunteer site: http://www.guidedogsvolunteers.org.uk though they still have a lot of pieces to put up there, which I sent them.

My old dog, Esme, is still enjoying her retirement with her new owners, Dennis and Val, in the New Forest. I’ve rung them to check and all without tears though I’m not sure what it would have been like if I’d heard her bark or shake her collar. She will be eleven on 20th December and is still fit and walking approximately three miles a day. She knows now that she is no longer required to work and has settled down well, ignoring the ponies and traffic in the Forest.

Last Wednesday I gave my first talk for SA-vi and loved every minute of it – Well you do if you’re a bit of a poser! I went to a church in Guildford and found the audience warm and interested in all I said about how blindness affects me and how SA-vi has helped me. I’m so glad now that I went on living after Andrew, my husband died after only five years married to me, in 1986. There were times when I desperately wanted to join him and thought seriously about helping myself on the way to the oblivion of death in order to free myself of the burden of blindness which is very tedious if it is carried alone. One day, after a talk with a Samaritan (I was so desperate I rang them just for someone to talk to) I was asked: “Do you feel like committing suicide”? I said: “Yes often but if I did that I wouldn’t be able to come back to see if things would get better if I had stayed”. “What a lovely outlook”, he said. At the time (1986/7 and for many almost intolerable years since) they didn’t get better but now, mercifully, they have. Of course they’re not perfect and there’s a lot I’d like to see change. I am still on my own and though I’d not particularly like to marry again I wouldn’t mind a few friends to go out with who can see because I feel that we could all enhance each others’ lives but things are much, much better than they were and better than I ever hoped for or could have imagined them to get. Each day I spare a thought for the people who feel as hopeless, unhappy and despairing as I did and wonder how many of them will take the decision to end their unhappiness by ending their lives. I know nothing lasts and my present period of happiness will not go on indefinitely. At some time I will be overtaken by greater disability or old age and finally the death for which I once longed. I can only hope that, as I have spent so long in misery, I’ll be allowed to spend a fair amount of time in the happiness which is now mine and I hope the same for those I don’t know and those I do, some of whom are blind and engaged in destructive practices like self harm, that they will find the determination, courage and help they need to make them want to go on living.

I forgot one final thing which I have managed to do since I started this blog. I’ve put on a bit of weight through not exercising without my wonderful Esme. Well perhaps the dog which may be in the distance and which I may be destined to meet soon, will alter that state of affairs. I do hope so or my new doctor will be telling me a story of her own – “These are the consequences of becoming overweight”! Personally I think the consequences of deep unhappiness and blindness endured without support are far more destructive than a few extra pounds but funnily enough, nobody wants to discuss those, choosing to close their eyes to them and wanting only to hear the good things. That’s precisely why I’ve told you about all the good things that have happened to me since I started this blog. I hope they happen to you too. Here’s to the next hundred pieces and I shall ask my friend to put the link to those photos either on the blog itself somewhere or in this piece so you can see them.

INDEPENDENT LIVING?

2009-10-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

I made what I thought is an interesting observation today when talking to someone connected with Social Services: “Blind people are told, when living in supported housing, that it’s independent living and yet sighted people are becoming ever increasingly dependent on technology; often have friends and family to call upon for help and grown sighted children are often still living at home well into their twenties while their blind counterparts are housed in flats, having been given inadequate preparation in mainstream schools and special schools in order to face life outside them”.

Of course I am not suggesting that either position is one of choice for either group. Sighted adults who are still living at home with parents can be the victims of unforeseen circumstances which include crippling debts incurred as students and inability to get onto the housing ladder or to find somewhere to rent at a price they can afford. Like their visually impaired peers they may also find enormous difficulty getting jobs but even in these days the chances of them finding work as compared with blind youngsters of a similar age are greater not only because of the scope being wider for the sighted but also because of the real prejudice which still exists about employing someone blind.

There is, however, something really irritating to me about the phrase: “It’s independent living” which makes me want to wallop the person uttering it. I hear it regularly where I live which is in my supported housing scheme where the staff are efficient and kind. Of course I know why it’s said. The fact that there are staff would encourage those who either think they are helpless because they now face severe or total sight loss to needlessly turn to them for the least little thing which they could and should be taught to do for themselves. Also it is said to stop the lazy from using the staff as servants or entering into a competition with other tenants to see who can get the most attention from them. However, it can have a counterproductive effect by discouraging those in real need asking for the help they require. Many sighted people do things in pairs especially if they have partners. Hubby gets the car out and helps load the shopping (no not every hubby does nor does every partner. This I know and accept); a wife or husband who works may well have the dinner ready for the other when they come home. My support worker’s partner has hers ready sometimes. One Sunday she told me she was going home to a meal he was cooking – Lamb I think. Of course she’d been doing the nightshift here on Saturday and Saturday afternoon too, plus Sunday morning so deserved it and anyway I accept it’s none of my business what people do. I only mean to make the point that sighted people are often in a state of dependence, one upon another, where as we carry our burdens, both emotional and those imposed by sensory loss without the support of someone exclusively of our own. Instead we share too few overworked staff with too many others and we’re the lucky ones! Plenty of blind people are living unsupported lives in isolation without the help they need to cope or are struggling in appallingly run housing schemes like the last one I was in and this makes that phrase: “It’s independent living” all the more irritating than it may otherwise be.

The fact that blind youngsters today do not have adequate social, life skills or in some instances even an adequate education because they have been put in a class at school either with those with whom they can’t keep up if in mainstream or with others with an assortment of learning difficulties as well means that they will be in a state of dependence and totally unable to maximise their own potential or reach it. For them, this phrase has an especially hollow ring.

When I think about it, I get my own shopping, do my own cooking and washing, organise my own finances and manage with just one hour’s help in the flat, all that with a back problem and with me not seeing a hand in front of me, then I think how dependent all the sighted people are that I know – One upon another and upon technology in the form of satnav; calculators; spell checkers; the last thing I want to be told is that: “It’s independent living”. There’s no greater example of independent living than I am. “Rubbish”! I hear you cry. “Hypocrisy”! I hear you shout and all because I am living in supported housing for the blind. Now that I know the way to the shops; how to use the washing machine; (I knew how to use others in other places incidentally just in case you think I’m a late developer); have a scanner to read my mail and know how to operate my cooker, I rarely need the help of the staff. I do have the security of knowing they are here and would probably not be eligible for council accommodation anyway since I’ve not lived in the county long enough and am adequately housed so there’s your reason why I’m here apart from being so near to the shops, which helps me maintain this independence everyone goes on at such length about. Of course I too have a reliance on technology but it helps me do what, had I not lost my sight, my eyes would help me do. Those with their eyes have substituted their faculties which they could train and with which they were well endowed with a technology which makes them lazy; spoon feeds them and makes them as helpless without it as we are without the training we need to cope in a world not geared to our needs. Then, whereas they take their dependence on others and technology for granted, we on the other hand are repeatedly told how independent we must be – Every day; all the time and often while having to emotionally support and nurture ourselves too.

There are those who say we’re at least not lumbered with the problems of partners and children if we’re on our own and of course many blind people are in relationships where there is the mutual dependence, one upon another, that I have mentioned. We are not insulated or isolated from the problems of others. Who do the weaker and more helpless, sadder and lonelier blind people come to for help? Of course they come to the more able for emotional support; advice and encouragement. Here, unlike the last dump I lived in, the staff encourage us to get those people to turn to them since they are efficient and don’t use those of us who are better able to cope as avenues of escape from their professional obligations. That’s what makes this place so lovely to live in. However, because they’re so few in number and overworked, I want to assist other tenants where I can. I have great difficulty in restraining that urge partly because of the way I am but also because for the sixteen years in which I lived in South-west London, I could see that people needed help and didn’t feel I could walk away knowing they’d have a poor deal if someone – Either another more able person or I didn’t do something. I just long for the abolition of the phrase: “It’s independent living” for none of us can claim to be truly independent. Is the above sour grapes just because I don’t have someone to warm my slippers for me and put the kettle on when I feel irritable; lazy; hacked off by blindness and sick of an aching back? Course it is! Well folks, watch this space. I may soon have a stinking wet Labrador to be responsible for as well! Can’t wait! I’ll moan to her and oh blimey! I’ll have to take her out on a cold wet day in Paul Simon’s famous deep and dark December. Why? Because ‘’’’’’Altogether now! “It’s independent living”!

FOUR LEGS GOOD – ONE TIP BAD.

2009-09-25T08:28:00.001-07:00

I have now been in Epsom since May. I have learned parts of the area – Those I need to know – With a white cane and from an experience mobility instructor from SAVI (Surrey Association for Visual Impairment for which I now do voluntary work when they want me to). I go out alone now and that’s the point – Alone without the four legs and two eyes I used to have.

I shall never see Esme again now and never a day goes by without I either think of or wish I still had her. I have tried to enjoy the clean flat without Labrador sick; slobber; dog hair and the requirement that I leave it and brave the cold which will come when winter does and for a while I loved it but the truth is I love my cane much less than the cold; dog sick; hair and emptiness in this flat and I love dogs more – Especially the freedom they give one when one is blind. I thought of the reading I have done over the years, including “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. In it the pigs (I think) chanted: “Four legs good, two legs bad”. How I agree with the pigs only instead of legs, I substitute the word “tip” – That which you find on the end of white canes. Now a roller, when it’s a car driven by a guy who is loaded or at least wealthy enough to keep it may be rather nice but I bet I’d even tire of that eventually. What I can’t seem to have enough of is a wagging tail and loopy old Labrador such as Esme – The faithful pair of trusted, borrowed eyes I had for so many years and so I rang up the Surrey Guide Dogs team today and applied for guide dog number four.

I worried myself to death about moving in May: “Who will help in the absence of family”? “How will I find a trustworthy cleaner to take the place of Sue”? “How will I manage to get out of the flat in a strange and unfamiliar area”? I felt the fear and did it anyway. Now what I have found to worry about is: “Who will hoover up the hair when my trustworthy home help is away”? “How will I cope when I will have to manage taking the new dog out when I need to sleep in the afternoon”? The shops are so near I can’t possibly go out just once a day as I did in London. These are real problems especially the very real and significant impact my irregular and disorganised circadian rhythms have on my body when they get out of synch with the rest of the country and my future dog’s routine which can’t be played with and made to fit into my altered rhythms. However, lack of exercise and the strain of using a cane is so significant and my love of dogs so strong and the longing I have for a fresh pair of eyes at the opposite end of a wagging old tail is so persistent that I can no longer ignore it so once more it’s feel the fear and do it anyway.

Who knows? There may even be the reinstatement of “waggy games” and the return of a disgusting old bundle of wool at each end of a slobbered-on length of rope! Ugh! Not just after tea please! Do you know something? I’m even missing that I’m so desperate! Now that filthy old toy which Esme had is still a vivid memory, along with its disgusting smell but even that is not enough to make me say: “Four legs bad, one tip good”. A cane can never match up to the loveliness and loyalty of a dog and maybe I’ll lose some of the weight I have put on since moving to Epsom. One thing’s for sure, I will definitely lose some of the fear I feel when going out with a dead bit of metal and rubber once the new dog (if I qualify and it’s always an if) knows the way so let’s be positive and go for it! Wish me luck folks! I’m going to need it.

MY NAME IS LINDA.

2009-09-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve just come in. All these faces look so ordinary – Are so ordinary. Everyone looks nervous. I see there’s an empty chair over there, by the thin woman with the glasses and the sallow complexion. She looks old but I bet she isn’t. I’ve not dared to look in a mirror recently. Still looks aren’t important really are they? In the grand scheme of things they are like passing trains or buses – Here one minute and gone the next.

I’ve just heard the front door close. I keep telling myself he’ll be back. He loves me. He won’t walk out – Not after twenty years. I can’t believe he won’t miss me and then there’s the kids, Laura and Sam. They’re on the verge of adulthood now. They took their exams only last week. Both of them are so talented and so funny. I look at them and think to myself:

“How did someone like you produce two such wonderful examples of humanity”?

I know Grant will be back. I get out of bed – My head thumping and look at the peeling wall paper. I’ve not noticed it till now. I suppose I ought to see that the bedroom gets decorated soon but there never seems to be enough money. My mouth is dry as usual. I stagger downstairs and see the pile of broken china in the hall and the kitchen and then it begins to come back to me. We had a row. I don’t remember throwing anything at anyone. Sam is preparing breakfast. No he isn’t. He’s cleaning up the kitchen. He never complains – Just gets on with it. He’s a quiet boy. He tells me Laura’s gone to a friend’s again. I expect she went to Trisha’s. They’ve been friends since they were toddlers.

“Is there any tea in the pot, Sam”?

“No Mum. Not yet there isn’t. First I had to clear up this mess. Remember! Last night’s frenzy of violence and mayhem. You really do go in for it in a big way once you get started don’t you”?

“Don’t you get started! I have enough to do now that your dad’s gone”.

“Yeah and that’s another thing. How long do you think he’s going to put up with this”?

“He’ll be back. A spell of time at his mother’s while he cools down and he’ll be back”.

Something in Sam’s eyes tells me that this time that’s not so. Maybe I’m seeing the reflected knowledge in my own eyes rather than in his. I rush out. Good job there’s a downstairs loo. I only just get there in time. Retching on an empty stomach is so horrible but I’ve got that I can’t eat much nowadays.

“Put your case down here, love”,

Maisie urges. Grant sits wearily down on his mother’s old familiar settee. He looks careworn and old – Nearly as old as I do but for different reasons and both of us are only in our early forties. Maisie brings him the cup that cheers. He no longer cries like he used to do when he walks out. Instead he sits quiet and sullen like a sulky child who has been sent to bed before he wants to go. He stares unseeingly at the wall. Maisie’s paper needs replacing too but for different reasons. She is now too old to do her own decorating. He promises to do it for her now he has moved back into her spare room and she once more thankfully whispers her gladness to the god that she believes in that he has come home to that room at last and is glad she never sold her house.

“You must stay this time Grant. You can’t keep going back to her. You do realise that now don’t you”?

He nods. While she makes his tea he sits and wonders how you rid yourself of all the accumulated memories and emotions of twenty years. He knows he must start again and so do I.

The room has filled up now. I look at my watch and see everyone turning off their mobile phones. I sold mine. I needed the money. I spent the money as quickly as I had it in my hand. Money’s like water in a sieve to me. I look at the floor. I can’t focus properly on any of these people or this room. I want to get out. I can’t seem to breathe properly but I’m nowhere near the door. My hands are shaking again and I’m sweating all over. I’m sure I smell. I must do.

Grant lies looking at the moon after his mother’s tea. He thinks how nice it is to go to bed in a peaceful house for a change, knowing that he won’t be woken any moment by screaming and shouting; banging about and smashing crockery; knowing he won’t have his face clawed and his hair pulled out for no reason. Bone tired and free at last, sleep eludes him. He stares and stares blindly at the shining moon through the curtains. Soon it will be morning. He’ll have to stagger off to work having had little sleep. He may as well come home, that’s what he tells himself. If there’s to be no difference ‘twixt his mother’s bedroom and ours, he may as well come home but he doesn’t. He holds out. He fights the urge to come back to the painfully familiar. There’s security in the familiar and change is scary even if it is change for the better.

Laura and Sam come home after a night out. They almost trip over me, lying on the stairs. The hallway smells of urine. I’ve been sick. They step over me and carry on up to bed. Each has obtained a place at university. They’re now adults. Grant sends them money but I don’t get any now they’re grown. I’m not entitled to maintenance. They’ll be off in September. It’s August now. I daresay they’ll be glad to go.

There are five minutes to go till the session begins. I feel my throat close up. I know I won’t get a word out. I want to just sit here, anonymous in my drab clothes, obtained from the charity shop nearby. I could have got better ones but don’t think I’m worth it and anyway what’s the good? Nice clothes are for nice people – People who go out with friends and have dinner parties – People who can afford holidays and decent homes – People who have families and children at home.

Grant is cutting his mother’s lawn. That’s what made me fall in love with him – The way he cares for and about his mother. I’ve always maintained that if a son treats his mother properly he will do likewise with his wife. I can’t complain about the way I was treated. Maybe I had too much. It has never struck me that I had any more than other people. He’s finished her bedroom now.

I spent the money which should have been used for the mortgage. I have to be out tomorrow. I expect Sam and Laura will go to their grandmother’s for their holidays. I know they are in touch with their father. I haven’t seen them for weeks. They did come round only there was no food in the house which hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. They look shocked. There’s a momentary expression of disgust on Laura’s face which she can’t hide. Even when they lived here they stopped bringing their friends home.

The woman sitting next to me pats my arm. She gives me a look of reassurance and I feel tears welling up in my eyes. The man on the other side offers me a tissue. It’s a huge one, just right for men but not for the ocean of misery I have inside me which wouldn’t be held in check by one tissue. There’s only two minutes to go now.

It’s cold out here. Winter has come early and with a vengeance. I prefer to walk. I sat in the library this morning but was turned out. I was in a hostel but couldn’t settle there either and besides that I couldn’t quite do as I wanted to there. It was run by the Salvation Army and I’m not religious and they have too many rules. I’ve got this cough. I’ve been counting passing cars instead of imaginary sheep. I wonder where the people are off to and how many are going home to happy marriages and loving children. Probably not as many as I imagine. Lots of our friends used to think we were happy. Grant would explain the scratches on his face by saying he’d cut himself shaving and sometimes, when I was still alert enough, I’d see the knowing looks in the eyes of our dwindling number of guests. I’d almost hear them thinking:

“And the band played ‘believe it if you like’”.

A blind man gave me fifty pence today. I was ashamed. I used to give to Guide Dogs and now, here I am, reduced to begging off the blind. All I’ve had to eat today is a sausage roll and that was out of a litter bin. I thought of Scrap, our Labrador. He used to scavenge in litter bins. He was well fed but then again so was I, once.

Maisie is quiet tonight. She sits thinking of something which she doesn’t discuss with Grant. She’d seen me, you see, when travelling past Park Road. She stared and stared as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. I was transformed from the person she knew, you see. I’ve lost all the weight my doctor once told me to shed. Well you do when you don’t eat. Eating is no longer an activity indulged in at will or when the brain tells the body it needs to. I’m not hungry nowadays but even when I am I can’t stomach much. I’ve just smashed a shop window with a hammer which I found in someone’s garden shed. Not noticing the cuts because of the jagged glass, I push my arm through, grasp the object of my desire and withdraw my hand. The alarm goes off but I’m not bothered – Not now I have what I need.

I’m lying in hospital. They’ve just done my obs again. They offer me tea but I don’t want it. There are visitors for everyone else but not for me even though I’ve been deloused and have had a bath. I’m cleaner than I’ve been for years. The doctor’s just been and given me the once-over. He read me the riot act but didn’t tell me anything I don’t know already.

The letter has just fallen out of my hand for the third time. It’s the shakes. I slopped soup all over the place – Half of it ending up on my table or down my front. It’s unopened as yet but the handwriting looks familiar.

“Dear Linda, Mum saw you the other day and was shocked. I have never stopped loving you – Never will – But I don’t think you love yourself very much. Either that’s because of what you have become or you’ve become what you are because you don’t love yourself. Either way the result is the same. I want us to keep in touch – No promises mind – I’m not saying I’ll come back to you – Nothing like that and if I do it is conditional. You really have got to try this time. This time! There’s never been a previous time has there? All you’ve done is given your word which you have broken. Mother says you can come to us to convalesce when you get out of hospital but any repeat behaviour will mean you will be back where you started. It’s tough love. We want evidence that you really will try this time as I say”.

So the letter went on and I am now staying at Grant’s mother’s. She’s a good woman – Better than I thought actually. Although his letter sounded pompous; priggish and sanctimonious; it wasn’t meant to. He didn’t mean it that way. I don’t know what the future holds but neither do you – Neither does anyone. There are always sharks, swimming near the water’s edge, hoping for suckers to fall in so they can grab their ankles and pull them under so they will drown in the ocean of addiction. I know that now. The funny thing is though, I don’t need Grant’s support – Well of course I do – But not half as much as I need that of those like me – Fellow addicts who have fallen prey to their demons. Grant is out tonight, too. So is Maisie. Like an odd couple they have gone out together but not to a film or for a meal. Oh I see the man who is going to chair the meeting is now on his feet. He is welcoming everyone and telling them that there’s a new person here tonight. Oh god! I feel like a very old person but I’m new to this of course. This is my cue to go on. Here I go, then. Wish me luck.

“My name is Linda. I am an alcoholic”.

(The end).

THE EPSOM CONQUEST.

2009-08-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

It’s now thirteen weeks since I moved to Epsom in Surrey. Without my lovely guide dog Esme and back on my feet after plantar fasciitis which believe it or not has still not gone though is much better, I have had to begin learning a new area with a cane as well as learning my way round my new home and remembering where everything is within it.

Because of staff efficiency which far exceeds that of the staff in my last appalling place where I used to live (I now live in supported housing run by Action for Blind People) it wasn’t long before mobility training began. Within three weeks of my arrival in Epsom, I was able to go unaided to Waitrose in order to get my shopping. However it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Though the route is short and relatively uncomplicated, to learn it as someone without sight is hell especially with a cane, having had a dog for almost eight years. Every time the cane hit something I was startled out of my wits and jumped. Also learning has to be done in a completely different way and I hope that the route to Waitrose may be posted on the site, with this article, to show how it’s done. If the road name where I live is blocked out then this may be possible. I’ll leave it to the powers that be to decide.

A route has to be practised and gone through many times before it can be walked without mistakes. The number of times depends on the individual’s ability to learn and willingness to write things down and practise when not with the instructor and the instructor will not sanction doing it alone until (in this case she) is confident it can be done in safety.

Before going, I felt sick and very apprehensive. This, though, is something not to be given into as to do so would result in becoming or remaining housebound.

Before getting another dog it is necessary to learn the area so the dog, which is a pilot, has to be told the way you want to go. If I pass the training again the dog won’t come complete with full knowledge of Epsom and if I want to go to the shopping centre or the bank, the dog won’t know which way I want it to go once I cross the road unless I can direct her.

Now, thirteen weeks on, I am able to get to the post office; Marks and Spencer; bank; HMV store (they don’t call me music lover June for nothing) and Thornton’s; though I’ve resisted the temptation to go in for chocolates.

My mobility instructor refers to me as her star pupil and actually I feel quite proud of myself because for ten months before my move I was housebound because of my feet and the hilly area in which I lived and because I lost my beloved Esme last August. As said before, I “dogged” before coming to Epsom and hadn’t used a cane for eight years and so felt that I was without eyes again once I started to out of necessity.

The local people of Epsom are fabulous. It’s much better than living in London and where I live is lovely too. I’m the nearest I’ve been to amenities and the happiest I’ve been for years.

On Sunday just gone, the wonderful lady who boarded my lovely Esme, brought with her an adorable Labrador Retriever which she is boarding at present and we all went to my local park. Unlike Esme, he stood still long enough for a really long cuddle and scratch behind the ears. Esme would start dancing round and round in circles, wagging and biting her tail and finally bringing her disgusting old toy with her to shove into my face whenever I tried cuddling her. We had a lovely day and I once more had dog hair on my clothes but who cares?

Maybe one day in the not-too-distant future, I’ll have another dog all of my own who will fill the gap in my heart and home, which Esme has left – Another trusted pair of eyes to walk silently at my side and through my altered world and if I do, my “tail” of life in Epsom will end happily and I can put my cane away for another eight years. Whatever the future holds, I know I can go out in safety once more and that’s thanks to the “square” of success I talk of on my blog – Ability, determination, luck and help – All of which must be present for achievement to be realised whether one is blind or sighted.

MY LORD! WHAT A MORNING!

2009-07-30T19:03:00.000-07:00

Don’t you just love it when things don’t go to plan! Yes, when someone turns up with an invitation to the ball when you thought you’d be spending the evening with a box of forbidden chocs and some rubbish on the TV because that’s better than sitting in the silence of an empty room – No when your whole morning has been rearranged for you by an oik who should be washing up in some café somewhere and pretending he’s on the radio by chatting into a baked bean tin (clean of course) and making out it’s a microphone!

I was due to do a radio interview, via the phone, for a local station which was probably named after some bimbo nobody’s heard of and I could feel in my bones, the distinct ache of foreboding when they asked to reschedule it. The interview was designed to encourage people to leave legacies to charities through a scheme called Remember a Charity and of course my chosen charity would be Guide Dogs every time!

Having rescheduled my interview, the guy’s watch had obviously stopped – Either that or he was learning what happens when the big hand is on three and the little one is on nine or am I out of date now? Oh yes it’s all digital now isn’t it? I forgot I’m an old curmudgeon who is a fossilised version of twenty-first century woman! Anyway when he did phone he was all smiles, no apology and, just like a first date who thinks the woman is lucky to be taken for a pint of pop and a packet of peanuts, he was most miffed when I expressed my annoyance and ended up hanging up on me. Mind you I dented his ego by calling him arrogant and had the temerity to voice my crossness when an apology was not forthcoming. After much phoning and rearrangement, smoothing of ruffled feathers and waiting to see what would happen next, like a true pro I had the interview in the can within five minutes and, no, I don’t mean the cordless phone landed in the baked bean tin which I use as a microphone because I have dreams of radio stardom when all I’m really fit for is washing up in my Auntie Ethel’s kitchen!

I reminded people how important it is to leave money to charities of their choice and explained how my three guide dogs revolutionised my life; how Guide Dogs gets no state aid; how future money is already “spent” on replacement dogs which cost forty thousand pounds to see through each dog’s lifetime, at todays prices. With almost five thousand dogs in the U.K I’ll leave you to do the maths. Also, the one bit I forgot to say is that someone potentially could go through four or five dogs in a lifetime so each person may well have replacements because the working life of a dog is about eight years on average.

In the afternoon I went on mobility with Val who is teaching me my area. Before I can even think of another dog, I have to learn it with a long cane and boy do I know the difference! It’s like eating in a transport café when once I ate in a five star hotel. It’s the difference between listening to a professionally run, nice big radio station, whose reception is great and whose employees treat contributors with respect and courtesy instead of some cheapjack outfit where the recently promoted teaboy thinks he’s managing director of somewhere as big as the BBC.

Although I was very annoyed at being messed about and although I’m a “nobody” in stardom or celebrity terms, I have enough chutspah to realise that but for the contributors on these programmes, these “teaboys” wouldn’t have jobs! Such is my commitment to Guide Dogs and so high is my opinion of them and my awareness that, but for people like you who generously give of your money and time as well as those who train us and our dogs, I would be housebound or crawling around at a snail’s pace with a lump of metal and rubber in my hand. I’m truly not interested in my profile being raised. What I want is for future generations of blind people to benefit from these magnificent animals as I have done.

When I got home after mobility with Val, I turned on my digital radio and tuned it in to Radio4. Now there’s real class! Rather like having a guide dog really isn’t it?

CHARITY BEGAN AT HOME.

2009-07-24T17:11:00.001-07:00

Close your eyes for a minute and imagine what it would be like to open them and find you are blind. For me, this is a familiar reality and has been for all but three months of my life and those are the three I can’t remember because I was a baby when I lost my sight. Imagine how you would cope if you had to move home as I have done recently. How would you know where the shops were? How would you know what local amenities were around you if you couldn’t get out of the house or what equipment you could access to help you live within it?

I recently moved to Surrey, from London in order that I could be near shops, be in a less hilly area and have a better support network which would more effectively meet my needs. Part of that support network includes service provision from SAVI (The Surrey Association for Visually Impaired people). From there it’s possible to obtain aids to daily living such as talking clocks and for those who need them, radios on loan but to me the most valuable and essential service is the mobility training provided by Val who teaches people like me to learn the area with a long cane as either the aid they will continue to use or as a forerunner to acquiring a guide dog because the person needs to know the area before a dog can learn it.

SAVI is a charity which does work whose value is incalculable. Without Val I couldn’t get my shopping unaided and would have to rely on sighted people’s help which would mean going out when they could take me and for some that option may not even exist.

Val is one of a small group of instructors and she has many service users throughout the county - this is why I can only have one lesson per week. A route has to be done many times because my knowledge of my surroundings is fragmentary and nothing is understood as a complete whole. Skill and patience are required by the instructor who learns to think “blind” by going under blindfold when they train to do this work because that is the only way they can even begin to understand how learning in the way I have to is done.

Over the coming months I hope to increase my knowledge of my surroundings, with further help from Val – Help I couldn’t get if she wasn’t there and help she couldn’t give if SAVI wasn’t there and without that help I would have no hope of the independence you have when you open your eyes first thing in the morning right up until you close them again at night.

For this reason I intend to use my time to give back to SAVI and hope you will help me support them too. Who knows? You may see me in Epsom where I now live, either with a cane or guide dog number four who I hope will one day replace my last one, Esme, who retired in January. I shall always remember the day when charity began at home and thanks to you, Val and SAVI’s supporters and volunteers, I won’t have to stay isolated in mine.

WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES.

2009-05-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

Those of you who regularly read my blog entries will realise you’ve had nothing new to read for weeks. There are two good reasons for this, the first of which is simply that I’ve been too fed up to right and the second is that I’ve been busy because the spiritual “sun” which I thought had gone behind a permanent cloud, has peeped out and spread new light on my circumstances which are now about to change.

I am sure you will recall the loss of my dear beloved guide dog, Esme, now happily settled in the New Forest while I have been trapped without her in my home with only a painful back and feet for company. You may also recall that I said I couldn’t have another dog unless I move.

In January, this year, I had a letter from another housing complex for blind people, asking me if I wanted to remain on their waiting list. Having only moved last June I was tempted to say “no” but something told me not to so I said “yes” instead. I was told I was second on their list, having jumped up from fourth. If only they’d been talking about a book in the best seller list, written by me of course! Instead they were talking of their waiting list and my place on it. Each day I waited patiently for the phone to ring with the news that I longed for – That I had got a place there.

Just before Easter I was told they had a vacancy and offered the opportunity of staying for a week in their guest flat to see how I liked it and help the staff and me make a decision as to whether it’d be the best place for me. I went. We all got on well. I loved it and am moving tomorrow. In the weeks between January and now, my present environment has gone from bad to worse – Children running around an unattended complex at night, no meals provided for those who need them, and people clamouring to leave in droves, not least of whom was a lovely and efficient receptionist who couldn’t take working here any longer. This must be the only place with a waiting list to get out!

Without caring relatives I wondered how I was going to manage this move and what I would do regards the practical problems of clearing stuff out and packing. My lovely German lady who boarded Esme has said she will come and take me down to my new home and help me all day; other sighted people have lent their hands and helped with writing letters to folks I can’t email and helped with the acquisition of the post office form needed for the redirection of mail. Esme’s former boarder and my fairy godmother, even gave me the details of a removal firm which is reliable and that really was a load off my mind.

I managed most things like arranging for the stopping of my standing order at the bank and to have my BT account transferred but my back problem has made clearing stuff out very difficult though I’ve even managed that also to a very large extent. What I have been stunned by is the unexpected kindness of those I hadn’t thought would come, including a lady who I met when she talked to me on the street about God and tried to involve me in her religious group. Most outstanding of all though is the goodness of U, the lady who looked after Esme when I was first ill and whom I shall meet for the first time tomorrow.

I have mixed emotions today. I’m glad to leave the worst run place for blind people that I have ever had the misfortune to enter, sad to leave those who unfortunately can’t come with me, especially some of the old and frail people who are being sold short when they need help most and who are having their anxieties heightened instead of relieved and I shed tears when I said my farewells to S, my kind and trusted home help. She has also been a great help to me in these last weeks leading up to this move. She will come and see me I know.

Tomorrow I will be off to a bigger flat in a better area with more facilities and nearer shops and dedicated, kind staff some of whom hugged me when I came home last month, saying: “See you in a month’s time”. While there I went out for three meals with tenants, some of whom have offered me their help when I get there tomorrow. It will be strange at first, for I don’t know the area, only know my way round part of the building and everything will be in different places in a completely new flat. However, I’m also relieved as well as dog tired and excited to be making a new start. Maybe there will be another wagging tail at the end of another dog who will come bounding into my life. Who knows what tomorrow will bring apart from the furniture van and my fairy godmother? I can only offer up a silent prayer of thanks for my deliverance from this dismal dump and hope that the needless sorrow to which my poor friends here have been exposed, due to crass and stupid mismanagement and a profit before people ethos will soon end for them too.

I’m not stupid enough to believe my problems will all be left here and will not be found at my new home but the difference is that there will be joys too which is more than can be said for life here. Those whose responsibility it is to run this place should hang their heads in shame for they do not even deliver their services with kindness or care. When the door to this chapter of my life closes tomorrow, I can only hope that the opening door will indeed be on a brighter and happier day – Something I thought would never happen, especially when the Guide Dogs employee took away my lovely Esme last August. She, together with my friends, some dead and some living, was all that kept me going through the sixteen years of needless misery and worsening services which I’ve had to endure here and which are now, thankfully, coming to an end. Maybe that annoying cliché really is true (my Nan said it often enough to my great irritation because I don’t like clichés and platitudes). “When one door closes another one opens”.

ALMOST HUMAN – A TRIBUTE TO ESME.

2009-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

If you who are reading this have a dog, whether a soppy little mongrel or a great lumbering creature on legs, doubtless it will mean the world to you and when the time comes to part or the dog dies then surely you will feel as I do, namely that your whole world has collapsed or even disappeared before your very eyes. How much more is this true when that dog has been your eyes for approximately eight years.

I first met Esme at the Guide Dogs Training Centre in Wokingham where the food was like that served in a top class hotel and the compassion and kindness of the staff matched it in equal measure. However, food enthusiast that I am though much of it is forbidden these days for health reasons, my main longing wasn’t for a decent meal but for my first meeting with my dog. From the moment she bounded into the room I knew that I loved her. How much I would come to love her more even I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Because of a back problem which has now forced me to retire her a little earlier than would otherwise have been so, the Association matched me with a slow walking though very conscientious dog who was rightly described by Julie Tranfield, our instructor, as “generous”. For eight years nearly we walked the streets of my local area and Esme rarely made a mistake. At home though, it was a different matter entirely in that she turned from the conscientious guide into an exuberant and lively dog who needed some effort on my part when drying her after the rain had soaked her coat. She would back me into a corner, stand on the towel I was trying to use after shaking herself inside the flat of course and finally pin me to the bath as she rolled onto her back with all four paws in the air. My friends described her as a real character – One or two commenting that they have never seen a dog like her.

Esme’s strangest but most welcome characteristic was her love of the vet’s surgery. Most dogs have to be dragged kicking and barking to the vet but not Esme. She would stand on the crossing, quivering and whining and almost run me over the road in order to get inside for the liver treats she was given there. In fact I had to get the receptionist to help me back over the crossing because if I didn’t, Esme would walk round in ever decreasing circles, finally ending up at the door again with tail wagging on the frame in the vain hope of another few treats. When her plans were thwarted she would walk sulkily home at a snail’s pace with the tail down.

Hearing the “windows” tune on the computer was a source of joy to her as she realised I was logging off in order to feed or take her for a walk. Amazingly she was not afraid of fireworks or loud bangs and thunder.

The dark cloud on my dog owning horizon began to form last August, just after I’d completed the “Race for Life” walk with two other visually impaired people and two sighted guides, in July. Already my feet were painful so maybe it was stupid to do the walk which didn’t cause the problem but may have aggravated it. Diagnosed with plantar fasciitis which makes the heels intensely painful, I had to have physiotherapy but worse than that, had to have Esme boarded out by Guide Dogs who found her several suitable boarders including a lovely German lady with whom I’m now in touch and who sent me photos of Esme via the computer which to my utter chagrin I cannot see but still have so others can see how lovely she is. Always in my mind was the kernel of hope that I may be reunited with her once the physio was over. However, just before Christmas just past, I developed numbness and pins and needles in my right leg, which shows no signs of going and have been told it is due to a back problem I’ve had since I was born ten weeks premature which is why I’m blind in the first place as I needed so much oxygen to help me breathe that the high levels damaged my eyes.

This week (Tuesday, 27th January in fact) a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor visited me and we sadly came to the decision to retire the best friend any blind person can ever have and in some cases is ever likely to have. Since Esme is now ten and hasn’t worked for months it seemed silly to bring her back to work and very wrong too since I can’t go very far at present as this area is so hilly. The worst aspect is that though I’d planned to have her back in order to see how I’d cope with a new dog, because these wretched pins and needles have started it has been mutually agreed that while I live in this area which anyway has few amenities now, my guide dog owning days are at an end though if I can move then perhaps I can own one again in the future but knowing my luck I’m not holding my breath.

What I can say is that throughout Esme’s time with me I had a friend who was almost human, a magnificent pair of eyes and a unique character quite different from those of the dogs I had before who were in their turn distinct and special. At first I was relieved not to have to take care of her because of my health problems but now that I know that my supposed temporary parting is permanent and that the prospect of more guide dogs is uncertain I’m devastated.

The kindness and compassion of the staff at Guide Dogs who have praised me for the high standard of care I gave to Esme plus our equally praiseworthy standard of work as a team,is greatly appreciated and shows me just how worthwhile a cause Guide Dogs is and it is to be hoped they don’t suffer in these times of recession especially as the charity gets no state aid.

Finally, I know I shall always have my memories of her but you can’t be guided in the street by a memory and neither does a memory wag its tail when you’ve just popped out to throw the rubbish down the chute and welcome you as if you’ve returned from Australia. Painful though the decision was to make, I know I did the only thing I could do – Release Esme from her duties so she could have the retirement she deserves. No it wasn’t a life of drudgery and slavery for her but a mutually beneficial life for both of us as she conscientiously worked for me, even slowing down when she knew my back was bad – While I, in my turn, loved and cared for her to the enth degree as she deserved. She was, as I say, almost human and an ever faithful pair of “eyes” which I have lost all over again. My only consolation is that I’ve heard she has adapted to being without me since dogs live in the present and will no doubt go to a loving home but what I can say with absolute certainty is that nobody, however loving and kind they will be to her, can ever love her more than I did and still do for she, like my other dogs, brought me to the brink of an understanding which just about still eludes me, as to the miracle of sight itself because walking with a dog is the ultimate in blind people’s mobility and beats using a cane into a cocked hat. Only thing is though, I never shed a bucketful of tears when I parted from any white cane but grief is the price you pay for love and anyone who meets or met Esme, never mind owned her as I did, could do anything other than love her.

BITTER-SWEET.

2009-01-06T06:48:00.001-08:00

I have just this minute finished a book, telling the story of someone else who, like me, has owned a guide dog. I wanted to see whether her experiences were anything like my own but as I read the story, it became clear that our paths were to diverge in a way I could never have suspected.

Much later in the story, the author was seen by an eye specialist who operated on her eyes and returned her lost sight to her as a result. She had a genetic disease which blinded her but, like me, could see light at some time but unlike me; she saw colours too which I have never been able to do as far as I can remember for my sight was lost too early for me to recall them.

As I became aware that her operation was going to be a success, I was aware of mixed emotions. I wanted to know how she reacted to sight and seeing the world, herself and family plus colours and how she would learn to see but I was also aware of a deep sense of sadness that I am never to have this experience. Yes it was as I had imagined in that I have always thought that you can’t just open your eyes and see and know what everything was like. No you wouldn’t be able to get up out of a chair and just go anywhere without feeling apprehension and fear because your brain would have to adjust to your new situation and for a while at least you would have to close your eyes and touch things so you could recognise them that way. You’d have also to learn to write in the usual way with a pen and paper but once done, you would be filled with a sense of wonder at the world and all that is in it which is surely what a young child must feel when confronted with the world’s visual imagery for the first time.

I learned things from this story that I never realised and know now that I was quite correct in assuming that there is a great deal of difference between knowing things factually: “The sky is blue or grey”, “roses are red, violets are blue”; “clouds can be like fluffy bits of cotton wool in the sky” etc. and knowing things experientially. She describes how lettuces catch the light, or perhaps it’s the water they’re being washed in as it runs from the tap, and how it creates pools of reflected light which swirl around. I have never thought of this before.

This author was honest enough to talk about the implications of blindness, what it robs you of, how narrow it can make your life and how disconnected from the world you can be because of it and she was fortunate enough to have married a sighted man whilst blind and have many friends who can see.

In other ways I wish I’d not read this book – Not because I am not pleased for her and not just because of sour grapes and horrible feelings of envy, jealousy, rage and frustration but because it has brought to the forefront of my mind the tantalising nearness of a world I live with in parallel to but cannot enter and, yes, I would be telling lies if I said that I happily read this book and thought: “Oh well, never mind! That’s your story I’m happy as I am and never think how good it would be were things different”.

The only area on which I disagree with her is that about when it is “best” to become blind. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The terrible feelings of helplessness, fear, resentment and longing which often accompany loss of sight later in life are not exclusive to the adventitiously blind. These feelings of knowing what you’ve missed or at least that you have, feeling left out and indeed being so and knowing your life is not going to be the same as it could have been had you not been blind or otherwise disabled for that matter are just as painful in youth and adulthood for those who haven’t seen. It’s like being hit on the back rather than in the stomach. Both hurt and both have to be coped with. Those who’ve lost their sight have a visual memory to take with them and an understanding of a world they are forced to leave – The world of vision – Whereas I have no actual readjusting to do in one way but a cobbled together understanding which makes it hard to choose clothes, find my way by thinking in terms of spatial distances and raised maps and suchlike. I do admit that because I was taught how to cope in the home I don’t “feel blind” at home and can and do cook, know how to identify my tins because I can put Braille labels on them and can do such things as measure cereal out without spilling it everywhere. I neither burn or scald myself and don’t fall downstairs and am not a fire hazard. Older blind people who have seen do tend to do some of these things more often but I am sure that, were I to sleep in the same house with one of them, they would at some time have heard me shedding tears over a horrible journey through a world of nothingness just as I would hear them doing so over things no longer seen by them or possible like their lost ability to paint or read books; see flowers or family.

One thing I do know for sure is that, after I have next slept, I am going to need to employ my happiness strategies all the more rigorously. Just beside me, walking stealthily, is that other “me” which does wonder what the world is really like, why this had to happen in the first place and why something can’t be done to reverse things and, as with monopoly: “get me out of jail”. Sheila, the author, has called this other self from the shadows and it’s a voice I’ve not heard for a long time and a longing I’ve not had for a long time and rarely get now until I hear of someone who has been liberated. It’s going to take all my strength to restrain this other self; to send it back into the shadows because, like her guide dog, mine is ten now as hers was when she wrote the story, and my future is by no means going to be as hers was. However, I don’t know what has happened to her in later life though I have another book here which will no doubt tell me and I don’t know what my future is to be either. I just know that, as it is for the rest of you, it’s got to be a question of one day at a time and playing the hand of cards I’ve been given. However, soon I shall have, for the sake of all these suppressed and now expressed longings, either to escape into fiction – Either reading or writing it and into music in order to divert my thoughts.

What a wonderful reversal of fortune this woman had! At least though, she did, as I hope I would, appreciate it and didn’t, as I don’t, shrug off and play down the enormous impact blindness has on people. The secret now is not to dwell on the difficulties – Easier said than done but I have become an adept at it for it’s something I have to do every day and though I had tears in my eyes when I’d finished this book, I was smiling at the same time. Well then folks, could you call that the facial equivalent of a rainbow?

IT CAN BE DONE.

2009-01-03T19:53:00.001-08:00

Let’s start 2009 on a positive note. I’m going to make what will, to some be an outrageous statement and a contradiction in terms. Christmas and the New Year celebrations can be enjoyed without the inclusion of alcohol! Yes you did read it right.

Some years ago, after the death of my husband, I took to drink in a big way. My intention was simple – Drink enough and I’ll forget the misery of being unexpectedly and unpredictably alone – Drink more than enough and hopefully I’d join him. I kept this up for some considerable time until I realised that not only am I a tough little individual who is resilient and constitutionally quite strong but that the procedure didn’t work! I didn’t forget and haven’t died yet! All I had for my troubles was a headache which felt as if a band had set up their equipment inside my skull and I was the poorer both financially and spiritually and was on the way to doing serious damage to my liver and other organs. I didn’t have a moment of supreme enlightment on the way to the road to my personal Damascus and neither did I “get religion” though I have read the Bible from cover to cover. I just got fed up with the dry mouth, continual thirst and headaches and the fact that I needed more of the stuff to achieve the same very transient effect. Then I found that my epilepsy had worsened to the point where I was hospitalised and needed life-long medication which doesn’t go well with alcohol. So I kicked the habit, with only one or two relapses at Christmas time when the pressure to drink is at its strongest.

I had to sit down and analyse the reasons why I drank and knew only too well that it was to do with my deep and painful unhappiness. It was because I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was on my own when I didn’t want to be and resented the rejection of me by many sighted people who either don’t get to know me or keep making promises they don’t keep or conduct any sort of relationship on their terms and I wanted a short cut to the oblivion which death brings to us all. At aged thirty-five I had three massive epileptic fits but still refused to die. I wasn’t drunk at the time but instead had just come home from switchboard work at the U.K’s well known charity for those with sight loss. I lost several hours of time and woke up in hospital with a canular in my arm, which dripped anti convulsant medication into my body. I wondered then why I was still here and realised that, though not lucky because of all I have suffered, at least I was still around which is more than could be said for the man I fell in love with and married. I thought too of the terrible distress my very elderly grandmother would suffer had I died or if I destroyed myself by abusing alcohol. Though the epilepsy is definitely the result of the oxygen damage which blinded me, and which began in early adolescence, I can’t deny the fact that what I was doing to myself must have affected its progress just as surely as my having to cope alone without help both of a practical or emotional support.

So conditioned are we to think that every and any celebration must include alcohol that even after I’d made the decision to stop, my Christmas relapses were always due to the fact that I thought I couldn’t enjoy them without it. As it is Christmas is not my favourite time of year so anything which would oil the wheels seemed to me a must. What about the Christmas just gone then?

In June I made my escape from the unspeakably inconsiderate oaf who spoiled my life for seventeen months by playing loud music all night and moved into another flat within the block where I’ve lived for years. With apprehension I heard that a couple was moving in beside me. I dreaded it in case they were a couple of beer swilling louts with an equally loud stereo system and no desire to wear headphones. I worried myself to death for days until I could stand it no longer. Armed with a box of chocolates I did something I’m not noted for – I rang their bell and introduced myself to them. They invited me in, told me they’d suffered in the same way and that they were quiet and private people who also avoided alcohol. We clicked at once and are now not just neighbours but friends and I was so touched when, dreading Christmas as I always do, they invited me round for Christmas dinner. I had the loveliest Christmas possible. The lady of the house is a superb cook and I’ve been teasing them both about constructing a serving hatch in the adjoining wall so that I can push my plate through at meal times. They popped in for New Year’s Eve and throughout both occasions we drank coke or water. When I came home and when they left after each celebration, respectively, I was on such a self-induced high that on went the headphones and up went the music! Then I said to myself, with a shock: “June, you’ve done it all without alcohol but not without friends whose kindness helped you accomplish it”. Both these lovely people keep their eyes on me. If they don’t see me for a little while, I get a ring on the bell to ask if I’m okay. It’s taken me all my adult life to realise that celebrations, especially Christmas and New Year do not have to be lived in an alcoholic haze and life can be happy without it too.

Of course one addiction or need if you like has been replaced with another. I live with music in my ears and as I’ve said before I’ve a strong compulsion to write but at least these are harmless compulsions especially since, in the case of music, I keep it at a sensible volume because I need my ears so much more than I would if I could see. I have been invited to my friends’ and neighbours’ wedding this year and, yes, I expect that too will be an alcohol free affair but the obvious love they feel for each other is all they need and having them as my new neighbours and friends is all I need so folks, if you’re struggling with alcohol consumption and were, like me, conditioned to believe that you can’t manage your celebrations without it, the good news is that you can. Also, if you feel a bit apprehensive about popping round to new neighbours with a box of chocks and introducing yourself, go on, give it a go! You may be unlucky and find you’ve met a real waste of space like I did when the floods in my first flat caused me to live underneath the neighbour from hell but then again you may, as I have, strike oil. Whatever the outcome, if you sit in your own flat or apartment or house, isolated and drinking alone as I did, you’ll never know and you may miss the warmth and kindness of others which will come back to you for that which you gave and that is more beneficial and precious than any number of bottles of alcohol. Here’s to friendship, love and kindness, as I sit here with my cup of tea!

WHAT TO DO WHEN HAPPINESS STRATEGIES FAIL.

2008-12-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

As you may know, on this blog I have written my own personal suggestions, developed out of necessity, in order to help you find the best chance of reaching a happy state. I am not an expert in anything but living the life I have been given and playing the hand of cards fate has dealt me but I have suffered both from physical disability which is still with me and includes total blindness and mental illness in the form of depression so maybe as a lay person I can be of help. I certainly hope so because the unbearable sadness and weight of severe depression is destructive to the spirit, painful to bear and maybe avoidable altogether in the future or at least not so severe if it does return.

It will be impossible in some cases for you to realise how ill you have become since your thinking powers and ability to see yourself clearly and to reason properly will be affected. Therefore it is essential that you do not let pride stop you from seeking medical help even if that help includes taking drugs to alleviate and cure the symptoms. You must have the same attitude as you would to the wearing of glasses or a plaster on a broken leg. Depression is a normal reaction to an abnormal load of human suffering or misfortune, often carried alone and without appropriate support or even any support. The dangerous and damaging English attitude to: “Keep it all in” and adopt a permanently stiff upper lip is probably responsible for the terrible feelings of shame you may feel about being depressed in the first place. This may seem as if I’m contradicting my earlier statements about there being people worse off and all of us needing to count our blessings. While I stand by those statements, this is only possible once you have accepted that you are ill, sought and accepted treatment and then returned to health again. While in the throes of your depression, these maxims will sound like trite and meaningless rubbish which you will, in your negative state, dismiss just as I did.

It is essential too that you must learn to cry; feel sorry for yourself without feeling guilty and learn to love yourself because unless you do this you will never be in a position to love anyone else or to empathise with them or even to laugh with joy again. Just how do you learn to love yourself when for years someone has told you that you’re worthless and inadequate; hopeless and have no redeeming features? You sit down and think of all those who have had time for you. Few of us have gone through life with absolutely nobody to care for us or have been unfortunate enough never to have been told that someone loves us. Even if you have to go way back into childhood to find them, I bet someone once told you they believed in you, that you were good at this or that at school and even perhaps that you had a lovely smile or nice hair or skin. Start from there. Then think of a reason why there was a constant person in your life who devalued you all the time. If, as in my case, it was a parent, ask yourself why this happened and tell yourself that although it was because you were told it was due to your innate worthlessness, whether in fact it was because they were transferring their inadequacy to you or whether they needed to feel better and could only do this by making you feel worse. Tell yourself anyway that they were wrong, even if at first you don’t actually believe it. Say that today, although you are feeling miserable you will get through to nightfall, having perhaps achieved the small act of eating a little something or briefly smiling at someone who speaks to you even if it takes all your effort of will and then say to yourself: “Would the worthless person I was told I am do that”? Answer: “No”. At first this will seem stupid and pointless but from this small beginning greater steps will be taken believe me.

We were not meant to live alone, cope alone or be alone. So why are we? There are lots of reasons for this. Some have to do with the fragmentation of society; our over dependence on and value and even worship of material things and possessions; our writing off of weaker and more vulnerable people as worthless and insignificant; the structure of our cities which have enormous concrete tower blocks in which to house people and the transient nature of our physical relationships and an ever faster pace of life. We are taught that to be unable to cope is a sign of weakness and moral inadequacy and failure. We are conditioned to strive for and laud physical perfection and mental stamina and wholeness and that anything which does not match up is thought of as “uncool” so it’s no wonder that we fail, fall and need help. What would be the first thing which you would do if you saw me, a blind person, trip over something and land on my back on the pavement? I’m sure you would rush to my side, give me an arm and pull me up; always assuming I hadn’t broken a leg. You need, and so do I, a mental “hand up” when the weight of our unhappiness causes us to fall spiritually and mentally.

Depression is not something to be ashamed of. Deep and heartbreaking unhappiness and feelings of utter despair and hopelessness are feelings to be admitted and not denied for fear that people will ridicule you. Years ago you would never have got me to admit to being a blind writer on this blog. I never would have had blind characters in any of my stories which are too long for it and most certainly I would never have openly talked on the radio of my experience of depression. Now, in middle age and certainly in the second half of my life I don’t care. If people want to think I’m doing it to gain sympathy that’s their prerogative. I am flawed, fragile; frightened of increasing disability, cancer and/or having a stroke and being alone for the rest of my life and do you know what? So are you and so are they. I don’t like the thought of not existing one day or of having a painful death and being dealt with harshly by impersonal strangers or thinking that I will die unloved. Neither do you and neither do they. Therefore for you to have these feelings and worries, for you to feel crushed and defeated by life is normal. Struggling stoically all on your own is not. Talk to someone and if they tell you that you need help then believe them. Don’t let the fact that you feel better in the evenings full you. You cannot get over serious depression without help and treatment.

Finally, believe that you will get better. I did not believe I would ever get better. I harboured thoughts of suicide; drank too much before becoming ill; felt too full of misery to eat; hated people being near me then wanted them to be when they weren’t; felt overwhelmed by all the suffering both of my own and on the news; then eventually walked with a white cane up to the surgery to see my doctor, the tears streaming down my face as I went. When he asked me what was wrong I said: “Everything” and burst into tears again. I did not want pills, thinking that people’s affection and company would help but I took them all the same because I trusted him enough to believe I’d not get better without them. I also had six weeks’ counselling but don’t personally have that high an opinion of that, due to the guy who gave it to me who I consider to have made rude and offensive remarks during my last session but that’s just my opinion of it and it may work for you so try it if it’s suggested.

Now I am cheerful and happy again despite still being blind and having a bit of a painful back and having had something wrong with my feet for months. I believe in you though I don’t know you simply because I know how much the human spirit can overcome. I’ve seen it time and time and time again. I know I’m no better than you are and would lay odds on your return to full health again providing you accept yourself as you are, admit that you are ill and need help and then accept it. Most of all you must reject and disregard the opinions of those who have told you that you’re worthless and not loveable you’re not. Like me you’re just flawed and frightened though it’s probable that you are sighted.

When you are well again, then and only then, will my recipe for happiness have any chance of working for you. If it doesn’t, find your own and stick to it for your personality may not be the same as mine. Depression will hold you as securely as any lover but it is not your lover. Instead it is a cruel prison with barbed wire arms which will shred you into little bits if you don’t gently let others disentangle you and bind up your wounds. I promise you that you will heal. You will heal and feel again, love and laugh again and find some joy in life again but it takes courage which I can’t give you but which you must find from within yourself. I hope I have helped you. Please let others do so too.

BY GEORGE HE’S GOT IT!

2008-12-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

“Hi Ken! Are you all packed and ready to go? I sure can’t wait to get into the White House which sounds kinda strange don’t you think? First black guy in the White House. Where you gonna live now that the people and I have turned you out? Do you reckon you’ll end up in the Wild West in one of those cowboy films? I mean remember Ronnie! Anyway, there’ll always be a room for you here if you’d like to come visit some time. Yours apologetically,

The other ‘big O’”.

“Hi, ‘Big O’,

I keep a-tellin’ ya, my name’s George don’t you know? Just ‘cos my wife’s name’s Barbie, that don’t mean I’m a male doll. I was once the most powerful man on the plane – Hell no! I mean the planet don’ I! Anyway, don’t you worry a darn thing about me. I’m goin’ to migrate, you know, like the little old tweetie birds do when the cold gets into ‘em. We’sa goin’ to Britain, me and Barbie. We got our eyes on a nice little pad near the Strand if not on it. Why they even named it after us! That was real nice o’ them. They did it ‘cos of the special relationship we’sa got. Why it’s so lovely and quiet in there that I will have time and privateness to write my memorabelia. ‘Scuse my spellifications. I never got much learnin’ at school you understand. Anyway, now that we got that Osama Binladen out of Iraq and killed all those poor soldiers of the Americas and Britanicles I feel really happified now. I mean I will go down in historics as the greatest President the little old U.SA has ever knowd. I know you’ll never beat that Big Boy but I wish you all the luckification in all the big old worl’.

Yours sincerely,

George (not Ken) dubblya.

“Hi again Ken,

I loved your letter. I’m interested to know where you’re going to emigrate to in Britain.

By the way, it was Saddam who was killed, not Binladen. Still, man of your standing is allowed a little mistake once in a while. I can’t think of a single place in Britain which is named after you. Maybe you can enlighten me. Anyway I’m glad you have somewhere to go. I feel very mean kicking you out and all that.

Kind Regards and don’t forget your toothbrush,

“The ‘big O’”

“Hi again ‘O’,

Well now I’m so excitable. I wonder if Barbie and I might stay on for a little while. We won’t ‘interseed’ with you nor nothing. It’s just that there are some people in my proposed homestead which are refusin’ to budge. They told me they like it there. Who can blame them! I liked it there when I had a peep through my sunglasses just before Christmas! Anyway, I reckon a stick of dynamice will move ‘em. By the way, the place is called: BUSH HOUSE. You get that, ‘Big O’? BUSH HOUSE I reckon it’ll do just fine.

Yours as always, Georgie Porgy. (And don’t call me Ken again”.

“Hi Ken,

Hell I know that place. They broadcast the World Service programmes from there and some of Radio4. They let the world know just what a mess you made in Iraq and they tell them about all the other little S.O.B’s who run the world! You can not hole up in there. I shall stop it. I shall write to Gordon at once and express my concern at your proposal. I’d say you could stay here and play with the kids but who knows what you’d teach ‘em. I don’t want you strutting about the place in your cowboy boots, giving ‘em bad ideas and a bad role model. I wanna raise my kids properly. I know what it is to be down-trodden. I’m sorry Ken, you’ll just have to go live somewhere else. Emigrate, yes by all means, but not to Bush House which, by the way, was called that long before you were a disaster in your mummy’s tummy.

Yours horrified,

‘The Big O’.

“Hi Obama,

You ain’t no ‘Big O’! Everyone knows that was the singer with the glasses – Roy Orbiting, that was him. I’ve already talked with Gordy. He told me he can’t do nothin’ ‘cos he ran the Tamla Mowtown label. I don’t like that stuff. I’d rather have Johnny Cash and Tammy Dinette. Why she sings real good! Anyway, I’m sure I can get into BUSH HOUSE if I wanna. There’s just two ladies holdin’ out on me. They’s reasonable gals I think. When they meet Barbie and me and see I’m twice as stupified as they thought I was they’ll take pity on me I know they will! Why I may even get a job as a security man. They’ll value my expandees which I gained while I was Presidivying over the good old USA. Anyway, my eyes is getting’ tired now. I’s a little short sighted so I’m gonna go now. Good luck Obama. I know’s you’ll be far too tied up to write back. I had the boys arrange that. Told ‘em to use the best Italian spaghetti. There’s no way you’ll excapee from that tangible I know. See you on the ice,

George”.

THE SQUARE OF SUCCESS.

2008-12-13T19:43:00.001-08:00

Often I’ve heard it said that if you want something badly enough then you can achieve it. Not quite true.

I don’t often think in visual terms because, being blind, it doesn’t come naturally to me. However, in this instance I do. Success to me is like a square which, like any other square, has to have four sides of equal length to make it so. If a side is missing or of unequal length, the “square” of success cannot be drawn on the map of achievement.

First of all when a successful outcome is desired, ability has to be present. Without sounding immodest, I know I have writing ability which goes beyond just putting down any old word in any old order down on a piece of paper. It’s something I was told at school and numerous times since by people from all walks of life, some of whom work in the media and who have been the recipients of funny emails and snippets which I hoped would draw their attention to me. However, though necessary, ability alone is not enough though without it you’re sunk. An avid music lover, I could never be Georgina Shearing, or Stephanie Wonder. Therefore I’ve never tried because I can only really pick out a tune one-handed on a little keyboard and can’t co-ordinate my hands.

The second side of the square is the perseverance. How many people waste their talents because they don’t persevere or can’t manage the consequences of having their dreams realised? My old blind school was harsh and the discipline rigid as I’ve said before and this has given me the staying power I’ve needed. Writing, to me is like breatheing. I love it so much that I can’t imagine life without doing it. Reading is equally important. Such wonderful authors as Daphne Du Maurier, Ruth Rendell and the psychologist Dorothy Rowe have helped me cope with the bad times and while I can never claim to be anywhere near as good as any of them, I believe I could give as much pleasure to blind and sighted readers alike – People whose lives seem empty and hopeless and who need an escape from the drudgery and daily grind of life. Apart from a nagging desire to stick two fingers up at all the people in my life who said I was fit only for making cane baskets or being guided around like a helpless beggar, I long to give that sort of pleasure to others and have voiced that longing for many years to many people.

The third side of the square is practical help. This was a very long time coming. To begin with I had to find the right people – The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association employee who encouraged me to get a computer and went further than he need have done by offering to pick one up for me if I trusted him with the money. I did and he did. He brought it home, set it up and arranged for the training I’d need to use it. Technically this help was beyond his job description but as he said:

“You can always find excuses for not doing things”.

Had he stuck rigidly to the rules as so many do then he’d have joined the ever-growing band of people who wished me luck without helping me or knowing who could. I told him some of the ideas I had in my head and it was obvious to him that I needed help. He also sees his job as that of alleviating the terrible isolation which many of his clients feel. Other reasons for difficulty in obtaining help include too few trained people spread among too many clients over too wide a catchment area and, an even more pertinent reason in these hard times of recession, lack of funds as people tighten their belts and giving is less of a priority as spare cash is unavailable. Many charities including Guide Dogs get no state funding and smaller ones get no publicity or public support. I never heard of UCANDOIT before I had their support. This is the charity which trained me to use the computer and provided me with the talking software. I also had further help, costing much more, from a blind man whom I paid privately. Then the greatest stroke of luck of all happened. I started corresponding with someone whom I met on a social internet site. I sent her a story, far too long for the blog as many of them are, describing how blindness has impacted on me and how I cope with it. She suggested I start a blog. Because of health problems and the need for hospital visits due to my feet problems and the need for a new guide dog soon, I explained I didn’t know how to do this. She offered to put the entries up for me until I can do so myself. Reliable as the days of the week and trustworthy as all the professionals who have helped me in my quest, she has faithfully done what she promised. Luck has really come into its own here since at least had the others let me down I could have complained to their superiors or the Charity Commission but I’d have had to put it down to bitter experience had my friend let me down and you’d have not read any of my work which I have so desperately wanted to share for so long with whoever wants to read it.

So there you have them – The four sides of the square: Ability; perseverance; practical help and luck. How I would like to see more blind people reach their full potential and they could do, for we all have talents whether blind or sighted, but for the want of practical help and luck. Sadly instead I have seen all too many become despondent, lose their will to persevere and watch their abilities rust and be corroded by bitterness and despair. Some turn to drink, don’t eat properly or eat too much, others hate sighted people for seeing and successful blind people for being luckier than they and one or two have tried and indeed succeeded in taking their own lives. Of course sighted people are prey to all these things too but it’s the degree which differs and the fact that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far, knowing all the time we could get further but for the helping hands we need.

This is why I’ve written this piece, in the hope of inspiring not only the blind people whose courage is failing but you who are not blind so that one day you may reach out your hand containing the pencil light of hope which can help draw the square of success on another’s map of achievement. If you, and indeed I,don’t hold out that pencil light of hope, then vital and sometimes vibrant chapters will be missing not necessarily from my story and stories, but from the whole human story and I think that would be not only a waste but a shame since we’re all pages in the book of humanity and what a varied book that is!

DEAF DOGS FOR THE BLIND!

2008-12-10T21:55:00.000-08:00

I used to live near a large Shopping Centre. In fact Wheat [my guide dog] and I were used to catching the tube there whenever my freezer and I needed re-stocking.

One day while there I realised I needed help as I always did and so duly switched on my beaming smile and waved my card which reads: “Your help welcome”.

A good samaritan answered the call in the form of a well educated sounding woman who I estimated as being taller than I as her voice came from above me. Mind you to be smaller than I would mean you’d probably have to be a seven-year-old child!

“Can I help you my dear”?

She said. In my turn I told her I needed the taxi rank so we could get home. Suddenly her voice came from somewhere near the floor – Right down by the dog’s ear in fact! I was astonished to hear her giving complicated and detailed instructions on how to get there to my Retriever!

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I cried in true Hollies fashion for those of you who remember the song.

“Have you not heard of deaf dogs for the blind”?

“Oh no! Don’t tell me this poor animal has to work though she’s deaf”!

She said, equally alarmed. I was quick to notice she extended not the same concern for the fact that I have to shop though I’m blind.

“Well yes but it’s a simbiotic relationship we have”,

I said in a calm voice designed to reassure this frantic spectacle of a dog loving passer-by.

“You see each has something the other needs so each compensates for the other’s loss”.

“Oh I see! How marvellous! You so obviously love her and she’s so beautifully cared for”.

I refrained from telling her she lived on a diet of whisky, raw sausages, cigarette ends and tissues and beamed with pride and pleasure at my lovely old dog’s appearance. I wonder what the woman thought as she heard me say:

“Forward”

to my obedient and well trained dog? Was she amazed as the dog moved off with me keeping up the rear? Perhaps she thought she lip read!

RAIN DROPS KEPT FALLING ON OUR HEADS.

2008-12-08T17:54:00.001-08:00

Shopping and weather conditions don’t take account of one another as I’m sure you know. If it’s wet and shopping is needed it has to be done regardless.

One day my lovely Labrador, Esme, and I, were making our way to the shops in very wet weather when I was stopped by what can only be described as a fool. She very indignantly asked why Esme wasn’t wearing shoes and a coat! I, very patiently at first, proceeded to point out that all that hair which I’d have to dry on our return home was in fact a coat – A dog’s coat which is water proof and that Labradors, so named because they originate from Canada, where it’s cold enough to freeze the ‘’’’’ ah well now I’ll leave you to fill in the missing words – Means they’re quite hardy. I also pointed out that her harness, necessary for her to wear so she knows when she’s on duty, wouldn’t fit if she wore a Mac. The woman then admonished me for looking after myself by seeing to it that I wore a Mac and boots, plus hat and told me I was being cruel.

“I’ve got a right one here”,

I thought and then remembered how I’d teased the lady who came to conduct market research at my door that time. I suggested in a moment of pure folly that perhaps she would like to give me her contact details so I could save my poor guide dog from the inclement weather and then thought how very unwise it’d be to entrust my safety to someone as dippy as she obviously was.

Then I tried the “pity the poor blind woman” angle:

“What about me? No hanging upside down in a cave for me though I’m as blind as a bat. No flying either which would be quicker. No dependence on sonar like radar and highly developed echo location. How will I eat? It’s fine for you I mean you can dodge between the drops. I can’t even see to do that and they’re all falling on me – Look at ‘em! Besides that if you hadn’t nobbled me we’d have been there and back by now and Esme would be dryer than she is now”.

I had hoped that the idea of her being able to dodge between the rain drops may focus her mind away from Esme and her neglected state and would mean I’d not be reported by her to Guide Dogs or the R.S.P.C.A for animal cruelty.

When I got home we then had ten rounds with the towel. Firstly the game begins, not with the sound of the bell which brings the opposing boxers out from their corners but with the entreaty from me to:

“Shake Es”, muttered desperately outside the front door where I hope she’ll oblige rather than waiting till we get in before shaking herself all over my recently vacuumed hall carpet. Of course she shakes inside which means I’ve lost the first round. Next comes pinning me to the bath as I attempt to dry her off with her towel; rolling on her back while I’m trying to dry it; standing on the towel when I try to dry her front paws and finally licking out my ears as I kneel to avoid back injury.

The technical knock out comes as Esme pushes me to the floor and rolls on me, wagging her tail in my face and I lay there completely floored while she wags to ten and then, convinced she’s a boxer instead of a Labrador, she stands to receive her prize – A pat on the head with my hand instead of a sledge hammer which I’m too weak to lift anyway, for being a good girl and helping me bring home the bacon. The entire afternoon is spent by me, inhaling the smell of wet dog which permeates the small flat in which I live long after Esme has been dried and which provides a jarring accompaniment to my deliciously cooked meal which Jamie Oliver would be proud to eat and the staff in my old blind school taught me to cook.

The question now remains as to who is going to volunteer to spare Esme the trouble of taking me out on a wet day? Answer came there none which is why I got a guide dog in the first place. Maybe soon they’ll teach our dogs to drive and we can all keep dry. Don’t tell me! There’s a dippy old girl at the bus stop near my flat who actually thinks that would be possible! Was it you? If so, do you mind getting a taxi next time it’s wet so I can go out and come home in peace? Thanks a lot. I’m very grateful.

THE O.K. MAN.

2008-11-26T21:52:00.001-08:00

They called Michael “the o.k. man” because he seemed able to solve everyone’s problems but who was there for him when his problems came about?

Michael was the kindest little boy in his school. Always he would collect up the pencils, toys and books at the end of the day. When any little children fell over he’d be the one to go and tell the teacher. His mother said he was so sensitive he should have been a girl. He never thought this was a silly or uncomplimentary thing to say as he rather liked the idea of being like a girl in that they were always portrayed as kind and caring and that’s what he was. He didn’t imagine himself as a train driver or a soldier when he grew up. Instead he imagined himself as a nurse or a doctor. He’d be too emotional some said and others said he’d never get all the qualifications needed but they were wrong.

All through his senior school and onto university and college – Michael still retained his caring nature and when the big boys and young men used to tease him for not wanting to go out and swill pints and get laid he just said: “The sign of a real man is just how much he will do for his neighbour without wanting something in return or without counting the cost to oneself”. Every time anyone needed anything doing he’d just say: “O.k. O.k. Leave it to me” and whatever was needed he would do. It was like magic having Michael around. If someone needed their car washing, their dog looking after, their kids picking up from school, he was your man. He even unblocked Mrs. Singh’s drains for her once.

I first met Michael when I was waiting for my train. He was waiting for his too. His elderly mother had been taken poorly and he was off to visit her. He kindly helped me into my carriage after insisting he carry my cases for me. He made sure I got a comfortable seat and chatted to me all the way from our starting point - Platform 1 of our local station - All the way to Stockport. I wasn’t a bit surprised to hear he’d qualified as a doctor. I was surprised at his love of “footy” as my brother always called it. He was mad on it and supported his local team and tried not to miss any of their games. Now me, I hate it. I’d much rather curl up with a good book. However I listened politely while he went on about “the beautiful game” and hoped I didn’t look too bored. Our train soon arrived and we got out. He saw me into my taxi and went off to see his mum.

Lizzie’s kitchen was always cosy. I loved visiting her. We’d not met since we’d left college. She’d married and now had two gorgeous kids. She seemed a bit frazzled though. All it was as it turned out, was because she’d not been getting much sleep. The second one was always a bit of a bad sleeper and even now at the age of five he still kept her up nights. I told her in no uncertain terms that what she needed was a holiday but she said how could she manage that what with Ben’s job and everything? Besides that she had nowhere to go. Then I reminded her about my mum’s guesthouse. “I can’t stay there”! She said: “Your mum’s lovely but she’d never let me pay my way and I’m not having charity”. I told her that I would happily go there with her. I hated holidaying on my own and although seeing Lizzie was like a holiday it wasn’t the same as being spoiled by your mum at the seaside. Both of us were agreed on that. “It won’t be much of a holiday with the kids in tow”, she commented. “Nonsense”! I said. “If we go off season like it is in another two months or will be, mum will happily play with them. She’ll get onto me again about why I haven’t married and blessed her with grandchildren – Even suggesting I can suspend the wedding bit if I like she’s that desperate for them – So playing with yours will be a good opening into the same old conversation we’ve been having for the last few years”. Lizzie laughed and said she’d talk to Ben about it.

Ben seemed happy enough to wave us all off when Lizzie and the kids came back with me. I think he relished the peace and quiet he was going to have. Mum was delighted to see Lizzie, her two kids and her Labrador. Then there was me with no kids and my Labrador. The dogs chased each other in and out of the sea and it was there that Timmy and Stuart learned to swim. Stuart seemed to have forgotten his aches and pains while he was here. He was sleeping better too and we concluded that it was the sea air. There weren’t many visitors to mum’s now that the peak period was over and the weather was turning slightly chillier. This meant we had time for shopping trips and Lizzie and I indulged our penchant for new clothes. “Ben’ll have a fit when he hears how much I’ve spent”, she said, remembering that she was supposed to be poor as well as happy. I just said to make sure she threw the receipts away. When we got back to the guest house, a man was there asking if mum had any spare rooms. She said she did and I thought something about his voice was familiar. He was about to speak to me when a distressed woman appeared saying that two little children had got into trouble down by the water’s edge. She was the only remaining guest with children, who as yet hadn’t returned home in order for them all to get ready to go back to school. We’d left Lizzie’s boys with her and her two girls while we went shopping and it was Timmy and Stuart who were now in trouble in the water. They’d gone out to sea on those lilo things. I’ve never liked them myself, thinking how easy it is to go drifting out to sea on them. We all raced down to the beach and before any of us could do anything, we found that the man who had just booked in was there with us saying: “O.k. o.k. Leave it to me. I’m going in after them. I’m a strong swimmer and I can and will save them”. By now they were little specks, hardly visible and yet terrified all the same. The two little girls were too scared to go in and had run for their mother to tell her what the boys had done. Nobody quite understood how they’d got hold of the lilos but just that now they were way out to sea. Eventually they were brought to safety and treated by the same man who had saved their lives – “The O.K. man” as they called him.

It was after their ordeal was over and I had time to think that I remembered where I’d heard that voice before. The voice belonged to the man who had helped me onto the train to Stockport when I went to visit Lizzie in the first place. Once more I’d met Doctor Michael, the “O.k.” man – The one who always collected up the pencils, solved all the problems of whoever he met and wanted to be a doctor. He now had his own practice and was looking for a receptionist. Mum was saying how now that she was getting on a bit she was finding the guest house a bit too much and on a whim, sold it and moved to where his practice is, saying she’d happily be his receptionist. Lizzie was very put out at this. She’d fallen in love with the place and moaned she’d have nowhere to take the kids to on holiday with or without Ben. She didn’t believe in being fazed by anything and just because Stuart and Tim had almost drowned it didn’t worry her to come back to the same place.

All this happened over thirty years ago now. Sadly my mother died without ever having the grandchildren she wanted and more happily Stuart and Tim have grown up into big strapping men who have produced about five between them for Lizzie. Michael? Well the “O.K.” man has now retired from general practice. He’s not stopped wanting to help people with their problems and - Guess what? I’m here to listen to his because he said: “O.k.” to one more thing – Marrying a blind woman who had a succession of guide dogs who rubbed themselves all over his clean smart suits just before he went off to work or out on his rounds to see his patients. He just took it all in his stride and he’s just been with me to a school where I’ve given a talk to the children about how the dogs are trained. He acted as my chauffeur you understand and at the end of my talk you can guess what he did – Why offered to become a classroom assistant so guess what he’ll be doing at the end of every day? Why collecting up the pencils of course!

(The end).

THE NIGHT IT RAINED ICE CREAM.

2008-11-26T21:51:00.000-08:00

The weather was baking hot in Toestampton, a little place where everyone stamps about in big green welly boots. The bus had just pulled in from Chutney, it had been driven by Mr. Pickle who was thirsty. Mrs. Pickle made him tea which he tipped straight down the sink. “This tea’s fizzy”! He shouted. She tried hers and to her disgust found it was. She tried some water from the tap only to find it was lemonade instead. She tried to jump onto the water board – A great big piece of hardboard which has a man sitting on it with a beaker, scooping beakerfuls out of the Thames and pouring it into the pipes where it runs always down to the spouts on the taps. He’d taken his lemonade with him to drink but just as he was about to pour it from his flask where he had put some to keep it cold, he sneezed and dropped it all into the river. Now when he collected beakers of “water” it was lemonade which had become mixed up and gone into the supply.

That night another weird thing happened. When it rained instead of water coming down from the clouds, ice cream came instead. There was ice cream all over the cars, ice cream over the ground, in the trees, in the hedges and ice cream in Mr. Trundle’s cornet which he’d carelessly left against the back fence in his garden. Mr. Trundle who owns a carpet shop called Mr. Trundle’s carpet bundles, plays the cornet in the Toestanpton and Chutney Brass band. When he tried to play it in the morning he found the bell was packed solid with frozen ice cream. He sucked and blew, sucked and blew and banged the cornet against the fence. “Don’t do that”, scolded Mrs. Trundle. You’ll dent it. “What we must do is send for the Labradors.” When the dogs, George, Wheat and Esme heard about the ice cream they rushed to help. Already Esme had eaten a lawnfull of ice cream and George was busy trying to lick out a milk bottle which had been put out for the milk man. Wheat was the first to come up with a good idea and Esme and George both wished they’d thought of it first. Wheat ran to Mr. Trundle, wagging her feathery tail (she was a big golden Retriever) and barking. Mr. Trundle didn’t understand Woofle, a kind of dogs’ language so was wondering what she wanted. He gave her a biscuit at first but then she ran to the cornet and stuck her tongue into the bell. At first it only went a little way in but then as her tongue warmed the ice cream she found she could get it further and further in until it went all the way down to the deepest and narrowest part of the bell. I bet you can guess what happened – Yes, her tongue got stuck. She yelped, snorted, woofed, waggled her body, banged the cornet on a tree and whined. Finally, George, Esme, Mr. Trundle and Mrs. Trundle all gave a big pull rather like you do in a fabulous game of tug-of-war and eventually her tongue popped out and all the Ice cream was gone. Mr. Trundle gave a great big blow on his cornet but because he was so thrilled to have it working again he forgot to wash it. Everyone was showered with dog’s spittle and Mrs. Trundle snatched it off him and washed it out. Then, of course, the inside was all sticky from lemonade which you may remember is coming out of the taps instead of water. “My turn, my turn”! Shouted George as he licked out the cornet again but the lemonade wasn’t half as much fun as the ice cream would have been.

Next day the man on his water board bailed out all the lemonade from the river. Some kestrels flew down, together with an enormous Wagpie – A cross between a Labrador and a bird, and drank all the water or rather lemonade until the Thames was empty. Then everyone in Toestampton and Chutney were told to put out their buckets and mugs, and anything they could find in order to catch the rain water and take it back to the Thames. Everyone hoped it would rain water and not ice cream again. Nobody thought that the Thames would fill up on its own when it rained again. Mr. Trundle put out his pork pie hat which got soggy and the pastry crumbled and the meat and jelly bits were soaked. Eventually Wheat ate the soggy mess, feeling it was her just reward for rescuing his cornet.

It didn’t rain ice cream that night but nobody will forget the day Mr. Trundle’s musical cornet became an ice cream cornet and Wheat will not forget the taste of Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat. For a while he wore a steak and kidney pie hat and loved it when the weather got hot and the gravy trickled into his long, long beard. Just like an adder he flicked out his tongue and licked it all in. The Labradors wished they could jump high enough to have a lick too but gravity kept pulling them down to the ground again. His wife said that kissing him was like having another meal but thought that some day she ought to get him a new pork pie hat as bad meat can poison you and make you poorly. Some time I’ll tell you how he got a new pork pie hat but not now.

(the end).

ARE YOU WITH ME?

2008-11-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

How many of you agree with me when it comes to spouting platitudes? Do you think as I do that sometimes there is a time and a need for silence or just a comforting squeeze of the hand or a hug in place of empty trite phrases which, like insects, fly round and round and get trapped and can’t leave and just seem to stay with you, bothering you most when you have nobody with you or in the darkness of the night when there may be nobody near.

If you really want to irritate me beyond measure, all you have to do after I’ve truthfully answered the question: “How are you”? With: “Well actually something horrible happened the other day and I’m worried about it”, is for you to then say: “Be positive. It won’t be as bad as that. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, etc. It isn’t that I don’t think we should be positive and anyway someone in my position has no choice if they want to function properly and manage their lives with as little help as possible but the fact is unless you have foresight and are a clairvoyant neither you nor I know whether something will be fine or we will be fine or it’ll be okay.

There is a marked difference between facing a situation with courage (being positive means being prepared to face it at all) and confusing positive thinking which will determine whether you face the situation or walk away from it if you can, with the factors often beyond your control which will determine the outcome of the situation. For example, you need to be positive when it comes to going for a job interview or deciding to take a driving course or getting on a plane to go off on holiday. If you just sit at home and say: “I won’t go in case the plane crashes” or “I won’t go for that job since someone else is bound to get it” that will mean you’re being hampered by negative thoughts and are giving up before you start. However, your positive attitude will not stop someone else actually getting the job if the potential employer chooses not to take you on and certainly it won’t prevent the air disaster you most fear if it’s meant to happen which is why, when you talk about your fears people should listen, say the right words which are: “Yes I know what you mean. The chances are that the plane probably won’t crash and you’ll have a safe journey but should the worst happen, hopefully you’ll not suffer for more than a second and you may regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t go and equally you could be killed crossing the road so that’s what you have to weigh up but it’s natural that you should feel like that since flying isn’t something you do every day is it. Have you ever flown before? If not this is why you’re frightened. It’s the unknown which is worrying you. When you come back with the photos of your trip you’ll really feel you have achieved something”. The stupid and trite phrase: “Be positive” is another way of telling the person that: “Look here! I have my own problems. Yours are trite and silly. Thousands of people fly every day. Go and bore the pants off someone else why don’t you”?

I find this phrase particularly offensive when it comes to illness and disability. I’ve heard of people with cancer being told to: “Fight the disease and be positive and you’ll beat it”. Of course they have to go into their treatment programme with the hope that it will work otherwise why bother? However the implication is that if it doesn’t they haven’t been positive enough or fought as hard as they could so the disease won. This is arrant offensive and hurtful nonsense. Nobody wants serious disability or disease but they’re facts of life which at some point and for all of us are inescapable as is death itself. What people need is for someone to sit down and listen to them express their fears that they may die or be in extreme discomfort and their anger that they may never see their loved-ones achieve what they want or that they in fact won’t do all they intended to do.

My home help soon has to go into hospital for a fairly serious operation (thankfully not for cancer) and she confided to me that she is frightened in case she dies under the anaesthetic or is made worse as a result of something going wrong. She knows why I am blind. Did I say to her: “Come on now S. Be positive. You’ll be fine. You’ll be leaping around like a two-year-old in no time”? No I did not. Instead I said: “Yes I know what you mean. Do you get most scared and anxious during the night? I bet you do. Well I can’t tell you that things will be fine because neither you or I know what the future holds and just because I’ve had the same operation it doesn’t mean you’ll be fine but then again it doesn’t mean you won’t either. The chances are that you will be because they have done loads of these before and do loads every day. If things do go wrong and you’re in worse health afterwards then somehow you will learn to cope because somehow you will find the courage to and the necessity of coping will make you do so. You’ve known me for a long time and seen how I cope and I’m no better than you are. Like me you are ordinary and human and you will find that participation is always better than anticipation and soon it’ll all be over. Whatever the outcome, I will be thinking of you and I shall do my best to find out how you are and I’ll miss you while you’re away”.

Contrast that with the stupid response I got the other week when someone who was evicted from my block of flats for bringing unsavoury people onto the premises, including drug users and for causing disturbance to others and breaking his tenancy agreement. I shouted at him and his mates for making a load of noise late at night and reported the fact that some of his pals were supposedly wanted by the police to the appropriate authorities in case he was sheltering them and putting the rest of us in danger. As a result I received a nasty letter when he left, written under a false name. It could have been from one of four people and I was very shaken by it. It blamed me for being the cause of his troubles though he’d cooked his goose long before I helped turn up the temperature of the oven, and when I mentioned it to someone, explaining why I felt so upset the day I got it, the reply was: “You shouldn’t let these things worry you. For the sake of your health you should not think about them”. Once I found out where the letter originated and who from, which I did because a friend told me he’d changed his name to that put on the letter, once I realised it wasn’t the start of what was to be an orchestrated campaign which would lead to worse, once I realised that this was from a young person as yet too immature to take responsibility for his own actions and to realise they have consequences and understood that he was born and brought up in the “blame” culture which exists in the U.K, whereby everyone seeks to find a scapegoat in order to either sue them or avoid ever having to face the consequences of what they do I laughed like a drain, partly out of relief and partly because there was nothing else to do. What I really needed though was the person I told to say: “Oh dear June, that must have been frightening. Have you got to the bottom of it and do you know who sent it? Has this happened before? Oh well now you know who sent it you’ll be able to put it behind you. I’m glad you felt you could talk to me about it. I hope you don’t have any more of them”.

Had she said that, I would have felt able to open up to her again if the need arose. As it is, when she sees me now and says: “How are you”? I just smile and say: “Okay thanks” and that’s the dangerous bit for if we can’t answer the question: “How are you”? Truthfully, especially to those whose job it is to find out because we’re under their care or because they may be the only friend we have, then vital information regarding problems we have could be missed and our long-term health will suffer, not just because we worry over trifles but because we have nobody to talk to. Even though my home help has a family of her own and work colleagues, my hope is that I made her feel better, not by dismissing her problem with: “Be positive. You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine”, but because I actually took the time to listen to and confront her fears about death and long-term disability and assure her that whatever happened, she would find a way of coping. Most of all I made her feel that she was important to me and that what she felt was important to me and that she is valued by me. I’m no saint. I won’t allow myself to be overloaded by other people’s problems and have been known to politely make my excuses when it all gets too much and leave but if I ask someone how they are, I actually want to know and am prepared to listen while they tell me and if I know I’m in the company of a professional whinger, I don’t ask but just say: “Hullo” and don’t tell them about myself either. Incidentally my home help’s response to my unpleasant letter was: “God June, that must have been frightening”. It was for a while and indeed, yes, S. I will miss you while you’re in hospital because you know what to say and what not to.

A QUICK DEPARTURE.

2008-11-26T21:48:00.002-08:00

All of us have had them haven’t we? The mother-in-law (or father-in-law let’s not be sexist here), who have stayed too long or the talkative blind woman who you have met across your garden fence while you were putting out your washing on Monday and now it’s Friday – Much harder to get rid of. The same talkative blind woman – Me, actually found a sure fire way of ejecting stay-too-longs from my home. No I wasn’t rude, didn’t let off stink bombs or keep pressing the button on my talking watch. I followed her cue in fact and picked up on a ball she threw and ran with it.

A rather well meaning but tiresome lady from some charity or other, hell bent on doing good decided to nobble me and talk to me about the wonderful ways of my latest hairy acquisition, Esme.

“What a wonderful animal she is! Tell me does she help you round the house”?

By now her questions like:

“Who dresses you”?

“How do you find your mouth with your cutlery”?

That came after the one:

“Do you eat with your fingers”?

Plus lots of other silly things like that was a question too far. So I enthusiastically said:

“Oh yes indeed she does. She’s great at the washing up. A quick burst of fairy on her tongue and she gets the non-stick saucepans clean in no time – Much better than a brillow pad! You should see her with the roasting tin!”

A silence as long as the mall followed after which she said:

“Oh I see”.

She’d just drank a cup of tea you understand. With my sweetest manners and biggest smile I offered her another one and she rapidly declined while sprinting to the door, handbag in hand, all of a fluster and she bade me farewell, foregoing a final pat of the darling old Labrador and was gone, never to return. As for me, I still have to do the washing up but don’t tell her will you!

A RIGHT LITTLE POSER.

2008-11-26T21:48:00.001-08:00

I once went on holiday with a group of people from a church. Of course at my side was my ever faithful, opportunist Retriever guide dog Wheat. She was well used to being photographed because I’d done speaking for guide dogs.

We once went to a pub where we received a cheque from a group of railway workers who’d collected for Guide Dogs. However that’s a story for another day. Wheat saw this family with their camera while she was lying next to me on the sand. Suddenly and unexpectedly she jumped up in the air as if all the hounds of hell were in hot pursuit, ran away from me and ensconced herself with this family. There was I shouting:

“Wheat! Wheat! Come back here at once”,

totally the wrong phrase to use but my panic had made me forget my training so thoroughly given at the Guide Dog Training centre. The curate’s wife said:

“Don’t worry! She’s spotted a camera and is sitting among the people waiting to have her photo taken with them”.

Feeling left out but more importantly wanting to be with my dog, I staggered to my feet and endeavoured to find my way to my errant dog’s side only to be told by the family when I suggested I hold her lead:

“Oh no dear it’s all right. We’ll just have the dog if you don’t mind”.

Knowing my place I flopped down dejectedly on the sand thinking:

“Oh well I can’t be as good looking as I thought I was”!

Eventually she came back after posing for the camera, flopped down on the sand beside me, sighed and wagged her silly old tail. You may be the one whose photograph album she’s in. If you are let me tell you I’ve not forgotten you. Wheat died in 1998, having retired early because when I moved I couldn’t take her with me, and let me tell you something else too, if I become famous as a writer you’ll be sorry you didn’t have the other half of the dynamic duo in your photo album. Never mind! I bear no ill will to you and may give you my autograph and a copy of my first book.

TOWER OF BRICKS.

2008-11-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

I sat on the floor with you,

Little open hearted boy of just gone two,

Your innocent laughter bringing unalloyed joy

To one who wondered just what toy

You were playing with or what it was that made you chuckle so

I knew that, given time, I’d know.

You had constructed for yourself a tower made out of bricks

My fingers, creeping along the carpet, just like walking match sticks until they found the tower’s base

Your little face

What did it say? Did you smile or did you frown

As I knocked your little tower of bricks down

And heard them scatter as they created their noise

Destroying the handiwork of little boys

Or at least one

You laughed until I almost cried with laughter too

Then, catching my breath I said to you

“Come on! Build me the tower again”

I intended to knock it down once more since doing so had caused you little pain

But rather made us laugh.

Patiently you went to work once more,

In your lovely little eyes was the tower a castle?

A sky scraper with gleaming windows

And a golden door?

Did it house soldiers whose battles were bloody and long

Or was it a refuge for the weak who are no longer strong?

On the command “ready”!

My unerring hands went into action a second time

And in a moment sublime

And with a shout of:

“Down you go”!

I destroyed the army’s hide out

Or perhaps the castle

Or the refuge from the foe,

And just as I predicted we laughed again as I urged you to rebuild,

You, so infantile and yet so skilled

At building your construction and making me a thing

Which I could nock down until our laughter

Made the rafters of the house you lived in sing.

This image – This memory

Of a little boy and tower I could not see

Stays in my mind where it has been for years.

You – Little nephew of a now dead friend,

Is frozen in time like a picture taken by a camera’s lens,

Now you are grown I hear and driving a car

Somewhere in Liverpool

That’s where you are

And I am probably long forgotten as you were much too young to know

How happy you made me and that I love children so.

My tower of bricks has taken long to grow.

It has to withstand the gales, the rain and snow.

Sometimes people come up to its windows, have a peep

At the lone occupant within who, company with the solitude must keep.

People throw “pebble words” at the windows

And try to break the glass

Or simply go to their own towers of constructed thought, they hurry with their eyes closed as they pass.

Only by not reaching out with their hands causes my tower to fall,

Their hands of indifference destroys and damages it all

And the rubble lands on my soul and I do not laugh

As the scars that form cut my soul in half.

I wave at their towers’ windows but know the battle’s lost

When they think it not worthwhile to wave back at my glass of frost which fills up my window pane,

They think my tower will fall on them

Overwhelming them with rubble,

Swamping them or

Worse still

Forcing them to rebuild their towers again,

And I wonder, were I to meet the man I once knew as a little boy

Would you “arms length” me?

Or laugh with me over something we had in common

Thereby once more giving me that rare,

That spare,

That not often felt but longed for unalloyed joy?

“TAR VERY MUCH”.

2008-11-23T19:37:00.002-08:00

I think out of all my guide dogs I had the most adventurous time with Wheat. Silly great lump she was but very ladylike. She had a few disgusting habits such as licking out ashtrays (obviously a dog of vice what with drinking and all) and eating tissues. Anyway one day we were coming home from somewhere or other – Probably shopping – And I smelled the gorgeously addictive smell of tar. There are others – Jays Fluid, Creosote and some others which I could go on sniffing but I’ll spare you the list which doesn’t include glue.

We reached the road and on the command: “Forward” she gaily walked me across the road. A friendly voice of a man from not too far distant a country said:

“Hey Missus! Your dog’s just walked you t’rough a load o’ tar. Well actually she spared you and walked t’rough it herself. Isn’t that grand now, how she didn’t let you get it on your shoes”?

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me”,

I said to him.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me and stop us”?

“Ah well now you see, I wanted to see what she would do, her being a blind dog and all that”!

I swear if he’d been digging a hole instead of tarring the road I’d have shoved him and his shovel right down it.

My poor dog walked home in that state, and tar burns. When we got home I had to ring the vet to see what I had to do to get it off. He told me, washing up liquid and Margarine would do it. First I put the liquid into a bowl of water, then dipped her paws into it and rubbed margarine into them and back to the bucket to wash it off. Naturally I had to tie her up outside so I could do it properly without messing up the carpets but I got every bit off, even from under her nails.

I showed her feet to a passer-by afterwards who said in true Bruce Forsyth fashion (it was him wasn’t it)

“Didn’t she do well”? Of course he was talking to the dog whose feet he was inspecting. How the poor animal worked in that state so we could get home I’ll never know but she did. Both of us had a rest day next day as I had such a bad back after all that bending that I couldn’t go out. Oh and by the way, I had dry bread for tea. No margarine had I?

TEA FOR TWO

2008-11-23T19:37:00.001-08:00

Don’t you just dread having the workmen in? All that noise and mess and the constant making of “builder’s tea”. Sometimes though the whole thing is taken out of your hands – Both the tea and the having to have the workmen in.

Such was the case when my radiators needed to be replaced. I used to have those big old fashioned things such as the one that our milk was warmed on before Maggie snatched it off the poor little school children long after I’d grown up. Now I have new rads with slats in the top. The workmen came round to instal them or am I getting mixed up! Must be Junile dementia as opposed to senile dementia! No I rather think it was when new windows were fitted to keep out the draft – No hope with an ever-wagging tail of an ever exuberant Labrador. Anyway back to these windows I think it was. I offered the workmen a cup of tea each of course and did so without my usual rambling story about how the dog washes up. Of course they accepted my offer, together with the instructions for the concocting of this disgusting brew – Hardly any milk and a teabag left in for about a century! Then one of them said:

“Tell me luv! How’dya know when it’s brewed”?

“Have you never heard of Braille teabags”?

“Nah! How’d they work then”?

“Oh well the little dots jump about till they can’t stand the heat then they rise to the surface and clog up the spout of the pot or float on the water in a mug”.

I was expecting them to fall for it and one did say:

“Isn’t that neat”?

His mate who obviously didn’t come down with the last shower said:

“You’re ‘avin’ us on! If they blocked up the spout how’dya manage to pour it out”?

I was going to tell them I’d got an ice pick in a cupboard but instead handed them their tea saying:

“You won that one mate”,

then told them what I’d said about the dog doing the washing up. Actually it’d have been quicker to tell them she barks when it’s brewed. Now why didn’t I think of that.

TOWER OF BRICKS.

2008-11-18T08:17:00.001-08:00

A DANGEROUS SLIPPERY SLOPE.

2008-11-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

Recently Mary Warnock, an influential person in the U.K, suggested that it may be a good idea for those with Alzheimer’s disease to be allowed to be able to terminate their lives in order to prevent them from becoming a burden to family and friends and possibly even to themselves.

This rang big alarm bells with me since I have three maxims which I hold to: “What you do you’ve always done”, “What you’ve done you’ll do again” and “It’s not where something starts but where it ends”. Of course in this case the first two maxims don’t apply since we all only die once but the third most definitely does. Living as I do, where I do, I know how distressing any of the dementias can be and have witnessed my dearest friends succumbing to this illness and it’s both frightening and harrowing for them and very distressing for their families and friends to watch but it’s the categorisation of people as burdens which worries me and the fact that they are not seen as productive members of society and should therefore be done away with which fills me with horror.

A person unaware of my capabilities could well, if in a position of power, one day decide that I too should be done away with on the grounds that I am not working in the traditional sense of the word. You only have to think of the word “invalid” used until recently to describe a worthless bus ticket or passport as I’ve said before to get my point. Also if a publisher ever stumbles across my work and I earn good money at it I most certainly will be financially contributing to the society I’ve “taken from” for so long and yet, if Warnock and her ilk had their way I may have been put to death long before I could have achieved this. Of course she’s not suggesting that blind people be exterminated – For this is what her wrong-headed proposal amounts to for those with Alzheimer’s disease but when a child puts a tray on the stairs and uses it as a slide he or she little thinks that a broken leg may well be the result of their innocent and well intentioned action for indeed completely unforeseen consequences will and do result from small beginnings and now with an over populated world and the credit crunch gripping the world there’ll be less room for sentiment than ever and many sinister actions could result from seemingly innocent actions and you can take it from me, not all families comprise sweet and loving members who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Gran’s fortune or the valuables in her jewel box and some would definitely not pass up a chance to do away with her first under the guise of relieving her suffering.

Of course there are genuinely caring people who care deeply for their family members and friends who they see falling prey to a cruel and terrifying disease and it’s easy for me as someone with all her marbles to talk like this and maybe I’d feel differently were I to be the sufferer from this disease and you may conclude that I’m talking nonsense. What I do know for sure, as a result of being blind, is that there are those who do not think it would be worth living thus but who have changed their minds once it happens to them; That they have found as I do, some joy in living and that it’s not up to some well educated woman with a plumb in her mouth to decide the fate of people who she decides to label as “burdens”. If we cheapen the concept of life in this way we will become ever more brutalised and like hardly civilised savages. Whether you’re religious or, like me, someone who no longer believes in a loving god but just about manages to swallow the concept of an indifferent creator, life is not ours to play with like this. We’re arrogant and greedy enough, thinking ourselves owners rather than caretakers of this planet and have no right to even consider doing away with certain groups of people on the grounds that they are burdensome and an inconvenience. If we do, remember that when it’s our turn to be trashed and eliminated in this way there’ll be nobody left to defend us. Don’t believe me? Well just think of the time when you first said your first swear word, probably while at school. Now think how mild and inoffensive that word sounds to you now and how in primary school playgrounds the F word is common parlance these days. You see it’s not where something starts but where it ends which should worry you, me and everyone with the power to think. No Mary Warnock! A thousand times know! If you want to do away with yourself then go right ahead, it’s your life but I do not want you deciding that other people’s lives are so expendable just because you are scared of becoming demented because you’re old now. If you do, disabled people in all categories will become a threatened species and I’m here to tell you that if that ever were to become so, the world would be a poorer and less civilised place for some of the gentlest people I’ve ever known have been found by me residing in the disabled community. I’m no sentimentalist for there too reside some of the rudest, feistiest, ignorant and objectionable people – Just like everyone else. This planet is for all of us from the moment we’re born to the moment we die having lived out our allotted life span, only to be ended by us should we want to but certainly not as a result of some well-to-do old duck from the House of Lords.

THE ADVENTURES OF TUMBLY, GRUMBLY AND RUMBLY.

2008-11-13T18:08:00.000-08:00

Tumbly was always falling down, grumbly was always wearing a frown and rumbly was always ever so hungry.

One day the three friends decided to walk to Mr. Trundle’s shop: “Mr. Trundle’s Carpet Bundles”. They wanted to earn some money so they could buy extra chocolate. At home they were only allowed so much chocolate each since chocolate in large amounts makes your teeth bad and causes you to get fatter and fatter till it’s impossible to go through doorways which means it’s very difficult to leave home or go to new places with narrow doorways. There were so many places the three of them wanted to see but first of all they had to have something to eat which meant earning some money so they could buy food.

Stumbly wanted to walk to Mr. Trundle’s carpet shop but was always falling over his feet so he thought it’d be better to drive but then he remembered his father told him he was too little for that. Grumbly wanted to stay in bed because it was either too hot out, too wet or too cold and Rumbly was too hungry to work yet knew all the same that he must or he’d never get anything to eat. Yesterday he’d seen a Canada goose flying overhead and asked her if she knew where there was food. She just told him to go and find some and flew off in annoyance. Then he asked a crow for a share of what he kept in his beak:

“Caw no”!

The crow replied.

“Go and earn some money and then buy food with it”, he suggested.

Mr. Trundle was whistling as he opened up his shop. It smelt especially nice this morning as it had some brand new carpets in there. Mrs. Trundle had made him trim his beard as, like Tumbly, he’d tripped over it twice. Then she’d told him off for spending too much time counting the spiders which lived in it and threatened to hoover them all out with the vacuum cleaner hose. She’d done this once before when some of them crawled into her long hair at night when they went to bed. How he hated that! Anyway he saw the three little friends outside his window and wondered what they wanted. Eventually they told him they wanted to do some work so they could earn money for food.

“What sort of work”?

He asked them. They told him they could shampoo the carpets or lay them in the hedgehog houses down in the wood. Winter was coming soon and they’d need a good carpet if they were to hibernate in comfort. In the end he told them about a tortoise he knew who needed some carpet for his box. He too was soon to hibernate and needed to have some carpet and since the sweep had come and taken the leaves away and the wind had blown them away as well there was only some carpet of his which the tortoise could have. The three little friends carried the carpet between them. It wasn’t that big but they were small and it felt like a huge load to them. As usual Grumbly moaned about the weight of it, Tumbly fell over it and Rumbly’s stomach made such a loud noise that they all laughed – Even Grumbly did – Which made them almost drop it in the mud.

When the threesome arrived at the tortoise’s box they couldn’t see him at first. They thought that his shell seemed more like a giant stone and almost kicked it away when he peeped out, yawned and asked them what they wanted.

“We’ve brought you some carpet for your box”

They told him. They were looking at his lettuce as they began to fit the new carpet into its new home. They thought he’d be too slow to catch them and planned to run off with his lettuce at the end of their task. He offered them some and one bite told them just how boring it is to eat especially on its own. They longed once more for chocolate and that’s when they decided to go and see if there were any shops open but then they remembered they had no money. As they returned to Mr. Trundle’s shop they saw him sitting on the step outside his shop. He told Mrs. Trundle:

“If those three manage to lay that carpet in Mr. Tortoise’s box before bed time I’ll eat my hat”.

They seemed to spend so much time grumbling, stumbling and rumbling that he couldn’t see how they would be able to get it all done in time for sleep that night. His hat, which was a new pork pie hat which Mrs. Trundle had just bought him, tasted good. The three little friends were horrified to see him eat it and not offer them some especially after all their hard work. He laughed so much at their dismay that they told him they’d never come back again to help him in his shop. It was then that Mrs. Trundle appeared, invited the friends in and gave them some of her “treecle” pudding. They expected some lovely sticky runny treacle but instead ended up with her very own version, made out of trees which grew in her back garden. They told her how they longed for chocolate and then they saw them. Mr. Trundle had chocolate buttons on his shirt and trousers, on his jacket and even on his calculator which he used to add up the prices of his carpets and work out how much change was to be given back to his customers. While Mrs. Trundle was washing up the plates in the kitchen they busily ate them all and ran like the wind all the way home. As they tucked themselves into bed that night, they noticed that Tumbly had run home without falling down, Grumbly was no longer wearing his frown and at last Rumbly’s tummy had stopped its rumbling. As each fell asleep they began to dream of the chocolate buttons they’d stolen and of how nice they tasted – Much nicer than Mr. Trundle’s pork pie hat would have and definitely nicer than Mr. Tortoise’s lettuce!

THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN.

2008-11-11T19:15:00.001-08:00

Holding the photograph in her hand, Louise stood like an ice statue, frozen in time.

“Ring o’ ring o’ roses, a pocketful of posies, a-tishu! A-tishu! We all fall down”.

Louise begged again and again to play the game with her adoring grandparents – Substitutes for her own parents whom she had never known.

“Stop it”!

Her grandmother shouted at last, remembering the time and anxious to get tea ready. Louise ran inside at last, the call of her stomach substituted for the call of her voice to the only people she’d ever known as family, inviting them endlessly to come and play.

“You spoil her John”

His wife remarked when they were alone.

“She’ll have you worn out. You should think of your health”.

“Stop it”!

He mimicked his wife.

“You’re only old once”!

Then he ran after Louise once more, Louise, the little girl who’d held them together after her parents were killed during the Second World War.

Louise’s childhood was carefree and happy. Sometimes her days seemed eternal as she excitedly waited for something special to happen.

“Don’t you just love those big saucer eyes”?

John said to Mary.

“One day those eyes will turn a man’s head”.

Within no time at all Louise had blossomed into a woman who loved travelling and went abroad to study. Her greatest love of all was the Orient. Eastern culture fascinated and captivated her, eastern food was tastier than that with which she was familiar and eastern philosophy she found most interesting of all. To her, east rather than west was best.

“Look at this photo Louise has sent us, John”,

Mary implored him.

“Put the damned thing away! I have no wish to see it. I have no time for them or their culture”.

Turning on his heels he slammed out of the room and Mary wondered if he would start shaking again. The nightmares which had become less frequent, had begun again. They were terrible when he first came home – Them and the tortured screams for mercy. Louise’s visit to Japan had brought it all back to him and the mention of it in her letters distressed him beyond endurance. Vivid memories of the trenches, the blood and the corpses and the smell – The terrible indescribable smell had all surfaced once again with such ease and such clarity. His memories of Ypres which had lain dormant for so long and which at first made him wish he’d gone too, were now crowding his mind and crying out for attention. The faces of his friends who had never come home as he had done. She couldn’t get one word out of him and when she did eventually hear his voice again it was only to repeat what she had heard so many times before:

“All those people on the Somme and at Ypres and Paschendaele! The senseless slaughter and waste of human life and for what”?

Then after an interminable silence during which his old eyes filled with tears:

“Our boy lost in the ’39 war. The senseless cruelty of the Jerries and the Japs Then you want to show me a photograph of that bloody country! I’d just as soon be blind than look at their damned country. I hate them! Every last one of them”.

Mary’s attempts to calm him were futile so she quietly took the photograph away and went to bed.

Fugi stared at her with rapt attention. He thought of her as pretty. They’d met during a visit Louise had made as she completed an assignment as part of her journalistic career. His favourite phrase was:

“I have little engrish”, the l being pronounced like an r. Fugi had longed to know more about the west which fascinated him as much as the east did Louise. He wondered if he would ever see it and whether they would become more than the nodding and smiling acquaintances they already were. Then as the weeks turned into months, Louise found herself helping him with his English and began talking about herself, saying she had been orphaned but not telling him why. She told him of her grandparents and then began to realise that things would become very difficult were she to fall in love with him, because of her grandfather’s hatred for the Japanese. She also knew though that in order for there to be peace in the world, hatred like this must be overcome and it had not been her battle or her past so she knew somehow that she had to make him see that in order to have a happy future he must come to terms with his.

A year to the day after they’d first met, they found themselves standing outside her grandparents’ front door. Nervously Louise tapped, rather like the child of long ago who waited impatiently for dawn on Christmas morning and could hold her excitement in no longer so risked waking her grandparents so she could open her presents and have breakfast.

“John’s down at the allotment”,

Mary said.

“You know what he is like about his vegetables”.

Louise sat, paused for flight like a bird who half expected a cat to appear. She knew her grandfather’s feelings and wondered at the wisdom of this visit but her dear wise grandmother had been insistent and begged her to come home in order that he may lay his ghosts to rest before he died. Mary knew that, her time, in particular, was short. Diagnosed with cancer, she knew that John was likely to be alone after her death unless he could reconcile himself to Louise’s choice for a marriage partner. She also knew that Louise, like him, was stubborn and much more likely to go through with marrying Fugi if he set his face against him. Ever the gentleman, John received his visitor with a dignity which cost him dear. He’d shouted at Mary before their arrival, telling her she’d no right to ask him here without his consent and blaming her for violating their home. Wise and thoughtful Mary also realised that, with both of her grandparents dead, Louise also would be alone if she didn’t find someone to love her and she realised too that the war was now so very long ago. However, she also knew that while she’d been part of it she hadn’t been involved in it in the same way as John whose wounds still hurt. He still had shrapnel in his body and visions in his head that wouldn’t go. Mary also realised that to hate a new generation of people for that which their parents and grandparents had done would be unfair and futile and may indeed lead to further wars. She realised that under the skin all our blood is red, that people have the same needs and that bigotry and prejudice are the children of ignorance and fear and that to overcome fear you have to meet and talk with those you do not know, thereby turning strangers into friends no matter what religion or creed you are and no matter what colour too. She knew too that the Christian message of forgiveness had to start in each individual’s heart and spread out like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond so that links can be forged and that if this is not done soon we will ultimately bring about our own destruction. This then was her quest, to bring about a sea change in her little pond before she died and reconcile the past to the present by making John see that the only way for him to heal was for him to forgive though realising also that he could never forget. Many would call her a silly old woman but even silly old women are entitled to their dreams or at least that’s what she told herself as she padded off towards the kitchen to make the tea.

Six months later Mary died. Fugi and Louise parted as he made his decision to fly home. He realised that his presence distressed the old man especially now his wife of sixty-five years had died. Louise made the most heartbreaking decision of her life – To let her loved-one go so as to stay and look after her grandfather. She felt the empty days filling up with a dull sense of duty but knew that she owed everything to this old man and her now dead grandmother whose unselfish love had made her who she was. Then the miracle happened.

John, now in his nineties, stood ramrod straight at the Cenotaph, decked out in all his medals and looking handsome even on two sticks, so he could be there to remember all those comrades lost so very long ago. Like millions, they observed the two minutes silence and heard “The Last Post” being played and Louise stood proudly at his side, gently tucking a hand underneath his arm in case he fell. Nobody noticed him at first – The quiet young man from Japan who crept up to John’s other side and in unison said in flawless English:

“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.

With head bowed, he stood in silent homage and paid tribute to those who gave their lives for the freedom we now take so much for granted. This young man, for whom war had thankfully not been a reality, had flown thousands of miles so that he could share this moment not only with the one he loved and couldn’t forget but so he could be with the old man who had given and lost so much. It was at the sound of his voice that Louise looked up but it was John who’d seen him first.

“You’d best come home with us”,

He said when the service was over and he’d chatted to the few friends who were left. This time though he was smiling and his medals were glinting in the autumn sunshine.

At Louise’s wedding he looked as proud as ever and was sorry Mary had not lived to see it, thinking how proud she’d be of “their little girl”. He was also pleased that now Louise would have someone to be with when he too finally died but kept this thought to himself. Louise had just got back to Japan after sorting out her grandfather’s affairs. He had lived long enough to see just one of his great grandchildren be born and was teaching her some colours and nursery rhymes and watching her take her first steps when peacefully he died at home in his sleep. Louise was holding up the photograph of both her grandparents when young and thinking just how handsome and lovely they both were. She hardly heard Fugi creep up behind her and he startled her as he suddenly spoke:

“Ah! You look at John and Marly! We must never forget! We must never, never forget”.

Then, with a drink in each of their hands, they silently looked out at their children playing in the garden and said, in unison as on that other Remembrance Day so long ago and as we will on all the ones to come:

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them”.

THE TWO WORDS WHICH MADE THE DIFFERENCE.

2008-11-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve just listened to a programme on forgiveness, where it comes from, what happens when it can’t be granted or achieved and what it means to those who can do so and, as with all such programmes, I found it interesting and moving especially since I have had to think about this many times during my own life.

Of course there is a difference between a wanton act of violence perpetrated against another or group of others by one or more individuals who are either fanatics or in gangs, and the accidental alteration made in someone’s life by someone trying to save it but knowing also that they can’t do so without damaging it.

Those of you who have read this blog will know that I am blind but not why. The reason is simple. I was born so premature – Ten weeks in fact – That I weighed no more than a bag of sugar looked like a skinned rabbit and had under developed lungs which meant I spent a considerable amount of time in an incubator, breathing high levels of oxygen designed to help me breathe more easily. This oxygen damaged my eyes to an irreparable extent by making the retinas become liked ridged cardboard rather like that found in chocolate boxes, thereby forcing them to detach. Probably the optic nerves were damaged or destroyed too as they may well have been burned. This practice was started in 1946 by a doctor who knew the consequences of the procedure but still it was done in order to save the lives of those involved and as a consequence many children born then and in the 1950’s and beyond were blinded thus. I have always known this is the cause – Even to the point where I was told that my Nan’s solicitor told her that my mother should sue for compensation which she refused to do for reasons of her own which I suspect I know but it’s not my place to say and anyway now she’s dead so what point would it serve? In my teens and beyond I bore a good deal of ill will and resentment both against her for not doing so since being blind is expensive since at least in the U.K help has to be paid for and paying someone else to drive me where I can’t easily go without riding in a car is ridiculously so. I was also angry that the plight of the Thalidomide victims was recognised while loads of people blinded as I was largely go unmentioned and uncompensated either financially or by being able to talk about what happened to us and even the medical profession prefer to say we were born blind or that it was because our eyes were under developed too which caused it despite their admission at the time that it was indeed the high oxygen levels that were to blame.

I never openly voiced my resentment but kept it to myself till some idiot said something like:

“Still it could be worse”

Or some medic said:

“Still we saved your life”.

Then I’d let fly at them, either asking them if they’d like to swap places or reeling off a stream of difficulties with all the vehemence I could muster. I realised that I’d become epileptic too as a result of the damage done by the oxygen although with medication designed to control the fits, taken on a daily basis, you could say I’m cured of it and now hardly know I have it.

What really angered me most was the dismissive way in which I was dealt with by doctors who asked the cause of my blindness and the casual way it was treated, rather as if they’d cut off my big toenail while trying to get a splinter out of my foot. They talked as if saving life was all, never mind whether that life was altered; career choices limited; even I believe at least in my case eligibility for marriage affected because as a woman I haven’t been seen as the ideal choice for a sighted man who hopes for a good mother for his children and a marriage partner or live-in partner who will share his life on equal terms. Then one day things changed. No my mother didn’t sue for compensation before she died. No I didn’t suddenly wake up and realise that there were thousands or maybe millions worse off because I already knew that since I’d been to school with some and heard about the others every time I didn’t want to eat my greens.

“Children in Africa or India would be glad of that”,

Would be the uttered statement before I was forced to comply by having them forced to the back of my throat on a fork in the blind school I attended, while my nose was being held. Instead, at the age of thirty-nine I moved to where I live now and met my present doctor.

“Why are you blind”?

He asked before my medical notes reached him from my former address.

“Here we go again”!

I thought and in one breath told him why, together with:

“Yes I know you (the medical profession that is) saved my life and yes I know it could have been worse since I could have been severely brain damaged. Yes I know all about it but ‘’’’’’”.

Gently he took hold of my hand and said the two words that maybe I was longing to hear, together with a few more:

“I’m sorry. That should never have happened”,

Uttered in a soft voice full of compassion and kindness which stopped me in my tracks.

I felt all the resentment and bitterness I’d often felt fall away. It dropped to the ground like a skirt taken off at the end of the day. I realised then that: “Sorry” was all I wanted; together with an acknowledgement that it wasn’t because I had under developed eyes or if I had then that wasn’t the sole reason for the problem. Many’s the time Nan told me about my Mum’s cousin who was wrapped in cotton wool and kept in the hearth in a shoe box and he’d been premature. They rubbed him in olive oil and he grew up strong and sighted. This lovely man whom I still see today as a patient allowed me to heal by acknowledging that this was an act of accidental and damaging destruction to a precious part of my body which most people regard as necessary in order to live even a half decent life. He accepted on behalf of the medical profession that something which shouldn’t have happened did especially since it was known about when it was being done. In fact the story goes that one nurse turned the oxygen levels down and another turned them up, thinking I wasn’t getting enough.

I could probably stand before the people who actually administered that oxygen without feeling all the bitterness and anger I used to feel towards them. There have been times when I could cheerfully have strangled them and would definitely have called them all the names I could think of if I’d met them but thanks to my doctor’s words the scab has healed over the wound on my psyche and I no longer pick at it. The fact that they didn’t mean to blind me meant nothing to me. I knew they knew that oxygen at those high levels did blind children because when Nan took me to a famous eye hospital they told her there was nothing they could do and why and what the cause was. Since there has been a documentary about it which is how I know the procedure began in 1946.

I’m forced to think from time to time about what would have happened had I not heard those words from my doctor and if I’d carried on feeling the deep hurt and anger I did feel. The only conclusion I can come to is that I’d have gone on causing further damage to myself – Not outwardly but inwardly. I wouldn’t have become sighted by bearing that resentment and it’s unlikely I’ll ever meet the people responsible so they’ll never know how I felt or the effect blindness has had on me. What I do know is that I am closer to my doctor as a result and trust him implicitly. I told him he’s the best doctor I’ve ever had and in his turn but on separate occasions he tells me he admires me for my courage, that he is a fan of mine and only last week he said:

“You’re a good lass”

Because I said:

“No”

To the questions:

“Do you smoke”?

And

“Do you drink”?

I waited for the sting in the tail as I left and he entreated me not to take it the wrong way but advised that I lose four pounds. I laughed and told him it’ll be more likely when I get my dog back.

I know now that another person’s acknowledgement of your hurt and what’s caused it, especially if they are connected with what has caused it, is probably vital in your struggle to forgive them. I also know that, as said before, there’s a difference between deliberate acts of malevolence and accidental harm but the pain from knowing you or yours have been injured, together with the consequences of each particular injury are no less traumatic or devastating for the victims. I also know that unresolved resentment, bitterness and anger is destructive and that in order to cope successfully with things as they are I have to make the most of what is left of an altered life. Yes there are days when I long to lay down the unrelenting burden of blindness and self-pity sticks its foot out for me to trip over into a slough of despond but I know too that only my arms can pull me out again when I fall in. What my doctor can never know is how the two little words:

“I’m sorry”

helped me also to lose the leaden weight of the anger, hatred, bitterness and resentment that threatened to anchor me there. Maybe he can come up with two words which will magically rid me of the four pounds he was on about! Who knows?

THE PROMISE OF SPRING.

2008-11-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

I was startled by the sound of the bell even though I was expecting it to ring. I opened the door to Gordon, the man I’d recently talked to on the phone. This was his first visit. He was a mobility instructor. He had come to widen my world for I am blind and he was going to teach me the way round my area so I could go out alone. We shook hands. Like his voice his hands were warm and on letting go of mine he swiftly returned me to my blind “island” state. I offered him coffee which he accepted and I made it with nervous fingers – Two spoonfuls in each cup and four on the tray on which they stood. His help was unobtrusively given and gratefully accepted. Gordon was a good listener but then that’s essential in his work. Living on my own as I do I tend to talk a lot. His manner was easy and when we went out so he could assess how good I was at using my cane and what local knowledge I had, for the first time in many years with one of these mobility instructors, I felt easy too

“I think you did really well today. We don’t normally go out on our first visits to a client as you know but you were right to assure me you would be fine.”, he said when we returned home. “I’ll come again next week and we’ll progress from there”. Suddenly he was gone and I was left alone to contemplate the day’s events. Although I was looking forward to his visits I was not looking forward to going out alone as I knew I’d have to one day. I knew how the drill was. These people get further and further away from you as confidence and knowledge increase until finally they disappear altogether and only meet up again when you have reached your destination. I had a shock next time he called. There was to be no long chat over coffee like there was last time. We were out working at once but the work was not too difficult. We strolled around a park so I could relearn my cane technique while not having to also cope with traffic. I’d been ill for some years and had lost my guide dog. This meant I had to a large extent become agoraphobic. He told me something about himself – His taste in food, his hobbies and his bachellor existence. Privately I wondered why a nice guy like this wasn’t married but would never have voiced these thoughts. In turn I told him how nice it was to speak to someone who treated me normally and not like some moron or freak, how nice it was to be with someone who wasn’t constantly on the watch to see that they didn’t use words like “look” and “see” and how good it is to talk to someone who isn’t making an effort to talk to me. I started to think about him during his absence but that I most certainly did not tell him. The work progressed well. I was just as interested in practising my cane technique to please Gordon as I was for the obvious benefits it would have for myself. I go red even when I’m alone when I think though how sometimes I deliberately got a section of the route wrong so I would have to take his arm as he took me back to its start so I could redo it properly. It’s funny what a solitary life coupled with very little human contact will make people do – Well it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Then I received this phone call. My twin brother, Daniel was dead. My neighbours spouted the usual platitudes so I gave up talking to them about him especially after his funeral when life was supposed to return to normal. “At least you have your memories”. Couldn’t they see it was my memories which were hurting me? Anyway I wanted what I’ve always wanted and what most people have – Support for the future and not just memories of a shared past. When Gordon came I burst into tears. He held me and told me he didn’t expect me to go out that day and that like the first day we met we could once more have coffee. This man had indeed widened my world. He had helped me to like using my up-to-then hated white cane which I saw as the ultimate badge of blindness and which I associated with power-crazed people who had always told me my mobility was poor. He didn’t automatically assume that I had poor mobility as many do because of the eye condition from which I suffer which supposedly pre-disposes one to poor mobility. For all these reasons I found myself leaning on him more and more and eventually suggested that he might like to drop in for coffee outside our scheduled lesson times. I was asking him in essence to become my friend and confidante. I don’t know who of us was the more embarrassed. I could feel the tension in the air as he swiftly changed the subject to why it was that I didn’t go on holiday to places where blind people go or why I don’t belong to blind clubs. I wearily told him as I have so many others that I have tried all my life to escape from the small and narrow world of those similarly affected and to cut the ties that bind me to the rest of the blind with whom after all there is only blindness which binds us all together. Only with other friends of the same intelligence and shared interests do I have anything in common, regardless of whether they can see. I told him how artificial and unnatural it is to keep meeting up with old school friends and enemies alike when you can’t get away from the goldfish bowl. I said how once the labels are applied they’re impossible to remove whether they are the ones applied by the sighted or other blind people and then in sheer desperation I said: “Do you go away with those of your choice? Your work colleagues or people named Gordon”? I wondered why even this enlightened man could not see that the same standards should pertain to me as to everyone else. I tightly held on to his fingers as he tried to extricate himself from my grip as he was leaving.

The phone call came soon after that. By now I had almost completed my work programme so his visits were becoming less frequent. A woman called Jean told me that she was to take over from Gordon as he had an increased work load. “But he still comes to Portsmouth. I know he does. He sees Stella, my friend”, I protested. Then I went on about how he sees Laurie as well – Obviously not understanding or not wanting to – The implications of what was being said to me. I rang him up at a later date to ask why the transfer had happened. I was angry and he said in his turn: “This is very difficult for me Heather. I really do sympathise with your plight and actually can’t understand why you haven’t got more friends and why things have gone so terribly wrong for you but there’s nothing more I can do I’m sorry”. He was telling me that our relationship – Professional though it was – Had now come to an end and that even if it were to continue it could not extend beyond its professional capacity where it must always remain. I felt sorry too – Not least of all for him as well as myself who now, because of my feelings for him and because of my loneliness due to the loss of Daniel, longed for the relationship to be something more than it could be. He had to be naturally warm and friendly to his clients in order to instill confidence and trust and I had misread those signals and because of that he had to pass the case over to someone else and obviously felt lousy about doing it.

I started writing to him at work and telling him about things. I knew Jean would update him anyway and that there was no need to write as I did but I couldn’t help myself. I knew too that he wouldn’t, couldn’t reply. I continually thought about him and would ask Jean about him who always gave me vague and non-committal answers. She’s nice too. I found myself wondering how many of their clients they’d exchanged when they tried to come close, to cling to them in inappropriate ways. Then I started my usual musings about how it is often easier for blind men who get mothered by “mumsy” types who are after all just looking, like me for someone to care for them and to be cared for in return. I wondered if Gordon and Jean laughed about us behind our backs or thought of their clients as sad lame ducks and whether they were flattered or embarrassed by our misguided feelings.

I’ve made up my mind to stop writing letters to Gordon. I’ve even stopped asking Jean about him too. I think she has interpreted this as a good sign but it’s not. My heart’s still breaking over the loss of Daniel but that’s not all it’s breaking over. It’s breaking over the loss of things I’ve both had and never had – Acceptance as a normal human being, by those who are after all just as flawed albeit in a different way, The chance to make a relationship with someone sighted due to reduced opportunities because of hidden disabilities and the fact that sighted men will never see me as a whole woman – Only a blind woman but more than that it’s breaking with the ever-increasing weight of love which is ungiven and which bitterness is threatening to sour. For me life has been a series of earthquakes and my spirit is becoming crushed beneath the rubble.

I’ve just come back from shopping. Gordon was instructing someone else when we met in the town centre. “You’re getting on really well, Heather”, he said. I thanked him for his comments and walked swiftly away. It’s a year since Daniel’s death and of course Gordon meant that I was getting on well in mobility terms. He couldn’t have meant in any other terms since I’m not getting on very well at all apart from being able to go out alone in safety now. I suppose I can’t or won’t until and unless I can meet anyone to whom I am other than a client and unless I can be cared for in anything except for professional terms. How can I progress till life progresses beyond the conveyor belt caring which is all that professional concern can ever amount to and until I can put my arm through that of another for another reason other than just to see me from one side of the road to another.

As I hurried away I heard Gordon shout after me: “Although it’s only February there’s the promise of spring. Some of the buds are coming out on the trees”. To me and for me God’s promise of the spring has been broken many times and the certainty of the summer is definitely for someone else.

(the end).

THE RAILWAY ADULTS.

2008-11-05T15:01:00.001-08:00

I’ve done a bit of speaking for Guide Dogs over the years – A bit of speaking! Whenever do I only do a bit of speaking? I could outdo Ken Dodd in the “keep you captive while I natter” stakes. People can’t afford to phone me and only come round if they have maternity leave length time off work!

Anyway I once went to this pub to receive this cheque from these magnificent folks who raised money for Guide Dogs. There I was praying that Wheat would be a good girl and not run off with some train driver or guard; Not nick any food and not get drunk while at the same time I was praying that I may have a couple of drinks, shake hands nicely with a guard or a train driver who may say:

“Wanna blind date with me love”?

Neither thing happened which was terribly disappointing so it was home alone with my unpredictable Retriever who of course got all the fuss. Before that sad moment came the time also came to thank the good people for their generosity so I did so in the only way I knew how and the best way for employees of the railway whose unintelligible messages about train delays and cancellations issue forth from their loud speaker systems each day:

“oeoeoeoe I er ioioio haaaaaaaa to for your ooooooooo kind ooooooo osity thank you”!

The whole place was in an uproar! For one, just one, golden moment I stole the show from my dog as these guys laughed at me till they cried. For greater effect I held my nose as I came out with this unintelligible drivel. Far from feeling insulted they took it in good part and then as is everybody’s wont, returned to fussing the dog as the blind owner slips quietly into the background while the real star of the show is applauded. Quite right to!

WARREN.

2008-11-05T14:59:00.003-08:00

The day was appropriately wet and bleak when Penny Palmer found out the truth about her mother and her boyfriend.

Irene Palmer had cleaned the house, got enough food in to feed an army and dug out all the best china and table cloths. She hardly ever saw her daughter’s boyfriends – Not since Penny had moved to Hereford. She knew this time it must be serious even though her daughter was only twenty-two. In Irene’s view this was still too young to be married but if she said so there would doubtless be an almighty row just like the ones about high heels, too much make up and loud music when Penny was living at home. How well she remembered those days. There were times when she thought the ceiling would fall down because the music was so loud and vibrated so much. She had a couple of hours to kill before their arrival and decided to take a trip down memory lane. She dug out the old photos she had which were carefully preserved in her album – Penny as a baby, as a little girl, as a teenager and now as a young woman – Days at the seaside, pictures of her own family and parents who had been Victorian in their attitudes and morals and the only one of the little boy which she had rescued from her mother’s attempts to obliterate from the family history. A tear ran down her weather beaten face as she recalled the memory and stared at the photo. Hastily she put it back in its place, looked at the rest and remembered. Then she went onto the ones of Bill, her husband who had been killed in action during the Second World War. He’d never seen his little girl or had arguments with her about the blaring music or the excessive make up. He’d never held her on his knee and played with her and would not be there to give her away if this relationship was serious as Irene suspected it may well be. Suddenly the ring on the bell made her drop the photos she had been looking through all over the floor. They tipped out of their places in the album when she dropped it.

He first saw her on the College campus – A stunning girl if ever there was one. Exceptionally tall and hour glass thin, Penny Palmer was enough to turn the head of any man. Warren Lomax couldn’t and didn’t take his eyes off her and hastily went up to her and introduced himself, offering in an old fashioned way to carry her books for her as if they were fourth form school kids. She smiled rather shyly and introduced herself, feeling the same degree of attraction towards him as he did towards her. They clicked at once and from then on went out together like inseparable twins. Within a matter of months – Even before each had met the other’s family they were engaged. They’d made love several times as people do these days and probably always have done though now it’s more openly talked about. “Mum will just love you”, Penny told him though he was terrified of meeting her mother. “Mum will just love you too”, he assured her though she was equally nervous at the prospect of meeting his. Now the time was here she could feel the butterflies in her stomach but knew her mother would take to him at once. Sometimes she thought how much like her dad he was- The dad she’d never known but of whom her mother endlessly talked and whose photos Penny had seen a thousand times or more. The footsteps padding along the hall just before the door opened told Penny the waiting was almost over and she introduced them with all the enthusiasm of a small child bringing home her best friend. “This is Warren Lomax, mum. Warren, this is my mum, Irene.” Irene almost fainted at the sight of him but composed herself quickly as she shook the outstretched hand and invited them both inside.

“Didn’t you like him”? Penny asked after their evening together was over. “Of course I did love”, her mother said in an unconvincing manner rather like that which people use when lying about a dress that doesn’t suit a dear friend whom they don’t wish to offend. “Well you couldn’t take your eyes off him that’s for sure”, her daughter remarked. “Well he’s an attractive young man”, her mother replied. “You ought to be past that sort of thing, mum. Seriously though something’s wrong isn’t it”? “No dear not at all. I just don’t think you should pin all your hopes on one person. You’re still very young you know. There’s plenty of time to settle down and there’s your future to think of. It was different in my day. We were encouraged to marry early and settle down to a life at the kitchen sink and the cradle but not so with you. You can play the field, have a career. I don’t mean you should sleep around just choose from a number of people rather than jump on the first one who takes your fancy”. “Oh Mum you are funny! The way you talk you’d think I’d never had a boyfriend before. Warren isn’t the first guy I’ve gone out with you know”. Irene wanted to ask her if they’d been lovers but knew she just couldn’t and that even if she did she’d likely as not get no answer. She knew that if they had been they must never be allowed to be ever again.

Alice Lomax was still up when Warren came in. “Mum, we need to talk”, was all he said as he flopped down on the sofa beside her as she did her knitting. “Did you have a nice evening dear”? She said, fearing another scene about her waiting up for him. Jerry always sided with him too and if he came down and joined in the tirade she’d be out numbered as per usual. “No. Well I mean yes. Pen’s mum was nice but it wasn’t that. It was something I saw while I was there. I pinched it and brought it home. Here! Look at this”. He produced two photos – One of an older man and the other of a little boy – A little baby boy. Alice put down her knitting and stared at them. “It says on the back of this one: ‘my little Warren, the boy I shall never forget’” “You’ve always known you were adopted”, Alice said. “Yes but look who my mother must have been? Can’t you see what this means? I’ve fallen in love with my sister for heaven’s sake mother”! “You’ll wake your father”, Alice said, holding a finger to her mouth. She knew though as she stared at the photo of the man that he was absolutely right – That there could be no room for doubt.

Penny was becoming moody and sullen. Warren was ignoring her – Cooling off. Of course it was obvious. He’d found another girl – Either that or he was bi-sexual and she didn’t think that very likely – No it was obvious. She wasn’t sleeping now and hardly eating either. Her work was suffering and she looked a mess – A far cry from the stunning attractive girl whom everyone longed to take out and date. It was ever since that meeting between her mother and Warren that things had started going wrong. She rang her mum and asked if she could come home. It was term time but she told her mother that she was ill and needed to get away for a bit. Her mother seemed reluctant to agree, telling her she had things to do, people to see. Penny put the phone down, puzzled but so unhappy as not to think about it further.

“Come in Warren”, Irene said, taking his hand and leading him down the hall as if he were blind. As they sat opposite each other he wordlessly handed back the pictures he’d taken from under the chair on the night they first met. “Please tell me everything”, he said. “Well Bill and I were both just fifteen. We loved each other from the time we were in primary school, right through into senior school. My mother especially was very Victorian in her attitudes and when I got pregnant after the one and only time we ever did it, she made me give up the baby – You I mean. A nurse took a photo of you which mother said she’d destroy if she found it and she did too but luckily I had a copy made in case she did – A copy which I smuggled out of the hospital by stuffing it down into my underwear. Your name was never mentioned again and all I had to remind me of you was that photograph. As soon as possible I got away from home and married Bill. By the time Penny came along Bill was dead – Killed in action during the Second World War You were never far from my thoughts but somehow I never got round to telling her about you even though you shared the same father and weren’t the product of some grubby little affair I’d had in some back alley. Tell me about yourself, what your life’s been like and how you’ve fared”? “Well I’ve always known I was adopted. ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ never kept it from me. They never even changed my given name from what it was on the birth certificate and although I had my surname changed to Lomax and knew Penny’s name was Palmer I never connected it. It’s a common enough name after all isn’t it? I always wanted to be a teacher and when I landed the job at Hereford I was pleased. I took one look at Penny – Another thing that’s against the rules – And fell for her at once. I realise now of course that it’s impossible – That we can’t go on being lovers or seeing each other because for one thing it’s against the law and for another it’s not moral but I don’t know how to end it, how to tell her that the only girl I’m ever likely to love – That I have ever loved is my sister”. By this time the two of them were in each other’s arms and in tears. “Oh Warren I’m so sorry! Bill and I caused such heartache both to ourselves and now to you two and all because we loved each other too”. Neither of them heard the key Penny had to her mother’s house being inserted into the lock, they were in such a state and by the time she burst in upon them, holding each other and sobbing, it was too late for them to pull apart.

“You bitch! You bitch!” She screamed at her mother. “So that’s it! That’s why he’s been going cold on me. That’s why he’s been refusing to see me any more! Well I knew he had another woman. He just had to have but I didn’t know it was you! You! You! Above all people you! What is it with you? Is it because he looks like dad? Are you hankering after your lost youth or just feeling sex starved? Perhaps you’re developing Alzheimer’s disease and going senile! Perhaps you think I’m your mother and you’re my daughter! What the hell is it then? Tell me! Tell me! I have a bloody right to know”! She threw herself between the sobbing couple, grabbing handfuls of her mother’s hair and scratching Warren’s face as she fought with them, shrieked at them and hit out at them both verbally and physically. Only the words – The tear filled, half sobbed, heart breaking words, barely audible yet all too clear: “Warren is my son. Warren is your brother”, stopped her in her tracks and left her frozen to the spot. As gently as she could, their mother told her the whole story from beginning to end – The story which Penny should have been told years ago. At the end Penny, white faced and trembling, stared into the eyes and face of the man whose older self she’d seen so often in her mother’s photographs and wondered why she’d never seen the similarity before.

The day was bleak and wet when Penny finally said “Goodbye” to her brother. She and her mother had gone with him to the air port to wave him off. He held them each in turn as they tearfully waited for him to board his plane to America. He gave them each a photo of himself – For one, a memento of a past they had briefly had as lovers and a reminder of a forbidden future and for the other a memento of an updated story of a forbidden past denied her by over strict and judgemental parents. When their “goodbyes” were said and the two women silently walked home after Warren’s plane departed Irene was the first to break the sorrowful, leaden silence: “I’ve lost him twice Penny. You’ve only lost him once. I’m getting old now and may never see him again. Please find it in your heart to forgive me. You are all I have.” The girl looked hard into her mother’s face and said: “Who’s counting? Loss is loss isn’t it? No matter how many times you lose and how many things you lose? Loss is loss”. Within days each had a separate letter containing identical wording: “Arrived safe. Missing you both enormously. Love you loads. Wish I could be with you. All my love, Warren”.

(The end).

WATCHING AND LISTENING.

2008-11-05T14:59:00.001-08:00

Colin stood yet again on the corner, taking up his vantage point where he knew he’d get the best sight of the girl. She was late tonight. Perhaps the traffic was held up and the bus was late, perhaps she was delayed by extra work.

Whatever the reason she wasn’t there yet. His desperate eyes scanned the crowd – A man with a briefcase and a rolled umbrella, an elderly woman with a stick, hunched in an ill-fitting raincoat and a tramp hugging his wine bottle to him like a long lost love. Colin wondered if soon people would start to think he was loitering – Up to no good. Every night after he closed his shop he stood here and every Saturday when she shopped there their fingers touched and he’d be treated to her big beaming smile. Like his pay cheque that smile had to last till he had the next one for in the week when he saw her she did not smile as she skilfully traversed the obstacle course on the pavement as she made her way home she was unaware of him. There she was now! Small, grey haired and scowling at the rain, standing at the crossing and waiting for the bleep. It came, she crossed and in a flash was gone. With a sinking heart Colin walked away. Yet again he’d not managed to speak to her. Bowed down by the weight of failure and shyness he too made his way home, cursing the advance in technology which brought about the invention of bleeping traffic lights. He prepared for another night, cloaked in the darkness of winter and of slow despair.

Jenny sipped her tea. Wonderful Wednesday was here again. Coronation Street, Brookside and then two more days till Saturday. That’s when she did her weekly shop, that’s when she had time to read a bit, that’s when she went into her local butcher’s and that’s when she heard “that voice”. Last week she could have screamed! A queue of people coming from nowhere had piled up behind her making it impossible for her to engage him in conversation. She almost went back on the pretext of forgetting something but that would have meant a more difficult walk so she decided against. Besides what could she ask for? In rare and spare moments she thought of him, wondering if he was married with kids, was homosexual or a confirmed bachelor. “Whatever the case” she said aloud, “he wouldn’t want me because I’m ‘’’”, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She hastily checked herself and turned on the radio. “soon be time for the ‘Archers’” she also said aloud.

Saturday was here again and Colin’s eyes were fixed on the seemingly stationary clock hands. Mrs. Shipley had been in and so had Dan. Mums with buggies and crying children, young pretty girls whom he had no eyes for and a few men who obviously lived alone. Then suddenly the shop started revolving. All other sights melted away as Jenny advanced towards him. People parted like the waves as she stepped forward. Two women pushed her forward saying: “You go first ducks, we’re in no hurry”. How could Jenny tell them she wanted to go last not first! She hated the unwanted attention everytime she was out and about and thought not for the first time how horrid it must be to be famous. Still fame was something some sought and loved yet this was something she had no choice in. All she wanted was to be unobtrusive – To be loved by someone certainly and to be thought of as normal and not treated like a walking spectacle. Most of all though she wanted to be left in the shop with him. As it was their moments together were so rare and their conversation so brief and predictable and now once again it was about to be marred by the other customers who crashed into their togetherness like dodge ‘ems at the fair. Stumbling up to the counter she once more asked for her purchases and felt her mouth drying. It was all over. Her purchases paid for, she felt herself propelled into the street by well meaning hands and she was out in the sunlight.

“Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! Cat’s got Colin’s tongue! He can’t speak, not this week, cat’s got Colin’s tongue!” Intrusive children’s voices from the past, cruel and taunting, filled his head again as he swept the shop. Long long years of children’s cruelty still made its presence felt and affected him. Mark and Jean, his brother and sister never had any problems but he always bore the brunt of children’s jibes. His stammer made it worse providing as it did a focus for their unkindness. He supposed it had started as a result of his crippling shyness and worsened because he dreaded saying anything knowing he’d be taunted and that adults would impatiently finish his sentences for him. As a result of all this he retreated into a world of books and paintings. He drew beautiful landscapes and found it a relief to go into the family business where he would feel secure and not have to get used to strangers. Now all his father wished for him was that he would be less on his own. He thought being alone was all he could ever hope for till he saw Jenny. Then it was more a case of wanting to be with her than worrying about being alone.

“We’re going to the disco tonight. Why don’t you come with us Jen”? Sandra’s voice broke Jenny’s train of thought. “Oh no! All that loud music means you can’t hear yourself think. Besides I was always a wallflower at school. Plus I have two left feet, hate large crowds and parties and there’ll be loads of people turning up at casualty departments all over the place because I’ve tramped all over their toes”, she said. After refusing so often the invites stopped coming though she and Lisa sometimes went to a film together. She remembered Stephen King’s “Misery” very well. Those screams of the people in the cinema really made her jump. She talked of nothing else for days, thinking the film great and chatted happily enough to Lisa when they walked home. Lisa was great. To her Jenny was just Jenny. She wondered though how much she’d see of her once she was married to Alan. As she foresaw their meetings became less frequent. Jenny was partly to blame as she didn’t like being part of athreesome. She wondered how the term “Gooseberry” came to be used for an extra person with a couple. She also knew in a painful kind of way somewhere deep inside herself that she couldn’t just keep existing from Saturday to Saturday in the hope of a snatched conversation with and brief touch from him. She didn’t even know his name. When she’d once asked him he’d only just got the first syllable out when a woman interrupted them, he dropped her change all over the floor and she’d wished she’d not asked him. Again she was propelled out into the sunshine, going home.

He was there again. Idly reading the adverts on the boards and scanning the crowd. The tramp was also there with his wine bottle. “Better night for sleeping rough”, he said to Colin. Colin nodded in agreement. “See you ‘ere near on every night. Ain’t you got no ‘ome to go to neither”? “Oh yes”, Colin said, blushing to the roots of his hair. “I was just watching the people”. “Specially that girl eh!” Said the tramp, laughing coarsely. “Shame! Pretty girl like that. Shame!” Colin again nodded in agreement, wondering how he’d cope if it were him. “She lives on Rowan Avenue you know”, the tramp informed him. “She’ll have to be careful tonight though. They’ve got the pavement up. Bloody drillin’ again. You wouldn’t mind but soon as this lot’s done some other lot’ll be diggin’ it up again. I wouldn’t mind but they never puts the pavement back proper when they’ve finished. Glad I don’t pay no Council Tax specially for that lot o’ buggers! Wastes your money soon as they gets their hands on it seein’s it ain’t theirs whatta they care! They makes a fresh lotta promises they don’t keep and muck up the good that the others ‘ave done little though it is”. In all the time Colin had known this old man he’d never been so expansive. He never knew him capable of such speech. “I ‘ad a girl you know. A’fore I came down in the world. Mind you I was always a travelling man. I went where and when the fancy took me. Killed she was you know. Must a’ been about five years ago now. Crossing the road she was. One minute ‘ere, the next gone. When you thinks of all the ways there are of dying – Disease, murder, suicide and old age and she has to get killed crossing the bloody road. Dirty great lorry done for her. Mind you I think her eyes was going. Too proud she was to get specs. Afterwards I sort o’ lost me zest for life. Drunk a lot – Well I’d done that since me days in the Navy – And came down in the world as I said. I’ve drunk, womanised and populated the world a bit. In the end I found meself out here after getting’ into debt. I got the stars for me roof and the earth for me floor. Don’t want no more now she’s gone. Don’t suppose I’ll last many more years out ‘ere. I’m past me allotted span you know. The cold paralyses me but it’s different wi’ you though. I’d say a different sort o’ thing paralyses you. Am I right”? He paused then, allowing Colin to talk about himself. He found he stammered less in front of this rough old man who’d seen and populated the world, lived in it and become disillusioned with those who ran it and remained insightful and shrewd. On the surface he was telling Colin a story of dissipation, disappointment and loss but he was telling him much more than that. He was telling him that the boat only sails once. He was telling him we each have a one-way ticket for the same port though each travels by a different route and disembarks at a different time. He didn’t finish Colin’s sentences for him but rather hooked him on the line of his rhetoric like a fish who needed pulling ashore. Eventually Colin told him about school – The taunts of the children, the family business and how he came to work there, why he stammered and lastly his desperate longing to get to know Jenny whom he admired from afar. With a startled cry he suddenly thought she may have gone while he was engrossed in conversation with this tramp. “It’s okay son. There she is. Get your feet walking towards Rowan Avenue. Take a deep breath and just talk to the girl”.

The traffic lights beeped, calling to Jenny: “come! Come! Come! Come! Come!” She went. Colin was in hot pursuit. Racing on ahead he stood breathless at the cordoned off section of the road. She approached, stopped and listened, sensing someone’s presence in this very quiet part of the area. Whose was that foot that broke that twig? “E-e-e-excuse me but you can’t go that way. The pavement’s up”. “Oh! It’s you from the butchers”, she said in surprise. “Yes. C-c-c-colin”. “Jenny Radcliffe” she said in reply. “M-m-may I help you past”? He offered. He heard the definitive click of Jenny’s white stick as she took his arm. “We’re going the wrong way”, she said. She told him she’d forgotten her meat and, smiling asked if he knew of an open butcher’s. When she told him she had an expected guest coming for tea his face fell. “Oh I see”, he said in a forlorn manner. “Oh I don’t know him well but we meet each Saturday in his father’s shop”. He beamed as he once more took her hand. They retraced their steps as they once more headed for the beeping traffic lights.

(the end).

FACT NOT FICTION.

2008-11-03T18:57:00.001-08:00

Anyone who rants on about “the good old days” always gets accused of untrue nostalgic reminiscences about a golden age of time which exists only in the imagination of the, usually middle aged or elderly, observer.

I’m here to tell you that post war there were indeed different and higher standards both in behaviour and manners. Don’t believe me? Then may I refer you to: “To Sir with Love” by E. R. Braithwaite. This book has just been re-run by the BBC’s excellent station Radio 7 and since it was abridged there, I’ve just read a copy of it so I could get the full story.

Of course the world wasn’t perfect then since this story charts one black man’s struggle for acceptance in mainly white British society. It deals with his reactions to prejudice which are both calm and dignified and one can easily see his great courage in the face of this blatant ignorance which would cause many to give up in despair. However this book is about more than that for Braithwaite worked in the poor and deprived East End of London amongst some of the roughest and rudest children one could ever hope not to meet. These children’s manners, language and educational standard were abysmally poor and low. They had little respect for themselves or those in authority and the Headmaster of the school which was renowned for what the outside world saw as being wooly and liberal made many of the allowances for them which “leftie” social workers and do-gooders of our time would make today, excusing all this behaviour and the lack of standards and often he entreated Braithwaite to do likewise to the point where the poor man became irritated beyond words. Braithwaite did not excuse it however, at least not to the point where he was prepared to allow it to continue. Instead he turned his classroom into a place of loving discipline without cruelty. He taught these children to be courteous to each other, insisted on their turning up for school clean and tidy, banished the filthy language from his domain, discussed openly all sorts of subjects and taught them the value of humility by showing them how to react to an unjust situation – Not by using violence and reverting to what most would expect them to do but by apologising for the wrong which one of them had done to a bullying teacher who had consistently picked on a boy who was no good at physical education, causing him injury in the process. The example that Braithwaite showed them and the line he made them take, especially the one prepared to violently confront the teacher concerned, eventually caused this man to apologise in his turn. By the time they left school they had a deep affection for Braithwaite but more important than that they had a respect for themselves and a proper respect for each other which doubtless they would show to new people they met throughout life.

By his example he also encouraged them to support a mixed race boy whose mother had died. For fear of censure and ridicule, scorn and maybe even a beating from their parents, they were at first prepared to avoid his home even though they’d played with him as an infant and he was one of them but ended up going to the boy’s mother’s funeral and making a stand against the ignorance and bigotry which had been taught them from their cradles. All these changes had been achieved in just eight months of Braithwaite taking up what was his first teaching post at what would doubtless be described today as a “sink” school. It was achieved as all things are by setting these children a dignified example. It was done by not using silly euphemisms like “road rage” for uncontrolled bad manners when driving and recognising the rotten seeds of indiscipline and bad manners and wrong conduct for what it was and still is no matter what the age of the person, the times we live in or the circumstances and insisting on their being weeded out. I’ve no doubt that this wonderful man saved many of these boys from delinquency and prison, drug taking and alcoholism and it is to be noted that though they goaded him, they didn’t show the outright disrespect for authority which people do today. The parents too sought his help if they suspected their children of possibly going off the rails instead of being in league with their errant children and threatening litigation because a teacher dares to chastise “little Johnnie” or “little Jane”. Also one girl’s obvious love for this teacher displayed in her very evident crush on him as she turned from a young girl into a young woman was dealt with by him sensitively and kindly and though he recognised her striking beauty especially when he danced with her during a social when she was dressed nicely and looked lovely, he didn’t seek to take advantage of her or the situation because he couldn’t control his sexual urges or thought he had a right to “do what you wanna do”. Of course I know that even then not all teachers were “Braithwaites” but I am suggesting that because there was a definite line which was recognised, stated and clearly set out and proper boundaries as there was proper discipline which probably resulted from the consequences of the obscenity which was the Second World War, most people were happy to stick within those boundaries so as not to incur disapproval. This is why it only took Braithwaite eight months to turn these children into the civilised and respectful adults they became. Now his task would be impossible. He’d probably be beaten up, stabbed to death, rounded on by vicious angry parents and have every civil liberties crank from Land’s End to John O’ Groates telling us about the violation of their human rights while not giving a stuff about the human wrongs they perpetrate.

This was a man who, like them, knew about poverty. This was a man who knew about prejudice and nursed a hatred of white people at times because of it but was saved from a totally embittered attitude by the kindness he did receive and very probably the upbringing he’d had. He’d got to these children just in time – When they were on the cusp of adulthood and before they went out into a world which would deal much more harshly with them than life had done thus far and goodness knows it had been hard enough already. I would recommend that all of you reading this, go and read Braithwaite’s book. It moved me to tears many times and it is most definitely one of the best books I’ve ever read and believe me I’m an avid reader. It has reminded me once more that apart from poverty and prejudice there is one more injustice which we inflict on our children – The injustice of not setting them boundaries and insisting on firm but fair discipline and a proper respect for authority. Yes they should question it especially when it’s abused, yes they should kick against it in their struggle to become independent adults but no discipline and an “anything goes” attitude is as bad as harsh and cruel discipline and will lead as it has done to the violent and largely immoral society we have today. This book reminded me too that poverty, prejudice and though not mentioned there, disability, is no excuse for uncouth behaviour, bad manners or abusive anger. The higher standards In manners, politeness and respect for authority were indeed present in those days. Braithwaite’s book proves this though it has to be said that ignorance of, and prejudice against, minorities was also blatant and rife but as a blind person I don’t see much change in that regard despite all the laws. All that has happened is that people have found more subtle ways of displaying it or masking it. As I said in my piece about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, we can’t get out of the gutter unless we can be and are taught to focus on the stars. Though it may have been unrealistic to expect those children, coming as they did from miserable circumstances of abject poverty, to actually reach the stars, Braithwaite taught them to focus their eyes on them and to believe that better lives and a better world was possible. For this they had much to thank him - More in fact than any present children have to thank the wooly minded liberals and batty social workers of today. By contrast with Braithwaite, they’re so stupid and “open minded” that their brains have fallen out and it’s the children of today and the parents of tomorrow and eventually as a consequence, all of us, not least of all the old and vulnerable whom the youth terrorise as they steal money for drugs, rampage round the streets in drunken gangs and of course themselves and their unborn children, who will suffer as they in turn will not know how to parent them properly.

RANT FOR THE WEEK.

2008-10-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

I may as well have my say regarding the furore over those two idiots on Radio 2 and apologise for those outside the U.K. who aren’t familiar with this, though you may well be since there’s the internet.

In my view, though many of us lampooned Mary Whitehouse, giving her a hard time and dismissing her as a crank who wanted to stifle free speech and “nanny” adults by deciding what is good for them when it comes to what they should see and hear, I thought and still think that she was a courageous and sensible woman who recognised what would happen if we allowed there to be unfettered, no holds barred, free rein to free speech. It wasn’t for nothing that my nickname at the blind school I attended was: “Mrs. Morals”. For I realised then that although there was much to commend the ‘60’s there was much to be sorry about too. I knew society had its feet on a slippery slope leading to the moral decline in almost every sphere of life from good manners to standards of decency both in public life and private life to the sexual immorality we have today and certainly I am aware that it’s not where something starts but where it will end which should concern us.

To give air time and a programme of his own, or more, to ghastly and vulgar individuals like Jonothan Ross only can and has ended in his grabbing hold of the BBC and dragging it where his mind and thoughts are – Down in the sewer with the stink, rats and rubbish. He cannot get his mind above his genetalia and finds it as easy to crack an non-vulgar joke as a fly does to crack an egg. He and this other apology for a star who supposedly passes for a comedian, namely Russell Brand have only been allowed to leave lewd and vulgar messages on an elderly man’s answer phone simply because we now need more and more outrageous and trashy stuff in order to become disgusted and shocked.

This puerile rubbish would never have been allowed past the hierarchy in the BBC years ago and comedians of worth and note such as Milligan, Hancock, Morecambe and Wise and many others would never have had to stoop to these depths in order to gain a laugh. I can remember the days when comedy was clever, as in the case of Norden and Muir and slightly naughty but funny all the same as in the case of Galton and Simpson whose talents spoke through their scripts and who left you feeling not as though you’d filled your ears with dross, thereby sullying your soul. Those people raised you up and made you think life was worth living whereas these loutish oafs have not only upset an elderly man and his granddaughter but also as I said, dragged the name and reputation of the BBC into the mud.

I’m all for free speech and don’t want a “Pollyanna” world in which everyone is pristine and crooks their little fingers while drinking out of dainty china teacups but neither do I want to live in a cultural litter bin or have the “smell” of one in my living-room.

I remember when I said my first swear word: “Damn” and I was hauled up to the teacher who said:

“The need to swear shows a lack of vocabulary and if you carry on you’ll graduate from ‘Damn’ to much nastier words”.

Of course I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t use harsher words than “damn” especially when I stub a toe or bump into an open cupboard door I’ve carelessly forgotten to close but though I didn’t understand it then, I get her point now. She was trying to make me achieve the best, show consideration for others by respecting them and knowing what may offend them and to this day I apologise if I swear in front of a very elderly person and never use obscene words in public. My short stories and longer ones not on the blog, do not contain obsceneties or explicit sex or violence and if the oafish Ross was on the BBC and offered me a thousand pound a minute to appear on his programme should I get well known as a writer, I’d refuse, such is my low opinion of the man and his drivel filled programmes.

People of my age and younger wring their hands and wonder why our young people have gone wrong and why we’re all grubbing around in an immoral vacuum and why drug addiction, alcoholism, crime and sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase and why the U.K. is in such a mess. Part of the answer has to be because we think anything goes and because we laud such dolts as the overpaid unimaginative broadcasters like Ross and Brand who have little regard for the sensibilities of other people both listeners and those they offend and whose privacy they invade and violate. If we’d listened to instead of laughed at Mary Whitehouse who we ridiculed because she foresaw just where our lapse in moral conduct would lead, then maybe those BBC people wouldn’t have had such a hard time deciding what to do about these oafs and their reputation as a decent public service broadcaster would be intact instead of in shredss. We’re where we are now because of what we didn’t do then and it doesn’t bode well for tomorrow when the children of today are the parents of the next generation. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad to have been brought up in a more disciplined and respectful age, even though I ridiculed my teachers and saw no harm in the odd: “Damn” or “bloody” for they helped me to differentiate between what may upset, offend and hurt other people and what is acceptable between consenting friends in private. You can never get out of the gutter iff someone doesn’t make you focus your eyes on the stars.

ESME LEARNS TO FLY

2008-10-28T07:50:00.002-07:00

Mrs. Trundle wondered why Mr. Trundle was walking in bear feet. “George has been round and chewed my slippers”, he complained. “Don’t worry darling,” she said: “I will make you some.” “Make me some”! He said. “What from”? “Those off cuts you have they will be lovely as carpet slippers. And the very big bit can be given to Esme as a carpet for her bed. Sally says she won’t sleep in her bed. So perhaps she’ll like a bit of your carpet.” “Well the little devil pretended to be a carpet once didn’t she and got taken home so perhaps she would like one”. He was wandering around trying to find a suitable plastic bag to cover his beard. It had grown so long now that he couldn’t walk without tripping on it. He wouldn’t have it trimmed because he said it was a home for little creatures and old food. He had two earwigs in it, one for each ear which stopped him hearing when Mrs. Trundle nagged him, some spiders, some of yesterday’s Sunday dinner, a couple of biscuits which he wasn’t supposed to have and a few other bits besides. Anyway he couldn’t find a bag so had to hold it out in front of him with one hand. He was annoyed with the dogs for trying to lick it and the spiders tickled him when the wind blew. There may even have been a drop of gravy from when he had to wear his steak and kidney pie hat after his pork pie hat was eaten. Anyway he didn’t like being without carpet slippers.

When he went off to work a little spider called Suzzie offered to spin a web so that his carpet offcuts could be made into slippers and joined up along the edges. Mrs. Trundle had the job done in a few minutes with Suzzie’s help and knew he’d be in a very good mood when he saw them. She took the other bigger bit of carpet round to Sally who put it in Esme’s box.

That night when Esme was sleeping, she felt the carpet rolling up round her. At first, as she was lifted into the air she was very frightened but then she loved the feeling of being in the air. However, once the carpet lowered itself down she was stuck on the ground unable to fly. Just then a family of Kestrels appeared saying: “Hullo Esme, we will teach you how to fly”. Esme was delighted and first she was told to watch the birds to see what they did. She looked at them stretching out their wings and fluffing out their feathers and told them she was too heavy. “Nonsense! Said the youngest kestrel who was only three. “All you have to do is flap your ears and raise your tail and say the magic word”. Esme unfurled her ears and said “dogragalabra” and up she went. She landed in Pockledown wood where she spent the night playing with the birds and swimming in a pond of enormous size. She chased swans and ducks which is naughty, and “borrowed” some food from them. She flew right over all the houses and shops which were closed and landed outside Mr. Trundle’s window, hitting her tail on the glass just as he’d got his beard comfortable. “Who is that”? He shouted and sprang to the window. “Woof”, said Esme whom he loved very much. He let her in and she licked all the bits out of his beard and cleaned it with a shampoo known as dog slobber. He did feel better and she invited him to sit on her back. “I’m far too heavy”, he said but she made him as she wanted to see if she could fly Sally to the shops when her feet were tired. He sat very gently on her back and held onto her ears. She took off and he saw everything from up on high and thought how good it was to be nearer the stars than he had ever been.

Then one of the kestrels appeared and told Esme what time it was. Dogs can only fly at night when it’s dark and now the sun was coming up. She lowered Mr. Trundle who crawled into bed and went home to Sally again who found her snoring on her new piece of carpet. “Isn’t Mr. Trundle kind”? She said as she tickled Esme behind her ears. “Yes. He is and this truly is a wonderful carpet”. “Well it’s the first time you’ve slept in your bed in all the years I’ve had you”. Little did Sally know Esme had flown in her carpet and not slept at all.

(The end).

DILEMMA INSOLUABLE.

2008-10-28T07:50:00.001-07:00

As David Carmichael regained consciousness a nurse was holding his hand. As soon as he realised where he was he became agitated, telling her he had to get out of the bed in which he lay otherwise there was no hope of saving the life of the girl he’d seen in his vision.

To Susan Savile, the little village of Pennington was paradise. A picturesque place with a few houses, church and a doctor’s surgery and beyond, the woods where she could take her Labrador walking. She’d become tired of London but not as Doctor Johnson would say tired of life. She was just sick of the rat race and the ever increasing speed of the big city which demanded you go faster and faster just to keep pace with your neighbour.

David had felt the aura just as he was closing his surgery and preparing to go on his morning rounds. Quickly he went to lie down on his couch and wait for the seizure to come and go. When he came round he jotted down the details of the dream he’d had while fitting. A dark haired girl, tall and big breasted was being driven off in a blue Volvo towards Pennington Woods and the man behind the wheel was someone well known to him – A loner by the name of Gordon Gill. Since his car accident two years ago David Carmichael had been prone to seizures. He had been prescribed medication for them by his neurologist and of course common sense dictated that he should take it but he was reluctant to do so for one very good reason. During his fits he saw things – Things which mainly concerned his patients. Often he could warn them not to pursue particular courses of action which may be dangerous for or disadvantageous to them and sometimes he was able to ring the police anonymously with tips about the whereabouts of murdered children or with descriptions of suspects in long unsolved criminal cases, all of whom had been shown to him in these prophetic visions experienced during his seizures. He never had any such visions during his normal dreaming state when asleep and knew that if he took his medication he wouldn’t be able to forewarn people or provide the police with their much needed information which they now took very seriously having at first considered him a crank and even a possible suspect in some of the cases he’d told them of. When Rita, his wife asked him if he’d taken his medication he always told her he had when in fact he’d flushed it down the lavatory. She regularly counted his pills arousing her suspicions. He always counselled his patients against throwing away their medication and here he was doing just that.

Gordon Gill wasn’t liked by the villagers. He never joined in any social events; hardly spoke to people when he saw them out and never if he could avoid it, made eye contact with them. He had nothing wrong with him but was just a loner who was disconcerting to be around. He still lived with his mother and had never married. She was now getting on in years and he looked after her and was according to all who knew them domineered by her. If and when he went to the village pub he only ever had one pint, never bought a drink for any of the other regulars and refused all offers from them. He was an “off cumden” as they called outsiders and knew he was not accepted but that suited him as he thought himself above them anyway – These yokels with their rough country ways. He had spotted another “off cumden” – Another outsider like himself and wanted to get to know her and reserved for her one of his rare smiles though his eyes remained cold when he smiled.

“You seem preoccupied today David”, said Rita as they sat together over lunch. He hoped she’d not notice that he’d had another seizure in his surgery. “Yes”, he said. “I’m trying to think where I saw someone who popped into the surgery today. She looked familiar and I’m sure we met before but can’t think where”. “Well new people always stand out in this village. I don’t know of anyone moving in or visiting and Mrs. Briggs at the post office who knows all the gen hasn’t told me of anyone new being around”. He didn’t dare tell her that he’d not seen her in real life but only in his vision. He knew for sure that he must find her because if he didn’t she would die.

Mabel Thorpe had just written the appointment down in the book for a Miss Susan Savile when David came back to do afternoon surgery. It had been a fairly busy day and he was glad that there was not much longer to go. His partner was on night duty tonight and he would be able to put his feet up afterwards and perhaps watch some TV. The first patient to come in for the evening surgery was her – The tall dark girl he’d seen in his vision. “I’ve come to see you Doctor Carmichael because I am suffering with my periods. I feel so tired and think they may be making me anaemic”. He could see by her nails and the state of her eyes that indeed her assumption was right and that she was indeed anaemic. He prescribed a course of iron tablets for her and some others to try and correct her period problems and was trying to work out a way of introducing the subject of the contents of his vision to this new patient who may well think he was crackers when he heard a terrible commotion in the street. Two cars had piled into one-another and the occupants were hurt. Susan, now with her prescription in her hand, hastily beat a retreat so he could attend to the people involved and never got to hear of his concerns for her safety.

Edna Gill was sulking again. This always happened when Gordon had a date. “I’ll not be late mother. You’ve got your radio and the papers and there’s the phone if you want to ring Auntie Maggie.” “Daresay she’ll be out. Everyone has the chance to go out ‘cept me. The radio’s rubbish. I expect I’ll have an early night and just as I’m dropping off to sleep you’ll come in, slamming the door and waking me up”. Gordon turned a deaf ear. She was so busy ranting on and trying to make him feel guilty that she never noticed the knife he’d taken from the kitchen drawer. She hardly answered him as he wished her a good night and told her not to wait up.

Washed and changed, Susan climbed easily into Gordon’s blue Volvo. They went to the cinema in the nearest town which was about five miles from the village. He’d held hands with her and had hardly concentrated on any of the film. She was thinking how everyone had got him wrong. He never tried to touch her or make a pass at her and neither did he make dirty remarks about the size of her breasts or how big she was. He wasn’t very friendly and chatty like the boys she’d known in London but he was gentlemanly in his own way. He’d insisted on paying for there seats and the ice creams in the interval and although he wasn’t a great conversationalist he said enough to make the silences less awkward than they might have been. As they walked arm in arm to his car afterwards she thought that it had been a pleasant enough evening on the whole.

David was dead dog tired. However there was something more he had to do. Because of the accident he had not told Susan about his concerns for her. She was new to the village and for this reason he couldn’t remember her address. He’d have to go to the surgery and look it up on the computer. “I won’t be long Rita”, he said. “I have just remembered something I have to do”. She looked perturbed and was just about to protest when she saw his retreating back as he went through the door. He was just about to cross the main road when he felt it again – The familiar aura which heralds a seizure. He knew he had about thirty seconds to get to a place of safety which in this case was the pavement on the other side of the road. He just got up the kerb when he went down.

Susan was almost asleep when she woke with a start. “Where are you taking me? This isn’t the road which leads to my house”. “No but it leads to where I want us to go. Surely you don’t think you are going to get home without you pay the debt you owe me. Nobody has something for nothing in this world and tonight you have just had a trip to the cinema and ice cream all courtesy of yours truly who now wants something in return – The only thing a woman is fit to give so I’ll just keep driving shall I”? As they got nearer and nearer to Pennington Woods the people became fewer in number. In fact Susan could see no houses now and nobody about. She wondered how she’d make a run for it when he stopped the car and wondered still more where there’d be to run to. Suddenly he stopped, produced a rope and blindfold, tied her and bound her eyes and then began driving again. Round and round he went like some dobby horse at the fair and then he stopped – She having little idea now where she may be. Finally he dragged her, feet first through the open door of the car, hauling her along the ground like some ungainly parcel. She felt herself bumping along the ground, her head banging up and down, her legs hurting as he held them in his hands. In one deft movement he let her feet go and landed on top of her. At first he lay motionless, breathing into her ear, and then he began to bite her face, sinking his teeth into her nose and upper lip. He tore out handfuls of her hair and beat her with his fists, finally tearing off her clothes and raping her. He then asked her if she’d like him to drive her home. Making as if to help her to her feet, he sought the knife he had brought, found it and stabbed her over fifty times until the life ebbed away from her body. Calmly then, his anger spent, he turned on his heel and strode back to his car and drove home to have the tirade he’d get from his mother.

The crowd had gathered round David Carmichael as he lay on the pavement. Into his mouth they forced an object in order to stop him biting his tongue or swallowing it. This is an erroneous thing to do and just leads to damage to the teeth. The ambulance came as he went into status epilepticus – A prolonged state of fitting without regaining consciousness. By the time he was tucked up in a hospital bed Susan Savile was already dead.

John Dixon knew who to look for in connection with her death. He’d had the anonymous tip off even before her death when the “seer” as he called him had revealed to him the vision he’d had in his last fit. When the police went to see Gill it was his mother who calmly led them into the kitchen saying: “There he is. He’s all yours”. John Dixon nearly had a heart attack as he stared up at the swollen and bloated face of their suspect, hanging from a beam in the ceiling while his mother set about making them both a cup of tea.

(The end).

FEET OF CLAY.

2008-10-28T07:49:00.001-07:00

It would be easy for me to forget how normal I am because either people treat me as if I am so very special or very different from themselves.

In order to remind me all I have to do is to think back to my school days and a girl whom I’ll call Jill and remember the day she was picked on by a group of girls including me.

I know now why people bully. I knew then that to do so was wrong. I also knew however that, though I was not top of the class it was recognised that I was reasonably bright even though I was also considered to be developmentally way behind other children even blind ones. There were other things I realised too, one of which was that my Catholic upbringing, together with my affection for my Nan and wish not to incur her disapproval meant I was unwilling to experiment sexually. This made me least likely to be the chosen girlfriend of any boy. For this reason I was self conscious, clumsy and awkward and while I fully understood, unlike one girl, that babies weren’t created as a result of a boy sticking his big toe in a girl’s belly button, I certainly didn’t know what they do today at far too young an age or even what they knew then as teenagers. My need to raise my profile with my peers when joke cracking didn’t work meant I willingly joined a group of other girls who for a reason I can’t recall now picked on poor Jill.

Jill had learning difficulties, residual sight and a placid temperament and I’d always got on with her till then. However this day, we broke her glasses which rendered her totally blind; damaged her radio; scratched her; hit her and made her cry. Eventually a teacher with a strong Liverpool accent, who stank of perfume and cats, appeared and told us off. She dispersed the group and comforted Jill but as I was slinking away she called out:

“And you, June x, I’m surprised at you”!

I was surprised at me as well. I realised then what I also know now and that is that I am thoroughly normal. Like everyone I like to be liked and feel insecure. I worry about what others think and about hurting them as I’ve said before and feel isolated and scarred by rejection. What I also learned then was that without a sound or an injury being caused to my body, I had fallen with a loud thud from the pedestal my grandmother had put me on. I didn’t dare go home and tell her what I’d done to Jill. Yes. Her adored blind granddaughter had feet of clay after all.

Maybe the next day or soon afterwards I sought Jill out and asked her forgiveness and whether I could once more be her friend. Without a moment’s hesitation and a magnanimity of spirit she readily agreed. Where were the questions like:

“Why did you join in”?

Or:

“How could you have? You were meant to be my friend”.

Where were the accusations of betrayal of trust and the wariness in case I should do it again and, something I didn’t think of at the time, where were Jill’s glasses?

I knew then that the fact that we all do wrong things is inescapable and part of the human condition but that does not mean we are just to accept it and not feel remorse for it. Instead we should strive all the harder to care for others worse off than ourselves and stand up for the weak and disadvantaged. It may cost us dear in terms of popularity and doing the right thing will never be easy but just because our feet of clay may cause us to slip in the mud, that’s no excuse for keeping our bottoms firmly on the fence.

I’d like to think that, being more intelligent than poor Jill, I have learned to cultivate the art of forgiveness and have honed it as finely as hers was but I’m afraid I haven’t. There are some people whose conduct I can’t forgive, either for what they’ve done to me or to those I know of but don’t know personally. Jill’s forgiving nature is every bit as valuable or perhaps more so than my intelligence. I only hope the world has not further wronged her and scarred it and washed it all away. I also hope that not only can I better learn to follow her example but also that I may have the moral strength never again to court popularity at the expense of the weak and vulnerable. One thing I know for sure is that it is much better to be respected by everyone than liked by everyone which may go some way to explaining why I’m so outspoken and intolerant of those who hurt the disadvantaged or exploit them.

THESE ARE FOR YOU.

2008-10-24T07:19:00.002-07:00

I shall always remember your last act of kindness. It was on the day you left me. I had been crying as I packed your things but you remained in the same placid and gentle mood as always. You had your breakfast and sat by your bags afterwards, trying in vain to examine their contents though I knew you were sure what lay within them. Salty tears mingled with the washing-up water as I cleared away the breakfast things. I chatted to you about inconsequential things as usual, hoping that I’d hear soon about how you were getting on. As usual, just like an overly attached child you followed me from place to place so as not to miss a word or a single falling tear.

You’d known for ages I wasn’t well. I wasn’t seriously ill but rather very inconvenienced. I sat about a lot nowadays and like many in such a position, began to reminisce and go back in time to happier times. At first I thought of the wedding cake I’d cut so many years ago and went back even further to the times when I was a child who played her time away on swings and see-saws till the fat boy who gave me the bumps scared me so much I refused to go on it with him any longer even though he’d promised not to do it again. I thought of the big chocolates which you can no longer get, with the rims round their edges. They came in cardboard tubes with silver foil wrapped round each one. I thought of my grandmother teaching me how to distinguish my coins – One from another and the “money” game we used to play. Maybe it was then that you came silently to my side and put your head on my knee and I realised that today was the day when you would be going on a journey of your own and without me for the first time in many years. I knew how mothers felt at school gates as they bade their children “farewell” and understood why it was that they cried. I put on the radio in order to distract me from my thoughts but of course it didn’t. I hardly remember anything about what the announcer said or the music played. With the callousness of the burning sun in the desert, the time ticked on relentlessly, punctuating the day with the half-hourly announcements made by my clever clock. I felt the nearness of you as your warmth mingled with mine as I knelt on the floor, your body pressed closely to mine and thought how I’d sometimes said a similar “goodbye” to others I’d loved so long ago. Their scents mingled with yours as memory shuffled the cards in the pack of my experiences and jumbled them up together, fanning them out in a different order now. Your sigh, gentle as any lover’s from the past calmed my racing brain as I wondered how I’d cope with the coming days and months without you and when and even if you may come home. Panic seized me as I wondered too what I would do if time ran out before this could be possible as it may do if I took too long to heal. The ache of loss – Of this and all the others I have suffered – Returned and then intensified anew until it became a pain almost beyond endurance.

The bell rang then. Excitedly you greeted our expected visitor. I offered him tea, done not only as this is the gesture of a good hostess but also so as to delay our time for parting. Too full for words I simply hadn’t the strength to wave my hand as you departed. Trusting as a child, how easily you went with him to his car. I bet you looked out of the window at all the passers-by. I bet you jumped out excitedly when you reached your destination. I knew whoever would take care of you would love you for how could they do otherwise? Then I remembered the long slow haul I had ahead of me to recover enough to have you back again and it was then that I remembered the little package you dropped at my feet on the morning that you left. When I opened it – Carefully in case I damaged the contents – I found within a pair of specially knitted mittens with tiny hard objects sewn into the thumbs and almost heard you saying in a series of barks which I had come to understand:

“These are for you. Be careful when you put them on”.

For peeping out through tiny knitted holes in each thumb were tiny little lenses.

“You’re going to need those while I’m away”.

I put them on and held my thumbs up to the world and, hey presto! What do you think happened? I know you’ll not believe me when you finally come home but I could actually open my hands and see!

MARJORIE DORE.

2008-10-24T07:19:00.001-07:00

She kept telling me that she had another friend – A little girl just like her that she could play with but I didn’t believe her. Then I saw them together and my heart ached.

“Look mummy! There she is! Over there by the window. We’ve been talking about dolls and things. She said she had lots of them when she was here”. “Yes dear. Now eat your tea. Each time you talk instead of eat you’re missing a mouthful”. “No I’m not! I’m just postponing it that’s all”. “Smart Alec! Just eat will you”. As if in a dream Natalie continued eating. Her eyes were on the garden as she did so. First she stared at her swing and then at the old apple tree as if she saw something I did not. “Stop dreaming or you’ll not have finished your meal by the time daddy comes home. He promised to take you to the park to make the most of the light summer night have you forgotten”? “No”, she said. I was amazed. For the first time my daughter had answered me in just one word. She was still staring out of the window when she started humming the nursery rhyme again about Marjorie Dore and Johny only earning a penny a day. She said that was when it first started. She was absent-mindedly humming the rhyme on her swing when the little girl first appeared. Dressed in old fashioned clothes, she had long hair which was done up in a bun. Natalie said she talked to her, laughed with and played games with her. The only trouble is I have never seen her. At first I just dismissed her tale as the product of an over-active imagination. I knew that in many ways Natalie was a lonely little girl. She wanted a little brother or sister but I could have no more children due to the complications I suffered at her birth. Bill said that I wasn’t to worry, that she’d grow out of it, but it’s three years now since she first started to see Marjorie. I don’t know what to do. I told Bill that she ought to see a child psychologist since it’s interfering with her education. The other children make fun of her because they’ve never seen this child either and think she’s odd. She hardly plays with them now, preferring the company of a non-existent child that nobody but she can see. She doesn’t accept that Marjorie isn’t real and I don’t accept that she could be a ghost. I’m becoming irritated by the whole thing. I can even hear Natalie laughing with this non-existent child in bed at night – Laughing and talking with her and my friends are beginning to label me as: “The mother of that funny kid”. It’s becoming embarrassing. “I know mummy doesn’t believe in you. If you’d only come to her, be real to her and talk to her. She’d have to believe in you then and she would know at last that I’m not making you up. Then we could play together openly. Why won’t you come to her, Marjorie? Why?” “I will, Natalie. When you come through the narrow gate I will. Then they’ll see us together but not now – Not yet.” “Where is the narrow gate and where does it lead to”? Asked Natalie. “Never mind that now. You just be happy while you can”. “I can’t be truly, truly happy because people don’t believe that you’re my friend and that you are real”. Suddenly, as Natalie looked up she noticed that Marjorie was gone. Whenever she was lonely, sad or in trouble, all she had to do was sing the rhyme about Marjorie Dore and she would appear to her again and comfort her. It always worked and never failed.

Bill took Natalie to the park where she happily played on the swings and the slide. She did not dare sing the rhyme in case her little friend would come and begin a conversation with her. Her father would then ask why she was smiling and she would tell him about Marjorie’s presence and this would invoke his anger. Like her mother he was now becoming irritated by the presence of her invisible friend.

For several weeks she neither saw nor heard the other child. She neither sang or thought of the rhyme and was beginning to think her little companion had forsaken her. Then one night she had a dream. Marjorie came and led her by the hand up a long dark ladder which was narrow and steep. At the top was a tiny door through which only the children pass. Beyond was a huge expanse of green with thousands and thousands of flowers. Then she woke with a start. She thought she heard Marjorie saying that this was heaven but woke with a jolt before she could be sure. In her fright she screamed and was soon soothed by her mother. At breakfast she explained that she’d seen heaven in a dream and was scolded for being wicked and talking of such things so never mentioned her dream again.

“Hullo Natalie, it’s been ages hasn’t it”? “Oh Marjorie! Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you”. “I have been making a place for you. I have been preparing the way so you can come and we can be sisters forever”. “But we’re sisters now”, cried Natalie in alarm. “No. Now we are only friends and it is draining my strength keep coming through to your side of the gate. For us to be real sisters you have to come to me through my side of the gate. You have to live here with me forever”. Natalie looked puzzled. “You mean never, never, never to return? You mean I must come and live in heaven?” “Yes that’s right”. “But that means I will die”. Natalie almost became hysterical as the realisation that she would never grow up to be a woman dawned on her. “No you won’t. I’m not dead am I? Only the body which is a casing which holds the soul dies and the soul lives forever and ever and ever”. “Is it frightening”? Natalie enquired timidly. “No not really. Anyway when you’ve been here for a bit you will have forgotten what it felt like. I can’t remember what it was like now”. The child then told her not to worry and that she must celebrate her tenth birthday before coming through the gate, just as Marjorie had done. For some months they never talked and once more Natalie almost forgot about her again, thinking that she’d abandoned her.

It was after Natalie died of meningitis that I was first to see them playing on the swing in the garden. At first the sight distressed me until I met someone who knew the history of the house in which we lived. Apparently a couple with one little girl had lived there and Just like us, the mother could have no more children but the child always longed, as Natalie had, for a brother or sister. The child was killed at a tragically young age after having prayed hard for the brother or sister that she was never to have. The story goes that once every so often she appears to another child in the village – Usually another little girl – The sightings last for about three years, after which time the child who has seen her dies.

I cannot say whether Natalie was the only child to have seen Marjorie, whether the story has been exaggerated over time or even whether any of it is true. What I can say is that I get enormous comfort from seeing them together, that I have longed for more than one daughter all my life and now in a funny sort of way I feel as if I have two and that now all I have to do is to hum the nursery rhyme about Marjorie Dore and there they are, as real as any living person is, standing at my side. I know one more thing too and that is as a result of these occurrences I have completely lost my fear of death.

WAITING FOR A TRAIN.

2008-10-24T07:18:00.002-07:00

There had been no railway line or station at Upper Parkway for many years so why were three little children waiting for a train?

Jill Somers had told her three little children, Max Wendy and Ross to go out and get some fresh air. They were continuously bickering over who was going to choose the t.v. programmes, whose toys each was to play with and who should be the one to walk the dog. She thought that if they were to go and get some air not only would they run off their excess energy but also may make them more amenable to reason and less argumentative.

I had been born in Upper Parkway and longed to go back there to live. When I met Richard who worked on the underground I hoped he’d like to go there too. He did go there but not for long and not often. He showed the greatest reluctance to even think about ever living there. I couldn’t understand this since I knew it had beautiful scenery even though I couldn’t see it. Richard and I met on the underground. Being blind I have to have help sometimes when making my transition from one train to the other. He often helped me to do this and stood there holding my hand as we waited for my train to arrive. I hoped he’d one day ask me out, which he did eventually and rather liked him holding my hand. I no longer have to hope for the signal failure I used to hope for when we were waiting for my train, not now that we are married.

“Let’s play that game with the pennies”, said Wendy who had saved up her old pennies in order to throw them onto the tracks so they could be run over by the express. Ever the tomboy she was the one who loved adventure even when it was the dangerous and foolhardy sort. She had the attention span of a flea and hopped about like one too – Hopped around when she walked and hopped from one subject to another when she talked. The boys would trail after her and found it easier to do as she suggested when it came to getting into mischief. Now she had thrown all her pennies onto the track and watched the trains run over her pre decimal coins which were big and suited the purpose very well and she was now getting bored.

Duncan Jones was also bored. He’d been given another sedative by the Matron of his Nursing Home. He always referred to her as the Ward Sister in his more lucid moments but his more lucid moments were now getting less frequent as he was entering another stage of dementia. What was all too clear were the earlier days of his life – His childhood and time spent as a train driver. When he saw the vision of the tragedy in which he was an unwilling participant he became agitated and it was then that he needed the sedatives. These scenes had not dulled over the years and he could not stop them recurring over the decades to follow them first taking place. Before the onset of his illness he longed for release from these scenes – Longed for the end to the torment which played and replayed over and over and over again in his mind. Now even the dementia wasn’t blotting them out – Not yet at any rate.

Jill had given the children a basket and suggested to them that they might like to go blackberrying. Ross would soon taste his mother’s blackberry jam which he adored and even Max was now getting a bit bored with playing down by the railway line. They’d clapped and shouted under the bridge so they could hear the echo as they did so and yesterday they had stood on the bridge and thrown big stones onto the cars below, now they thought they all should do something sensible. Wendy however liked throwing things onto the line and playing dangerous games with the trains. She grabbed the basket from Max and threw it onto the line approximately three minutes before the express was due. The seconds felt like hours as they waited for the approach of the train. Then they heard the whistle, after that they felt the rush of air and the thunderous noise of the metalic lion as it roared into the station. Suddenly thinking of their mothers wrath at the loss of the basket which would soon be a mangled mess, Wendy jumped out in front of the train to retrieve it. She slipped and fell, reaching out a hand to save herself and connecting with the live rail. She died in an instant. In one single movement of united sibling love and protectiveness, her brothers leapt forward to try and drag her clear, not quite understanding at ages seven and five that it was already too late to save her. The train rattled into the station and rolled straight over them all mangling beyond recognition all three of their little bodies. The driver saw them and tried to apply his brakes but the time lag wasn’t enough to stop the train and spare their lives and stop their deaths and horrific injuries.

As we stood in the bar of the Parkway Arms, having a drink after visiting Richard’s sister, I distinctly heard the sound of a train whistle. Richard’s face was ashen so they told me as his eyes were fixed on the wall to our right. Out of the wall and across our path hurtled the 11.45 Parkway to London Express. It came out of the right-hand wall, straight out in front of us, running over three little bodies and a basket in the process, and disappeared into the left-hand wall. At last I understood Richard’s reluctance to return to Upper Parkway. The poor little children who died were his niece and nephews and the person he’d been to see was his only sister Jill.

THE LONG CASE CLOCK

2008-10-24T07:18:00.001-07:00

The hands on the long case clock in the hall governed Martin’s life. In the end they brought him great sorrow.

As a small boy Martin was sickly. Although it’s true to say his illnesses were for the most part genuine it’s also true to say that many of them were either exaggerated or invented. He didn’t consciously make up illnesses in order to get out of going to school or some game he didn’t want to enter into with his friends but rather he thought he had them because that’s what his mother thought and encouraged him to believe.

Martin had a desperate need to adhere to routines. All of us like to stick as far as possible to our set ways of doing things but with him it was a matter of obsessional rather than normal behaviour. He hated being late for anything. His mother had told him that if he was on time he was showing politeness and that if he were early for something he was wasting his time but if he were late he was wasting the time of the person who was expecting him which amounted to rudeness. As he aged this maxim became his rigid rule of thumb which was to be obeyed without question or exception. He would glance at the clock in the hall which told him accurately what the time was or at one of the many other time pieces either worn about his person or dotted about his home. Then his problems multiplied and transformed themselves from obsessions with time and punctuality into checking that the doors were locked, windows closed and set number of paces paced between one room and another before he could leave the house. At first he thought that his wife Bryony had not noticed but she was under no illusions that his problems were mounting and amounting to the beginnings of a serious illness for which he would need help and that he would be more disabled without it than as a result of any other illness real or imagined which he may have had throughout his past life.

When she tried to talk to him about all this he denied there was a problem as many people from gamblers to alcoholics invariably do. Then she nagged him, telling him he ought to see a doctor. He eventually found that she had called him in, ostensibly to see one of their two children but really to have a look at him. “How are things with you these days”? Doctor Levy enquired. “Fine”, Martin said as he polished his glasses for the umpteenth time and excused himself to wash his hands after picking a paper clip up from the floor. The doctor was definitely hearing alarm bells in his head. He thought that Martin should see Doctor Klein, a psychiatrist. In the end and with much persuasion he agreed to do so.

There was much unravelling of his past and the feelings he had towards his mother’s over protectiveness and guilt at not taking his father’s symptoms seriously which in her eyes meant he died because she failed to see that he was undergoing a coronary. There was much talk of all the bullying he’d suffered at school because he was sensitive and delicate and didn’t like rough games or came to school wrapped up “Like a girl” as the boys put it. There was even more talk of all the imagined and real illnesses that Martin thought himself prey to and eventually an admission that, yes he did have a problem with time, obsessional behaviour and strict adherence to routine and terrible feelings of guilt when he let other people down or fell short of either their imagined or real or his real standards which were impossibly high. He attended group therapy sessions and was exposed to small amounts of his feared things and situations. For instance he was made to arrive late for an appointment with his psychiatrist – Just a matter of ten minutes or so – Also he was helped to reduce the number of checks he carried out at home on windows and doors and eventually life became more manageable which meant a better atmosphere at home and a more smoothly running household.

George, aged eleven had a vivid imagination. He told his mother that the long case clock in the hall was being silly and playing tricks. “Well it is very old now”, Bryony said to him. “Yeah I suppose it is. It even smells of the Winter Green oil that Nan used to use”. “Well there you are then”! His mother replied, reminding the child that she had died when he was six. The ticking of this clock, though comforting to many visitors to the house, was a source of irritation to Bryony who didn’t like it one little bit. She had planned to get rid of it and was wondering how she could broach the subject to her husband. She bought a bottle of wine and cooked a lovely supper for them all; even the children were allowed to stay up when she planned to introduce the possibility of getting rid of the clock. She knew there was less likely to be a scene if they were there. In the end, the second glass of wine having given her courage, she came straight out with it: “Martin, I think we ought to rid ourselves of that monstrosity in the hall. It is obvious you are now much better and I feel it is holding you back or at least it could do. I know it was your mum’s and that it is probably very valuable as an heirloom but health is more important than money and if you feel that bad about making money out of selling a treasured possession of your dead mother’s we can give the money to charity”. There she’d said it! All in one breath it came out like a cork from a bottle. He looked aghast at her and almost became angry but restrained himself, remembering George and Peter’s presence. “No dear. The clock stays. It sets the hall off a treat and looks grand. Besides as you say I’m a lot better now and just as some alcoholics like to have drink in the house so they can prove they can resist having it, I think it would be good to keep the clock so I can prove it doesn’t rule my life any longer. Besides that I have other time pieces which could take its place in that regard and it does remind me of mother. She would turn in her grave if I sold it”. He got up and turned on the TV, signalling that the discussion was at an end. Bryony however had other ideas and planned to auction it on the internet when he went into hospital to have a minor operation next week. When he came home she would present its absence to him as a Fait a Complis.

“’Bye Mum”, the children shouted as they ran for the bus. The house seemed alarmingly quiet as Bryony made coffee and waited for the computer to warm up. She thought she may give Nancy, her sister a ring. Nancy was due to come over from Ireland next week for a fortnight’s holiday. She loved Nancy so much. She often wished that she’d settle here for good. She was a lively bubbly sort of girl with Irish good looks and an Irish wit to match. She loved Ireland though, remarking on how lovely the scenery is and how Bryony was mad to leave it. However, the occasional trip to the big city was enough for her and one a year was sufficient to quell the wander lust in her. Besides she loved to see her nephews who were now growing into big strong boys. It hardly seemed a moment since they were babies and now here they were, eleven and nine respectively. She was sure that George would grow up to be a writer because of his vivid imagination. That’d be good she often thought to herself. Then the phone rang and she was jarred out of her reverie. “Must be Bry”, she said to herself as she hurried towards the phone.

Bryony sat on the stairs in the hall. Strangely, this was the best place for her mobile phone signal, goodness knew why. She glanced at the long case clock and knew it would not be long before Nancy went out to help their father on the farm. She pressed the buttons and heard the phone ring. The two girls were laughing together and giggling at the appalling jokes they were exchanging and the clock hands were moving. Then the clock itself seemed to move – To lean like the famous Italian tower, to tremble and to shake. Then a hand lengthened and strengthened. Eventually the clock had moved its position until it towered over the woman on the stairs. As it chimed ten, the big hand hit her as she tried to rise and flee upstairs, knocking her back down again as she rose. Then eventually it lowered itself down upon her, the whirring of its works in her ears and became a dead weight above the dead body which lay underneath. All Nancy heard at her end of the phone was the continuous chiming – Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty – It didn’t stop till it reached Bryony’s age – Forty-five, at which point the glass in the door shattered, the wood caught fire and the whole house went up in flames.

THE GLASS DOOR.

2008-10-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

“Sit up straight now Maud! Just look at you! All that soup running down your chin! We’ve got to make you a pretty girl now haven’t we? Never know who may be popping around here after I’ve gone home”. Maud gave Carmel a rye old smile. She knew nobody would be popping around but she was glad of that. All she wanted was peace and quiet so she could look at her old photos and play her 78’s. Carmel was lovely but she chattered on so much and Maud was no longer used to it. She loved to see Carmel – Well let’s face it she couldn’t do without her now – But somewhere in a little secret part of her she was glad when she went home. It was like going on holiday, Maud thought. At first you longed to go then longed to get back to the unequalled comfort of your own bed. “I’ll be in later to tuck you up”, Carmel said. “Snug as a bug in a rug”. She always said that to Maud as she left, as though she were talking to a child instead of an old woman of eighty-nine.

Maud had no relatives who “owned” her as Carmel said. Carmel was her home help. Of course she had become more than that. She had become her confidante, carer and friend. She wasn’t employed by Social Services but by Maud privately. She, Maud, had come into money when her husband died and took on this lively girl four years ago when she started to feel her age and realised that she could no longer manage by herself. Without help.

Carmel described herself as being from “across the water” and hadn’t lost her accent. She had the energy of a dynamo and the ability to talk and work at the same speed and time. Being close to home, the job suited her and when she went on holiday Maud went into a nursing home for respite care. She often cooked for: “Me owld lady”, as she affectionately referred to her and they got along well together. The cleaning she didn’t mind – Even down to dusting Maud’s innumerable China cats but what she really hated was shining up the glass door on Maud’s shower cabinet. For some irrational reason she was filled with an indescribable hatred for this glass door. She knew that in less than a day the door would not be spick and span as it was now but splashed and smeared again and the thought annoyed her intensely. She knew that all the other jobs would also need doing again so realised how silly it was to feel like this but some things were beyond explanation. Every time she saw it she had to fight the urge to put a fist through it or kick it off its hinges. Each day she cursed it and pulled faces at it as if it understood and could respond to her venom. Then she’d catch herself pulling a silly face in the shining, gleaming glass and say to herself: “God Carmel! You’re an eejit! It’s only an owld door!” At that point she’d look away, embarrassed at her silliness.

Old people get lonely sometimes as do all of us and that’s when they say things they perhaps shouldn’t. Carmel and Maud were growing very close and Maud started to take her more and more into her confidence. She had already shown her the masses of photos she had in her albums and all her jewellery. Carmel knew about her life as a young girl. Maud had been a dancer and had worked abroad. She’d lived in Italy and was well travelled. She loved the sea and animals of all descriptions but her favourite – The ones which captivated her heart above all others – Were cats. Her last pet cat Simpkin had died and she now felt that she was too old to have another one. Her arthritis was now very bad so she had to allow Carmel to dust her beloved ornaments, with which she now had to content herself and Carmel carried out this duty as though it were a labour of love. Only once did Maud get cross with her when she dropped one and broke its ear. However all was restored to peace and harmony when her boyfriend, Jimmy, stuck it back again with glue and did such a professional job that you couldn’t tell it had ever been damaged. “Ah! We all have little mishaps now and again”, she breezily told Maud who grudgingly agreed that this was so. Maud always said after one of their little spats: “What would I do without you? One day my dear you will be rewarded and I don’t mean in heaven. As you know I’m rich and nobody has been so faithful to me as you except Simpkin. He was more like a dog than a cat. Yes you will be well rewarded for having me as your cross in life”. “Wisht! Don’t be talkin’ like that! I don’t like to hear all this stuff about dyin’. You’ll outlive us all for you’ve the constitution of an ox!” Carmel was genuinely distressed to hear Maud talk of her inevitable death because she had grown fond of her and thought of her as a mother. Besides which she knew she’d be out of a job once Maud died. As I said the position suited her well and although Maud could be irrascible and tetchy sometimes, well you made allowances didn’t you? She was always generous and had a fund of amusing anecdotes and stories with which to brighten Carmel’s day.

It was in the spring that Maud started complaining of the pains. The doctor came and went, saying they were the result of old age and prescribing pain killers. Immediately after she’d gone Maud insisted Carmel throw them down the toilet saying: “What use will they be? I should go to hospital. I know it’s something serious – Must be at this age! I may have a malignancy”. “Ah no! Don’t be workin’ yourself up like that now! You look as bonny as ever. Besides the quack won’t be very pleased when she finds you’ve t’rown all your pills down the loo now will she? They don’t be inclined to take as much notice of you the second time if you don’t do as they say the first. That’s what I tell Jimmy after he is after goin’ with his back. He’s no sooner bin’ to the doc’s than he’s up the pub or doing the garden again. Ah! Men can be awful stupid sometimes! You don’t want to be folly’ing them now Maud”!

Maud and Carmel took their holidays apart and as usual missed each other greatly. Maud wouldn’t always admit it though, saying she was glad to get away from Carmel’s constant chat and her endless jolly smile. She let her have the spare key while she was gone so she could spring clean for her before she went away with Jimmy.

“Ah! There you are you owld bugger! I left you till last as usual! Couldn’t face you till now but when you’re done this time you’ll stay clean for the whole two weeks! Oh I could smash you so I could! I could put a brick right t’rough you! You’re the most god-awful t’ing I ever set me eyes on so you are and god forgive me!”

Six months after Maud’s return home she died from a stroke. Carmel was heartbroken. She cried for the best part of a couple of months and Jimmy was quite worried about her. Then she received what can only be termed the shock of her life. She was the sole beneficiary of Maud’s will. The house, money and jewels were hers and it was just as Maud said it would be. However there were certain conditions she had to agree to. Firstly she had to live in the house and run it as a cats’ home. She thought she could just about manage that. It was the second condition she found so unbearable. On no account was she to dismantle the shower unit and replace the glass door with a curtain. Maud had commented how lovely she kept it and how brightly she’d made it shine. In a private letter to Carmel she wrote: “Dear Carmel, thank you for all you’ve done for me. I trust you will enjoy living in the house and running it as a cats’ home just as much as I know how much you enjoyed polishing my glass door. You did it with such zeal that I’m sure you loved it best of all since you always saved it till last”. Carmel thought and said aloud to herself: “You owld bugger Maud! You know damned well I hated it! Ah well! I’ll just get the vinegar and newspaper”!

THE SHOES.

2008-10-21T21:01:00.001-07:00

She hated the shoes – From the moment she saw them she knew that they would have to go.

Maureen couldn’t sleep. It was another muggy night in mid July. She was frightened of waking Alan. He’d been working hard lately and needed his rest. They were hoping to visit their only son in Canada in September of the following year and that cost money. At the moment they hadn’t got a bean. She was doing two jobs as it was and now, the way things were going, she would be too tired to properly cope with either of them.

It was the noise that had woken her as well as the heat. It was like someone banging about and was coming from the wardrobe. She knew if she told Alan about it he’d only say she was dreaming or imagining it so she kept quiet but the noise was definite enough. She’d only noticed it during the last couple of days and after she’d crept down to the kitchen and made tea, she sat trying to think exactly when it had started. Then she remembered. It started after Alan had brought home the shoes. They’d been given him by Brenda, his old friend’s widow. She said they were too good to give to the charity shop and as Alan was the same size asAndy he may as well have them.

“This is a lousy pub”, Andy commented to Alan when they had drunk their first pint. The seats were ripped, there was beer all over the floor and the staff were abrupt. “Yeah”, Alan agreed. “Let’s move on”. They were only a few yards down the street when Alan spotted two girls walking along. “They look nice”, he commented and made straight for the one with the long legs and nice tan. “Fancy jjoining me and my mate for a couple of drinks”? He asked hopefully. The girls looked wary. They weren’t used to being propositioned so forcefully and besides were on their way to see someone in hospital. “What’s your name anyway – Well I mean names really don’t I”? Maureen who was the less inhibited answered for both of them, telling them their names and shaking hands with the two men. Until then neither of the men had thought much about finding girls to go out with. They’d each been contented with heavy drinking sessions and going off on steam trains which was a passion they’d shared. Now though with these two suddenly appearing out of nowhere things looked as if they may be very different. Andy especially was very taken with the quieter girl who hardly said much and thought she may be nice just as a friend but didn’t want too much involvement all the same. Instead he thought of her as rather mysterious – A puzzle which he’d solve in his spare time which would be found only when he wasn’t off on steam railways with Alan. For Alan though he was truly smitten with the lovely Maureen and definitely wanted to get to know her better.

Maureen and Brenda had always been good friends. From infant school they were inseparable. Maureen was the more confident one in whose shadow Brenda walked. They were happy with that though and Brenda never felt herself to be domineered or kept down. Luckily their mothers got on really well too. Eventually as they grew they did everything together and to some extent even dressed alike though Brenda being much shorter looked a bit silly in some of the clothes Maureen war so looked for others which were a bit different but not too much so. They got jobs in the same places . Neither of them were particularly ambitious and didn’t like offices much. They were happier meeting the public and especially Maureen loved chatting to clients and smiling even at the most miserable ones which seemed to have the desired effect - To make them smile in return. Working had really brought Brenda out of her shell and her mother commented how much less shy she was now she had this job and had left school. Her mother felt rather sad then when she started to bring Andy home. He was quiet like she was and seemed to have eyes that looked right through you. His only interest seemed to be trains. He never talked about sport or politics, didn’t know much about what was going on in the world and had no hobbies but the steam trains. True he went for a drink with Alan but that was only at his suggestion and Brenda’s mother doubted he’d go anywhere by himself without Alan’s prompting. He worked at a shoe menders - His father’s in fact. She rather had the feeling he’d been forced into that and would rather have been doing something else – Probably on his beloved railway. Now Alan was a different kettle of fish. Cybil, Brenda’s mum, always hoped that her daughter would get involved with him. Now here was a man who would have been able to bring her out. He was lively and had plenty to say and was good looking – She thought rather like Clark Gable had been in his youth. He could wax lyrical on any subject and seemed to always have a funny joke to make everyone laugh if there was an awkward silence brewing in a conversation. He was interested in her funny hobbies too when they all visited her as a foursome. She loved the tarot cards and reading tea leaves not that there were many of those now since the advent of teabags.

Of course all four had a double wedding. It seemed that Brenda wanted to share her big day with Maureen who was equally anxious to do likewise. Maureen’s family were delighted to see that the girls were now settled. Her sister Anna was also married now and only Duncan was left without someone. He was Maureen’s older brother and was in and out of hospital a lot because of illness. In fact they were off to see him the night they first set eyes on the boys who really were the ones to set eyes on them. Cybil was very put out to find that Maureen was expecting and that her Brenda – Her only little girl wasn’t. As it turned out ?Andy was infertile – Another thing for which Cybil could dislike him. He was always very polite to her and very kind to Brenda. She even grew to love the railway almost as much as he did. She’d go on trips with him when Alan couldn’t because of commitments at home and again sometimes they’d all go as a foursome.

He’d bought the shoes just before Christmas. He’d liked them. During that winter what with the heavy rain, he had noticed that the soles and the uppers were separating a bit and thought how sad it was that nothing is made as well as it used to be. Probably enough glue hadn’t been used on them during their manufacture. Whatever the reason, he’d pop them into the shop tomorrow and get them mended. In a quiet moment he’d have time to see to them he was sure. Cybil was there again when he got home. He showed them off proudly to her, telling her what a fine bargain they were especially for someone who could repair the slight damage that there was to the soles. She sniffed and looked down her nose as usual and when he was in the bath he heard Brenda and her rowing over him again. He’d always known that she didn’t like him. However, he had long ceased to worry about it. As long as Brenda cared that was all that mattered and she did care. He was still friends with Alan and doted on Maureen’s baby whom he saw as a little niece really since he and Alan were almost like brothers they’d been friends for so long.

Brenda slammed out of the house, taking their dog for a walk. She always did this when annoyed with her mother. All was now quiet in the house as Cybil held each shoe in her hands. She seemed to be talking to them when Andy came down from the bathroom. She hastily dropped them when she heard the door opening, telling him she had indeed thought them nice. All she wanted now was to get an object of Maureen’s and her plan would be complete.

The next morning Brenda woke shivering with cold and coughing. Obviously she was in for a dose of something nasty. Dutifully Andy rose early in order to take the dog walking before he went to work. He could take him into the shop with him and knew his mother would have him. She lived in the flat above. He may as well wear the shoes while walking the dog and then take them into work on his feet instead of carrying them in a bag. He had a spare pair at his mother’s anyway. It was while crossing the fields with the dog that he first noticed it. The shoes seemed to be propelling him along – Sometimes against his will. Like someone with Parkinson’s disease he couldn’t always stop when he wanted to. He was fine when he took them off but he didn’t like to do that here because of the dew and wet leaves. They were now approaching the road. He called to Sam, the soppy old Labrador which trotted along chewing up a stick he’d found and put him on his lead. When he reached the road the lights were red. He tried to stop but the shoes wouldn’t let him. They kept on moving, moving out between the moving buses, moving out between the lorries and cars, darting in and out between the motor cycles until finally a bus knocked him down. He died later that day but amazingly, the shoes and the dog were intact.

It was Brenda who first heard the noise when she had them in her own wardrobe. They seemed restless as though they wanted to find someone. She hated to see them there and wondered why she had not had them buried with Andy. Then she thought that maybe they’d be “quieter” with Alan, his only friend. She gave them to Alan who brought them home but said nothing about the noises they made or the feeling that they were looking at her when she took out the laces and looked into the eyelets through which they were threaded. From the moment Maureen had them in her own wardrobe she hated them and knew she would have to get rid of them. Somehow she knew they would kill Alan if she didn’t. She formulated her plan while drinking her tea and waiting for the alarm to wake him. When she was alone and he was at work, she’d take them – Take them and dump them beside the tree in the middle of Parmaston Grove. She was sure that this would be the best thing to do. It was far enough away from their own home so that they’d not be traced. If anyone asked her why she was doing it she could say that she was grief stricken at the loss of her friend and was a little unbalanced. They’d be safe there. No way could she or would she give them to anyone else. These shoes were evil.

When Alan had gone to work she phoned in sick. Her old ladies at the sheltered housing complex where she worked as a home help would understand and that nice Head of the school where she also worked would sympathise too. She never took any time off she was so conscientious. Quietly she looked out of the car window to make sure nobody was looking. Then she saw that one man on a bicycle was coming past. She waited for him to go and then gently placed the shoes by the tree. As she was getting into her car she saw to her horror that the shoes were running after her. She only just managed to scramble into the car in time to drive away with the shoes in hot pursuit.

Just as Cybil was coming out of the local post office she saw them too. They’d just crossed the main road where a group of startled pedestrians and motorists were staring open mouthed at the sight of a pair of lone shoes running side by side along the road as if they were being chased by the devil himself. Suddenly and without warning Cybil fell to the floor with shock. Then the shoes came for her and began to batter her about the head and body. As if they contained the weight of a man, and crushed her ribs as they danced upon her and leapt on her chest. They broke her legs as they did their frenzied dance like the mad things they had become. Eventually the laces flicked out of their eyelets and wrapped themselves round her throat like coiling snakes. They squeezed and squeezed until all her life had ebbed away. I should know. I was the reporter on the story for the BBC news. As I picked them up once they had stopped their deadly dance I saw a face – A man’s face with a hammer in his hand cobbling the soles and the uppers back together.

(The end).

THE DANGERS OF POWER.

2008-10-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

It says in the Bible that the love of money is the root of all evil but I think that it’s man’s love of power and his reluctance to relinquish it which causes most if not all the trouble in the world. Of course money is implicated in this since the powerless poor are kept so by their poverty while those with money can exert influence and do so to the detriment of all if their intentions are not honourable.

There seems to be an insatiable need for people to control others and this is done by everyone from church elders to overly authoritarian parents who exercise their power in the wrong way. It’s our lust for power which has caused wars, resulted in the abuse of children; those with mental illness and those with physical and sensory disabilities. It begins with very small children’s love (seemingly harmless and possibly done for the purposes of experimentation and done in ignorance)who find that by chopping worms in half and pulling the wings off flies gives them a sense of power over these smaller creatures. It ends with blustering statesmen strutting around and parading their authority like peacocks do for all the world to see, thinking they are impressing others while desperately trying to book a place for themselves in the annals of history, thereby gaining for themselves the immortality which is nobody’s to claim.

Men in religious sects (and it is usually men) claim to have direct instruction from God and manage to dupe millions of people into believing their claims to the point where these gullible and often lonely people are persuaded to give up the gift of life itself for the promise of a better world beyond the grave. I worry when I meet someone who wants to be a leader for it’s they who cause all the trouble even if they don’t set out to do so because their followers, often too scared or in awe of them to say anything, trail along blindly after them like automatons who have lost the power of thought.

I was recently involved with a religious sect for seven months and learned a lot. The wisdom of what they taught was in the main very sound but the psychological tactics used to manipulate people and all the contradictions that they uttered made me get out fast. So indoctrinated were their members that one who had just undergone a serious operation for cancer was back among them within two weeks and out with them trying to gain more converts. Of course I learned that the men at the top of the organisation are to be in a more privileged position than the rest of us after the great comeback of the compassionate carpenter and various people were encouraged to dissociate themselves from all former trappings associated with their past lives. There was no room for argument or debate when little scenes of pretend interactions between converts and would-be converts (played by actual converts) were acted out – All in the name of stifling debate or reasoned thought. I felt enormous guilt and fear when I broke free from these people at first, thinking that bad luck or worse would follow but also I felt enormous relief which is largely the emotion which persists to this day.

Had I not read “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen-eighty-four” and taken an interest in psychology, had I not been intelligent and strong minded, had I been desperately lonely and gullible, I’d have been dancing like a puppet on the string pulled by a secret group of unknown men in their little huddle, exercising their immorally obtained power over masses of people who en masse act like sheep. Doubtless such people, reading this will say I have been taken over by the devil who has infiltrated my mind and taken me far from God. All I have to say to that is that if you remove from the word “devil” its first letter, you end up with the word “evil” and absolute power in the hands of fallible men makes them evil, goes to their heads and as the Bible also says

“When man dominates man it is to his injury” and this is no less true of religious cults and sects than it is of politicians, presidents, army generals or those wielding power over disabled people. To remain free you need to be able to think for yourself and take responsibility for your own actions and conduct and when anyone seeks to stop you from exercising the power of thought then you must resist them with all the power at your disposal.

LATE IN THE DAY.

2008-10-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

“Ah! I’ve found it! There it is. The note that says to go and buy some more washing up liquid in case there’s another war. I wonder why I put it in the freezer? Never mind I’ve found it now”.

I’m exhausted. It took me forty-five minutes to get back from the shops. When I kept asking people where Chestnut Avenue was they looked at me as if I was off my chump. Who gives them permission to keep altering the road signs that’s what I’d like to know. Chestnut Avenue, Chestnut Avenue, I kept repeating it like a mantra. Then I met mrs. ‘’’Oh you know! She has the little black dog. She walked back with me and says this road is now called Lyme Avenue of all things! I must write it down before I forget. She asked me why I’d gone shopping in my slippers of all things! As if I’d ever do a silly thing like that! What was that road again? Chestnut Avenue wasn’t it? Ah! I used to live there with my mother and sisters. Funny that. Mother hasn’t been to see me for months. She used to come every week without fail, regular as clockwork she was. You can’t rely on people can you? You’d think though that your own mother would be the last person to let you down. Where did I put my pen? Oh here it is! In the washing up bowl. Those children must have been in again! Little tikes! No discipline! Well they don’t teach them properly now. We had to do our tables: Once two is two, two twos are four, four twos are ‘’’’’’ What’s the name of that road again? I know how to remember it. One-two buckle my shoe, three four, knock at the door, five six pick up sticks, six! Six! That’s it! Three twos are six! Four twos are eight! Who says I’m losing my memory! Of course I’m not!

I must remember to get the money ready for the milkman. He calls for it on Saturdays. It’s Saturday tomorrow. It was Saturday the day before yesterday. They never used to have two Saturdays in a week. I expect that’s the government or Europe. First they messed about with the money and then the weights and now they’re messing about with the time. Can’t leave anything be. Oh look! My slippers are all wet! There’s mud on them. Must have been when I went out to get the washing in.

Think I’ll make some tea. Oh I can’t. There is no tea. Tea tin’s full of those silly little things! Who do they think can be bothered breaking into those things to get the tea leaves out? Why does everything have to be wrapped up so stupidly? I threw them all out! Every last one of them went in the bin. Perhaps Mrs. ‘’’’’You know! What’s her name, she may have some proper tea. She didn’t. She gave me some more of those stupid things and told me they’re all like that now. “I know” I said. “Do you think I’m stupid”? She gave me a funny look, telling me she was going to ring Social Services and that I’m not safe to live here on my own. I don’t like them! They take people’s children away and look through your papers and pry into your affairs.

I must go and get some washing up liquid in case

there’s another war. Oh how I remember the war! Straight down in the shelter as soon as the siren sounded and not up again until the “all clear” sounded. They wanted me to have Shirley evacuated. I was not standing for that. I was right anyway. Oh she’s a fine girl! She came last week or was it the week before? Time goes so quickly. That lot in Parliament have speeded it up. Keep fiddling with the clocks. Can’t leavve anything alone. I must put my slippers to dry. I wonder how they got so wet? Sometimes my head feels as if it is full of cotton wool and little stones. When I try to think the little stones and cotton wool move about. Then my head starts to ache. I’m sure things used to be different before the stones began scraping together but I can’t think how. Mrs. Simmonds! That’s it! Mrs. Simmonds! That’s her name! She gets right narky if they leave out the d. That’s better! Ah I remember now! Who says my memory’s going!

Fancy that! I must have gone to bed with my clothes on! First time I’ve ever done that. I must go shopping after breakfast. I’ve just been out to the gate but I can’t remember which way to turn for the shops. Doesn’t it take a long time to get light these days? Well if I go now it will have got light by the time I get there surely. Did I have breakfast? No I didn’t! That’s why I can’t remember. My mother always says that your brain won’t function properly on an empty stomach. You should always have breakfast if you want to be at your best. Besides it stops you fainting in the middle of the morning. That coffee was horrible! It was the right colour but it didn’t taste like coffee. Now I know why! When I finally found my specs and held the jar up to the light it said: “g.r.a.v.y g.r.a.n.u.l.e.s” on it. Those little buggers have been in again and put gravy granules in my coffee jar. I can’t understand the parents of today.

I had to wait an hour for the shops to open. “You are an early bird, Ada”, said the chap in the baker’s. He looked a bit strange when I asked if he’d had a nice Christmas. He told me that Christmas wasn’t for another two months! Well why have they got those cards up in the news agent’s? I’ll ask mother when she comes. She does annoy me! You’d think she’d pop in and see me especially after all the years I spent going to see her, on buses in the pouring rain. She sent me back a letter I wrote to her the other day. It said: “Not known at this address” on it. If she’s moved why hasn’t she let me know where she’s gone? You’d think you’d be able to rely on your own mother! We used to have some wonderful times together. Poor but happy, that’s what we were. She used to tell me stories before I went to sleep. When I was frightened she used to come in and chase the ghosts away. We had a big black Labrador named Jet which she used to take with us over the fields. I can’t remember it raining as much as it does now. Rain’s got in here but not everywhere, only where I’m sitting. My clothes are wet! I’ve just been to the window but the pavements look dry. There must be a leak in here somewhere. I’ll have to ring Mr. Jarvis about it.

I never used to have this bedroom. They’ve moved all these people in here. I can’t quite remember when it was but I think it was just after I saw that beautiful sunset in my kitchen. A lovely big ring was glowing red, as if the sun really had come to earth. I touched it and burned my hand. I can still see the scar. I never knew you could burn your hand on the sun like that. They said it was the cooker ring but who’d be so stupid as to leave the cooker ring on with nothing on it? I want to go home. They tell me lies in here! For one thing they tell me my mother has been dead for over thirty years and that I am eighty-five. Impossible! I was only sixty last year and I should know. Shirley gave me a lovely cake and a party. She’s coming tomorrow. I shall ask her to get me out of here. Why should they keep me here? I haven’t done anything! The ceiling leaks here as well. All the stones and cotton wool are going round in my head! I asked where Albert was and why he hasn’t come home yet from the war. They said the war’s been over since 1945. I can’t take it all in! The staff here keep taking my things. Just the other day I lost a lovely blue cardigan. Then I saw one of them wearing an identical one to it. They think I don’t know what they’re up to but who’d be so stupid as to mislay a cardigan?

I’ve been standing at the gates waving to Shirley. She says I’m safer in here and that I can’t look after myself now. I’m sad to think I’ve had to leave my home. She told me that her father and I bought it off Mr. Jarvis years ago but I can’t remember now. My head’s more full of cotton wool than ever. The bits where I was a child though are so vivid. I can remember skinning my knees on the bark of a tree which I’d climbed just so I could get a glimpse of Eddie Pritchard who, years later, used to take me to the pictures but ask me what I’d had for breakfast yesterday or today and I’d be hard put to tell you.

It’s late in the day. I’ve just seen the sun go down behind the trees. I think tomorrow’s Saturday. Funny that! There never used to be more than one Saturday in a week. I must go out tomorrow and get some more washing up liquid in case there’s another war. Twenty pence should be enough surely. Aren’t the prices high! I shall write to mother again too. I’m so worried about her. Before I do though, I must have a little sleep.

LET’S HAVE SOME CLOSURE HERE!

2008-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

You know folks I’m getting paranoid!

Everywhere I’ve been throughout my life has closed after I’ve resided there. It all started with the hospital I was born in which was in a posh bit of L – K don’t you know

Rest assured I don’t live in K now and haven’t for a very long time. Now though I learn that many years ago the hospital closed. I can just hear all those N.H.S managers, doctors and nurses and even the other patients saying:

“Can’t risk another little brat like that one! Like a little skinned rabbit she was”.

True I was. I was only two pounds when born being in such a hurry to get here and that’s what started the trouble but we won’t go there will we? Then many years later after I left College, then in the wilds of S. it closed and was re-opened with a name change and is now to be found in H. I swear I heard the board of Governors saying:

“Best move in case we get another ‘un like that one. Caw blimey! She spent half her time in hospital having her back jumped on by physioterrorists and the other half listening to or broadcasting on the College radio station set up by a partially sighted guy who had his own transmitter. Never seen her do a stroke”.

After that came the hostel where I met my old man. Now that was on a famous carnival route and I used to hear it go by each year while I leapt about to the music only the procession passed before I got into my stride or fell over anyone’s feet. (Well if Stevie can do it why not me)? That place closed not long after I married and moved to C. I swear I heard the Trustees of the Royal National Institute of Blind People, who ran the place say:

“Right! Shut it! Everybody out. I mean she had a few blind dates here and look where it got her? Besides that there was too much frivolity in the place and too many corny jokes told. God forbid we get another like that one”.

I don’t think the landlords have any plans to shut down the last place I lived in so obviously I’d sobered down or up by then.

What’s that noise? Oh the post:

“We regret to inform you that we’re pulling down your block of flats tomorrow but I’ve heard park benches can be quite comfortable. Have a nice day”!

I say! Can I come and kip with you for a bit? I’m very respectable really – Clean and tidy and love great music and am a dab hand at baking pastry blind! What do you mean you only want the dog? Blimey! Even the dog’s left me!

“Come on! Here girl! (whistle whistle) Oh be like that then! Please yourself! All the more time for me to write rubbish for my blog”.

KINDER ISLAND.

2008-10-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

“I’m Abby. I’m seven-and-three-quarters. It’s very important not to leave out the three-quarters. When grown-ups say their age – Say forty-five – They stay forty-five till the very day they become forty-six. That can’t be right can it? After all you are forty-five and one day then forty-five and two days all the way up to forty-six. Me and my friends all ran away on the same day. Daniel who is ten-and-a-half and very strong rowed this boat with us all inside. A big storm blew us about and I thought we’d tip out but we didn’t. We stayed upright for miles and miles and miles! In the end there was no land only water. At first it was a bit frightening but then we got used to it until we eventually found this island that nobody wanted so we took it over. Since then loads more children have come to join us. Now there’s children here from every nation on earth. We don’t row much. We do fight sometimes but normally it’s about who’s going to look for food or keep a look-out at night when strange animals wander about. We don’t have many rules but one is never to let a quarrel go on into the next day. At first Daniel wanted to be our leader because he’s the eldest but we said ‘no’ because the older you are the less sensible you are. Sophie who is four is too young to be it so in the end they said I could be because I am sort of in the middle. After a bit though it will be another child’s turn who comes from another country because that’s fair. We will wait till the sun has gone up and down a thousand times before we change. Daniel is counting the times off with a pencil and a bit of paper.

We miss our parents a bit. Mine would be nice and kind if they were here but if they were then we’d have to let all the other grown-ups come too because that’s fair too and it was the grown-ups we were trying to get away from so that would be no good. Besides that not all children’s parents are kind are they? Another rule is that no grown-ups could come to the island and be allowed to stay because they say things and do the very, very opposite. Even my mum does that. For instance last Christmas after singing carols to celebrate Christ’s coming, mum refused to have Mrs. Pearce round because she’s old and smells a bit of wee. I smelled of wee when I was a baby but mum kept me every day that ever there was till I chose to run away. Mum says Mrs. Pearce is a bit morbid – Always talking about Mr. Pearce who’s in heaven now and that would make Christmas sad and it’s supposed to be jolly. I like her though and like going round to her house but mum says it’s dirty there and I shouldn’t. Our teacher, Mrs. Mossman, says the reason she’s morbid is because most of her future has gone into the past and she does not have much more left and that we should be kind to her. Jesus would have had her round though he might have told her to wash first. When mum caught me going into her house she told me off, saying it’s dirty but she can’t help that can she? If Christmas is the season of good will then surely we shouldn’t leave anyone out should we?

I miss going to school a bit and playing with my friend Sarah and playing in the playground. I forgot my skipping rope so thought I may get bored but I don’t as there are many big storms which stop it getting boring. We can watch the waves and then see the sun come back out. It’s always sunny here. If I’d remembered my rope then the sand would have flown up into my eyes I suppose and stung them. I do my tables sometimes – Well the ones I did before running away. I had started to learn to write though some of it is a bit squiggly. I even miss our head teacher, Miss Barker. She was always shouting at us and telling us off for running in the corridors. We’ve made a swing in the palm trees. It’s much nicer to land on the sand if we fall off than it would be to land on concrete or even that special stuff. I wish Sarah had run away too. How she can want to stay in the world as it is I’ll never know. Grown-ups’ quarrels last for ever and ever – Spreading to those who have nothing to do with them. Then if they can’t get their own way they drop bombs on other grown-ups and their children. Eventually they either kill each other or compromise so they may just as well do that in the first place. Different coloured people don’t like other people and then white people sit in the sun to become the same colour as those they hate and still find they are the same inside so how silly is that? Then black people who have been hurt want to hurt others too sometimes which is also silly and solves nothing.

I remember going to the doctor’s once with mum. There was a blind man there. Mum made us sit right over on the other side of the room even though there were two seats next to him. Doors were opening and closing everywhere around him and I worried that he wouldn’t know when his turn was to go in so just before it was our turn I ran up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘your turn next’. Mum told me off for letting go of her hand, talking to strangers and she looked away from the man but I looked for a long time right into his broken eyes. I wondered why they didn’t work. He smiled when I touched him. It was the first time he’d smiled and his face changed from being like a frozen thing set in a mask to very like our own faces. I thought about him a lot – Even through the children’s programmes. I wondered how he got there by himself. Nobody could tell me because we don’t know anybody like that. Anyway if you decide to sit on purpose far away from someone you won’t get close enough to get to know them and then you can’t ask can you? Why do adults say to us that if we don’t ask we won’t learn and then tell us it’s rude to ask questions? Once I got told off for asking a woman her age but the first two things people ask me are: ‘how old are you’? And ‘what’s your name’. I decided to say it was rude of them to ask me those things and was told off again for being impolite. No wonder I ran away from the grown-up world. It’s so confusing and makes no sense.

Daniel and another Sarah have just lit a fire. I’ve caught loads of fish. I feel a bit sorry for them but I’m so hungry I’ve got to eat something. Ages ago we found some dates and figs but they don’t fill you up for long do they? We must look a bit bedraggled whatever that means. Daniel is now bear foot since he lost his socks. He put them in the sea to wash them and the tide took them away. We’ve just found out how to open this coconut so we can drink the milk that’s inside. It’s not like the milk we have at home. We’ve got used to it though just as we have got used to living without the television though Sophie misses the children’s programmes. Sometimes we act out the characters in the babies programmes and that comforts her”.

I hauled myself out of the water. I was soaked through and exhausted from swimming. I’d fallen in after losing my way and slipping on some rocks. I realised that if I didn’t keep swimming I would drown as the waters were closing over my head. I am not an experienced swimmer. Now and again I just floated on my back till I regained by breath. Goodness knows where I am. I can hear soft breathing far away but I dare not move in case I fall into the sea again.

“Who’s that! Who are you”? I started as I felt a little hand in mine. “It’s a grown-up! Go away! This is our island”. I sat up, relieved that this child spoke English. She knelt down on the sand beside me as I brushed sand out of my eyes. “Oh! Your eyes are broken”! She said. “Yes, well, they’re well and truly caput”, I agreed. “Your clothes are still a bit wet. You should take them off because if you don’t you’ll get rheumatism.” Where did she get that from? “I can’t undress in front of you. I’ve got a few scars and things you shouldn’t see”. “We wouldn’t mind those”, said the child. “Besides we can see through to the inside of you – Past the outer things which grown-ups hide behind”. I’ve always known that so it came as no surprise. I went to where the sun was shining and soon got dry as the temperature was high. As I started to walk the child suddenly and silently led me to a safe place to sit. Perched on a rock which protruded from the sand we began to talk some more. “I’m Abby”, the child said, “And I’m Sally”, I said. “What happened to your eyes”? She asked. “Oh them! Well I had an accident when I was a baby so I can’t remember it very well. I don’t remember the details because it was a long time ago”. “Were you a child when you got blind”? She asked. “Yes”, I said. I wondered what she was thinking as a long silence followed.

All at once I was surrounded by children – Some as young as four and others as old as ten. “This isn’t a place for grown-ups”, said one of them. They were all around me now, at my feet and sides and even leaning up against my back. It was then that Abby spoke to them: “This lady’s blind. We have to find out what she wants, where she came from how long she intends to stay and whether she will go back and tell other grown-ups where we are but we shouldn’t turn her away because Jesus said so. Clear those things out of the way – Those big rocks for instance – For it says that whoever puts a stumbling block in the path of a blind person would be better to have a mill stone hung round his neck”. After moving the rocks the children encircled me once more, sitting quiet and attentive. They asked me why I’d come. “I’ve lost my way. I’ve become so sick of the world, the way it’s run; the way people hurt and ignore those who’re different I wanted to run away. Only I got so hopelessly lost. Because I can’t see and I am not in a familiar place this means I ended up here. I wandered about so much that eventually I fell into the sea and the waters went right over my head. I thought I would drown and look! I’ve scratched my legs on rocks that were sticking up out of the water”. The children looked. One came to bathe the cuts with a palm leaf soaked in sea water. It stung a lot but I knew it would heal because of the salt. “What do you want with us?” Asked Abby. “I just want to stay with you till I feel better and until I can think properly about how to get out of the mess I’m in and get back to where I should be”.

“It will mean sharing our food with her and trusting her not to tell on us if she ever goes away”, one of them said. They thought I was asleep but I wasn’t and I could hear them in conference. “If we send her away and make her an outsider where can she go”? Abby asked Daniel and Richard who were all for turning me out. “She could be useful”, Daniel conceded. “She could reach up to the higher tree branches and pick fruit for us. She could teach us things she knows like maths and history and tell us stories.” “She has lived longer”, Abby said: “That means she has been an outsider in the grown-up world longer and has been hurt more often. If we turn her away then we are no better than the grown-ups we came to get away from and we ran away because we didn’t like how they did things. We want our world to be different from theirs. That’s the whole point. Besides she looks poorly – Kind of sad too”, said Abby. “We must vote”, said Abby in a very important voice. I’d have given anything to see how many little hands went up. “We’ll tell her the good news in the morning and make it clear that this is our world and that no grown-up – Not even a blind one – Can ever tell us what to do”. Soon I heard running footsteps in the sand and called: “Abby”, who came running at the sound of my voice. “Did you hear all that?” she asked. “Yes”, I replied. “We thought you were sleeping.” “I will soon but I couldn’t till I knew you weren’t going to turn me away”, I said. “As long as you remember that you can never be in charge or tell us what to do and that this is our world you will be safe”, she said. “I notice none of you said I’d be a burden”. “Burdens are things”, said Abby. “Burdens are things not people”, she said with feeling. Then in a much gentler voice she said: “Open your arms”. I did and she came gently into them and both of us snuggled up to sleep

The next day we picked fruit and played games. I told them stories which have been stored up in my head for ages. Then Daniel, who’d not wanted me to stay, appeared with a present – A long piece of bamboo – Saying: “Here you are! Broken-eyed people carry these don’t they”? “Yes,” I said. “I had one but I had to let go of it when I fell into the sea otherwise I’d have drowned as I couldn’t hold on to it and swim at the same time”. “Well you’ve got another one now”, he commented. I was beginning to think it would do nicely but as it happened I didn’t need to use it much since as soon as I got up to move, little hands were there to guide me to where I wanted to be. Had another adult been present then surely they would have thought this a moving sight and would have had much to learn about the naturalness in these little children’s behaviour and the warmth emanating from their souls. From the very first moment of my arrival here I have never felt incongruous or unwanted by these children. Those who are afraid of the darkness come to me for comfort, knowing I won’t laugh at them or turn them away, thinking them silly. I have an honest, unadulterated picture of the world as seen from their perspective and through their eyes. What struck me most forcibly was the paradox of their having immature emotions, yet a wisdom far beyond both their and my years. I was amazed at how quickly they could change from almost being grown up themselves back into the little children which they still were

A ship was spotted. Abby suggested putting the fire out so we’d not be visible to its crew. We huddled together, frightened of discovery and yet in my case longing for it since I could envisage a time when survival would become difficult. “Abby”, I said, “In a way it would be good to be found. After all one day we will all have to go back to the real world because we won’t be able to cope here indefinitely”. “Why can’t you enjoy today without worrying about tomorrow”? She asked simply. “Because I have experience which enables me to think ahead and look ahead”, I answered. “Experience also made you want to run away in the first place”, she reminded me. That night a terrible storm raged. The wind and the rain were so fierce as to frighten me. The children and I all stayed close for safety’s sake. The log cabin which Daniel and Richard made blew down and some of the trees were uprooted. The children were stunned into a silence beyond tears and were shocked by the devastation. After some considerable time the log cabin was rebuilt. One of the children asked me: “Why is nature cruel”? I explained that I thought it was indifferent as opposed to cruel and that man continually upsets its balance by burning fossil fuels, needlessly felling trees and wasting energy. The next question was: “Why are adults cruel”? My answer was much the same. We are cruel when we become indifferent to another person’s needs, when we think that those who’re different are inferior and when we depersonalise people. We are cruel when we think people incapable of needing and giving love and that our rights are their privileges and that they do not merit respect. After I’d explained it more simply Abby asked: “Is it when we lose our way and ask people to do as we say and not as we do and when we don’t do as we say they should”? “Yes”, I said. I couldn’t have put it better myself. When the other children slept she said: “I’m glad you’re here”. Then with a voice breaking with emotion she said: “I miss my mummy and daddy”. She didn’t want anyone else to see her cry so I held her, telling her it would be our secret.

“How will we know when it’s our birthdays”? She asked. “Well since we have no watches or calendars we will just have to wait till we feel like having a big giant birthday for all of us and for Christmas we can have a separate one for Jesus,” I suggested. When we had our giant parties a greedy child ate more bananas than the others and was required to go to the naughty rock for a while but was allowed to come back when he apologised and before the night fell. Abby found it hard to forgive him since he’d taken them unbeknownst to me but I said forgiveness should come after an apology and if the person is truly sorry and resolves not to repeat his misdemeanours.

“What’s it like to be blind”? This question was repeated over and over again by the children who seemed to have a fascination with the subject. For all my language skills I found it hard to convey it to them. “Are you in the dark”? They asked. “To be in the dark you have to be in the light and I’m not in either. It’s like being in a nothingness”, I said. Since we were on an island I told them it was like being on an island of blindness, disconnected from the mainland of sight and some seemed to grasp this concept. I said it could be frightening but that one gets used to it. “Did you go to special school”? Abby asked. “Yes”. I said. “Then why aren’t you treated as if you’re special and not as if you’re different and if people insist on treating you as if you’re different then why don’t they call it different school”? “A good question”. I thought. The children described things like sunsets and trees and although I still can’t imagine them as I’ve not seen them they took so much trouble that I was deeply moved by their thoughtfulness. They made no assumptions about whether I was extra clever, a retard or had compensatory senses but rather accepted me as I am and liked me and I loved them for it.

Warm sun woke me on the day on which I left them. A helicopter circled overhead and spotted us. I was glad they realised I couldn’t have betrayed them since I was still with them when we were found. TV. cameras were everywhere and the precious place known only to and loved by children was no longer a private secret but known and violated by the adult world. Other aircraft landed to take us off and return us to our respective homes. Abby sat beside me all the way home and was eventually greeted, like many others, by crying parents who were relieved to see their children safe and well if a little thinner. Abby asked me on the way home as she sat beside me: “Since we ran away from the world because we didn’t like it, how can we change it when we haven’t got any power”? I told her: “Always keep in touch with the child within yourself. Hold to the values you have now and make no outsiders your enemies. Always remember why you ran away and remember the teachings of Jesus and adhere to them even when it goes against your self interest and even though you will fail. If enough people make a little difference then it will become a big difference and that will change the world.” As we neared our journey’s end I told the children it was a privilege to know them and to have been a part of their world. I told them, as I tell you now, that I believe that the smaller you are, the nearer you are to the very heart and essence of god. I told them: “I am humbled to have been part of your lives and sad to have to return to a world into which I do not fit and feel I do not belong”. Abby and Sophie got hold of a hand each in order to help me down the aircraft steps. Her final words to me were: “I Love you sally, you’re not blind at all”. Now my voice was the one breaking with emotion as I said: “I love you too, all of you”. With that and with Daniel’s bamboo cane, I made my way home alone.

(The end).

THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS I’VE BEEN ASKED ABOUT BLINDNESS.

2008-10-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

- “Do you dream visually or at all”?

Yes/no. I do dream and like you remember some of them. Just as in my waking life I don’t see people so it’s the same in my dreams. I lost my sight too early to have built up visual imagery which means it cannot appear in my dreams in the same way as alcohol doesn’t appear in a driver’s blood if he’s not been drinking and driving. If he’d never drank and the police described the consistency of different types of drinks he’d still not test positive for it in his blood.

- “What if I fill in the gaps surely then you will imagine things visually”?

Sorry no! People have gone to great lengths to describe my surroundings but it doesn’t work. If you said:

“I had a lump as big as a tennis ball on my hand”,

I’ve handled a tennis ball so would know that it’d be a fair sized lump but if you said:

“A lorry as big as an elephant went by”,

I doubt I’d believe you because factually I don’t think they can be that big but cannot imagine an elephant anyway.

- “Do you cook and if so do you scald yourself”?

I do all my own cooking, do not often scald myself and cannot remember the last time I either burned or scalded myself. I know when meat is done because the fork comes out clean and doesn’t stick on the way out and besides I have a rough idea now as to how long each item should be left in for.

- “How do you choose clothes and can you match colours”?

For me a nightmare and of necessity I dress to someone else’s taste I suppose in that I have to be fully reliant on someone to know what suits me and not make me look ridiculous. Matching is made easier if people choose things which go with the greatest number of things already present in the wardrobe. There are gadgets available to assist but to be honest I just can’t remember what colours go with what as they are only words to me. I know that black goes with most things though but things are further complicated by people describing the same things in different ways – Baige or off white for instance.

- “Do you read Braille”?

Yes but only a small proportion of blind people do as most people are blinded late in life by age onset diseases.

- “Do you think it is worse to lose your hearing or sight”?

A ridiculous, crass, deeply offensive, thoughtless and insensitive question which I only intend answering once more and that’s just so I can bury this chestnut once and for all. Loss is loss so obviously it’s better to be neither. I’m not deaf so don’t know how to compare one situation I am in with one I’ve never been in and shouldn’t insult deaf people by trying. You, if you’re neither have the luxury of debate for which you should be thankful. If someone decides it’s better to be one or the other and tells me so I put them down as a ninny and hope I can get away from them as soon as possible. I assume someone with Parkinsonism isn’t asked whether they’d rather have MS so why pick on us for this damn fool question? It’s worse to be both so please spare your thoughts for those who are deaf and blind as they must surely be some of the loneliest people on this planet. Hardly anyone knows how to communicate with them andI can’t imagine anything worse than losing my hearing as well as my sight not instead of. The same goes for my ability to walk and think properly though as I can’t drive and need my wits about me in order to know what I’m doing.

- “Do you miss what you’ve not had”?

Maybe not experientially but of course, being intelligent enough to know what I could do if I were sighted and knowing what I’d have liked to have done had I been then the answer has to be yes. To have to have a life-long need for assistance which is either of poor quality or just isn’t there at all is wearing and frustrating but when it is of good quality such as that provided by the Guide Dogs Association then the problems are greatly eased and if friends and family are supportive it’s a lot better. Unfortunately my family support ended with the death of my grandmother so the difficulties imposed by blindness have been maximised. Remember that you were born with nothing as was I and would never have wanted your mobile phone, car, spouse and children if you didn’t see the benefits they bring to others and thought them worth having despite their drawbacks.

- “What joy can you find in living in your state”?

Plenty but I’ve had to look for it where it matters and not keep endlessly longing for that which I can’t have. Give me music, a good book, access to this computer where I can talk to people, some good friends and a guide dog and I’m well away. For those of us who have experienced great heartache – Both sighted and blind – We surely know where joy can be found and beyond a certain level necessary for comfort it is not to be found in the acquisition of more and more material possessions.

- “What would you like to see if you regained your sight tomorrow”?

Possibly the easiest question of all for me to answer. Obviously I’d lose my dog then so I’d have to say the smile on the nearest child’s face. I love children more than words can say and in the main they love me. Right from my days in the blind school I attended where there were smaller blind children to love, and I did, right up till my days of living alone on a rough council estate where all the children of the neighbourhood knew they could come in and play with my dog and listen to my stories I have never had a problem with them and they have never stolen from me whereas adults have. I once went to my local school to help with the children’s reading with the aid of Braille books with print in them also and one said to me:

“We’ll never forget you. You’re looking very beautiful today”.

Special needs children who won’t go to anyone but their parents have readily sat on my lap and rough uncared for children have loved my children’s stories. I’m a true Canncerian – Home loving, child loving, animal loving and love being near the sea. I love life in general and yet at the same time readily admit to finding it crushingly difficult and heartbreakingly sad and desperately unfair, not just to me but to many others.

- “Does your guide dog do all the work and know everywhere you want to go”?

We work as a team with the dog as pilot and guide and I as the navigator. If I didn’t know where we were going the dog could and would get us lost as she may well try to do as Esme has done which is try and go to the vet’s when we’re on our way somewhere else which incorporates part of the route to the vet. She loves it in there because they give her liver treats and fuss her and she sees some of her “mates”. I suppose it’s like a social outing but suspect the grub is the main attraction! I was taught all my routes with a cane first and had to memorise them and then an instructor had to teach us both how to travel the same routes when the dog came home because you don’t do the same things with a dog as with a cane, like looking for lamp posts or crossing when you get to a box containing electricity cables or whatever as walls are no longer followed. Also it is not a dog’s responsibility to decide when to cross a road. It can cope with minor roads with little traffic but even then has to be told to go by its owner and on major roads sighted assistance is vital.

Want to know more? Post your questions in the comments section and I will answer them but remember keep ‘em clean! I don’t mind what you ask me because if you don’t ask you won’t know.

THE PRODIGAL SOCK.

2008-10-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

What a morning I’ve had! It was spent down on my knees that’s for sure.

I was getting clean clothes out of the airing cupboard when something flew at me. No it wasn’t a demented bat trying to get home because it was daylight and neither was it a jet engine aircraft which Frank Whittle would have been proud to invent. It was a sock – One sock. I picked it up and scolded it for jumping out at me like that as if it was some errant driver who’d pulled out from a side road without looking to see who may be about to cross in front of him and thought:

“Now where the hell is the other one”?

I can hear all my blind friends shouting:

“Why didn’t you pin ‘em together you twit”?

I can hear scores of sighted people shouting:

“Oh well you’re not the only one who loses socks. It’s not because you’re blind. It happens to sighted people too”.

That’s what I’m trying to convey – That everything that happens to you happens to me but maybe the scale and frequency are magnified and you must admit it would take you longer to locate the missing sock in the dark.

The search began. Thank goodness for gravity. At least I knew that it couldn’t be on the upper shelves of the cupboard because I can hardly reach them. So I must have put it with its “brother” together near the bottomed so where oh where was it? I started by pulling out all that was stored on the lower shelves but will spare you the details simply because there are no dead bodies there or stunning manuscripts as yet unseen by publishers. I heard that irritating noise in my head, which used to indicate a wrong answer given by the contestants on a British TV show: “Family Fortunes” “o-o. Not there”. I crawled the length and breadth of the hall beginning outside the airing cupboard and ending by the front door: “o-o.” “Not there”. By now I was beginning to wish I’d never heard of “Family Fortunes”. I shook out the old towels that I keep for Esme’s drying game and wondered how she is as I’m still without her. “O-o.”. Bloody tune! Then, eureka! I find two socks snuggled up together waiting to go home to the sock drawer as it’s nearly time for tights now that it’s getting a bit Autumnal in the U.K.

“Damn”! I think and start singing that Cat Stevens song:

“Where Are You”?

That’ll teach me to listen to so much music! Then I have an idea. If I stuff my arm down behind the shelves I might find it lurking there in the dark just as I’m lurking here in the dark. (Yes I know I said I’m in a kind of nothingness rather than the dark but I didn’t tell you what time I got up this morning). I hope I won’t get my arm stuck as I shove it down the back of the shelving and, yes! Yes! Yes! I’ve won the lotto! Here, curled up in the equivalent of a sock version of a hedgehog, or is it a crescent? Can’t decide as I was so pleased to find it. Then I go in search of the safety pins as I remember the warnings, imagined not real, from my blind friends who scold me for not fastening the socks together.

“Now where did I put the safety pins”?

I just give up and turn the tops down, one over the other and off they go to the sock drawer!

Today’s my day for my home help’s visit. I’m glad I found it as otherwise the conversation would have ran thus:

“I’ve lost a sock, can you spare some time to help me find it? Can you see it”?

“Well where did you last have it”?

“If I knew that it wouldn’t be lost would it”?

“What colour is it”?

“Um er oh um er well now I think it’s ‘’’’’’How the Dickens would I know? I mean I did know but anyway here’s the other one – His mate so he’ll be the same colour as that one”.

Now I know the real meaning of the tale of the prodigal son. How there was so much rejoicing when the lost sheep was found. I mean you don’t open the wardrobe or airing cupboard or the sock drawer for that matter, and say:

“Oh my little jumpers, skirts and dresses! Thank god you’re all still here”!

Or:

“Oh you great big bath towel, you great big beautiful towel! How great it is to find you where I left you”.

People’d think you’re bonkers and besides where, other than their right places would they be? But you sure do rejoice after all that crawling – So much that the Dickens character Heap who was:

“’ever so ‘umble”

would be proud of, when the prodical sock comes home – Not that it ever went of course!

Then as I sit writing this another thought strikes me. This morning I crawled, stayed bent down, stood up again without so much as an “ouch”. Do you know what this means? No my feet aren’t better but a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t have stayed down on the floor so long because of the intense pain in my heels and tendons too so perhaps there’ll be some more rejoicing soon when the prodigal dog comes home. I can tell you this – I’ll be more pleased to see her again than any number of lost socks – So much so that I’ll feel like killing the fatted calf and giving her the bones.

THE WAITING ROOM.

2008-10-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the mortgage repayments when I was obliged to keep my appointment. The queue in the waiting room was long, the weather hot, the seats taken except for some bucket chairs – You know the sort of things – Those uncomfortable plastic affairs that make your back ache after a while. Also there were some beds on which the very frail lay. My head ached, probably as a consequence of the heat. Someone was walking up and down giving out pills but my silent pleas went unheard. I had lost my voice. Then I noticed this cine film, designed I suppose to pacify the crowd. It was certainly not entertaining. To be honest I felt distinctly uncomfortable. My eyes were drawn again and again to the sight even though I made several attempts to look away. Then I heard someone telling me to budge up. When I did so I found that I was sitting next to an emaciated woman whom I judged to be of African origin. Automatically I tried fishing in my pockets for change as I’d done so often – A sop to my conscience and an imagined first step to the solution of her problems. Two birds killed with but a single coin and thousands more by compassion fatigue, apathy and indifference. My hands though remained frozen as the Arctic landscape and simply wouldn’t move. Across the room a Down’s syndrome child was flicking his tongue in and out like an adder. I did manage to avert my gaze this time and was heartily glad I’d passed the euthenasia bill to rid the world of the disabled. It passed its third reading last week and will be law by the spring. We can’t afford sentiment in a world already brimming with people, where parenthood is a privilege already granted to those unfit to have it and life itself given to those too mentally and physically feeble to appreciate it or contribute to it.

Thank goodness! I think I’ve just seen an exit. Damn! It’s one of those imitation picture windows. We’ve just been told we have to wait here till tomorrow. The tea looks disgusting. Stewed liquid in a paper cup. An accurate description of my brain I’d say. This film’s disgusting too and yet I have the distinct impression of having seen it all before. The floor’s disgusting too. It looks as if it’s not been cleaned for months. The air vent looks to be blocked. Cutbacks I suppose. There’s an ill educated yob who’s just come in and has made for a chair near the Down’s syndrome kid. He’s wearing leathers and mumbling expletives. He spat at me as he went by. I bet he’ll pinch the kid’s money or mobile phone, always assuming he has one and knows how to use it. No. He seems to be talking to him, comforting him and telling him we won’t be in here long. Wish I had his confidence. The ads are showing now. Typical! All the things I’ve already got are being shown. This imperious woman is asking me to stay seated lest I miss my turn to go in. I asked her if I could go home and come back tomorrow but she reckons I’d flunk it and stay away and says I should sit quietly, quit making a scene and drink my tea.

Just had a dream about Candy my old dog. That dream was miles better than this film “The Dibden file” it’s called. My name’s Dibden – George Dibden. When the hell are they going to let me in to see him? Why does he overbook like this? It’s grossly irresponsible. Well I never! There’s a bloke not unlike me sitting in a restaurant and refusing to pay because he thought the meat was tough. He’s causing a scene and declaring that the food and service are bad and asking if the waiter knows who he is. Now I see him driving down the motorway like a maniac at much too fast a speed. I remember asking if the waiter knew who I was once so I could get a good table in a restaurant. I didn’t think the food was up to much then either and refused to tip. In fact I walked out without paying at all.

The magazine rack’s empty. On asking why I was told they prove a distraction from the film. It seems arrogant to me to assume everyone should want to watch the film. I’ve just seen Eleanor. Firstly she was in silhouette and then she waved to me quite plainly through the window but that’s impossible! She’s been dead for fifteen years. She looked so carefree now though as she waved while passing the window of this stuffy waiting room. That’s enough now. I’ve become dehydrated and hungry and this room is too hot and that’s making me feel sick and dizzy. I’m off. The scene has changed once more as I move up one more chair towards the door. Some guy has made a quick killing in the city and an insurance scam has come to light as well as a gambling addiction. There was never any proof of my guilt in the scam though. I think I’ll make a quick bid for freedom as they help this drug addicted lame duck through the open door. I bet she’s some immoral little tart. She’s calling out delightedly that she knows me. Says I used to visit her for half price in the old days. I wish she’d keep her bloody voice down. Good job Eleanor didn’t come in after all. I remember her now. I visited her before I got elected, after which time I got the brothel closed down. She’s telling me now that forced her on the streets where she developed her drug habit. I can see row upon row of whisky bottles and cans, every one my brand but no glasses. Also there’s fast cars and all the other trappings of the good life visible to me upon that screen.

I’ve got this constricting pain in my chest. Queue’s moving again. I wish they’d turn that damned thing off. I’m sick of this film. Endless re-runs of foxes being hunted as they run towards their stopped-up earths, fish caught upon cruel hooks only to be thrown back into the sea and chickens kept in cages the size of a TV screen, the depletion of the ozone layer and the endless orgy of greed that the so-called “first world” revels in. There’s wardrobe upon wardrobe of nearly new suits I’ve hardly worn and endless scenes of animals being driven to the brink of extinction to satisfy our arrogant assumption that we’re the only ones whose desires must be gratified and satisfied.

At last! Something wonderful! Me coming out of “Buck House” having been knighted for my stance on land mines, by the king whose mother held the cause so dear to her heart.

“Come in George. I will see you now for I have seen the film and we must discuss it together”.

With the utterance of my name, I died at 11.30 a.m. G.M.T. My time in the waiting room is over. My audience with God about to begin. Now the man, also in silhouette like Eleanor was, is now plain for me to see and I see that I’ve been looking at myself. I await his judgement anxiously as the Down’s syndrome child is still happily laughing at all the cartoons I never got to see. Still flicking his tongue in and out like an adder, he will live for ever in the heaven created for him and borne of his own innocence just as he first had to live in the hell that I and others created for him before extinguishing his like for good. Oh how I wish that with him I could change places but I see that it is far too late for that.

BEWARE – A LOAD OF OLD COBBLERS!

2008-10-09T15:29:00.001-07:00

I really needed cheering up the other week since life’s a bit harder than usual at present and my little spiritual lift came in the form of a scam email sent to me on my beloved internet radio station.

A cobbler from a far off land sent me a long and passionate discourse on how I am the best thing since hobnail boots (I doubt they have sliced bread where he comes from) and how he’d been given divine instruction from on high to right to me.

I read this discourse with much mirthful laughter and wondered when someone would knock at my door asking what all the noise was about since no sound can be heard from the gnome office as I’m considerate enough to always wear headphones (especially important at night when people have the right and need to sleep. Inconsiderate drunken ex-neighbour take note when you’re sober enough to do so).

Nobody came and I thought it my solemn duty to right back to “shoeman” who cobbles rather than rights symphonies (yes I know it’s a different spelling, thank you Mother)!

The mistake I made was to tell the team overseeing the website I am so fond of. I had a lovely email from one of its employees whose job it is to close the accounts of these scammers down. How disappointed I am to find I can no longer engage in long-distance leg pulls with the aforementioned cobbler who has been nailed to the wall by a responsible citizen who doesn’t want to see him possibly getting his hands on someone’s personal information or having them be scared of him and feel they are being targeted.

Obviously his divine source was seriously at fault for suggesting he chat me up but not so about my being the best thing since hobnail boots surely! Obviously my best and most loveable feature is my extreme modesty which knows no bounds. Goodness I do talk a load of old cobblers! Seems he’s not the only one!

ANYONE FOR TENNIS – ELBOW!

2008-10-09T15:28:00.001-07:00

I used to work for a well known charity dealing with people suffering from arthritis. Because, had I been sighted, I’d have loved to have been a nurse (with a peg on my nose while I emptied the bed pans of course) I have taken a great interest in medical things. I know they say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but for a layman I have quite a lot of medical knowledge which I have gained through my own disabilities and from my dealings with lots of other disabled people who have told me about the in’s and out’s of theirs and through the reading I have done and finally Esther (remember that) through my work.

When someone asked me how I was and I was foolhardy enough to tell them that sparked off a whole conversation not about me of course but about them! Best to just say:

“Never explain, never complain” and hope they get the message. This cheery individual decided to tell me all about his elbow which he says has been hurting for months.

“I’m a big strong man”,

He said.

“I shouldn’t be having pain now should I”?

We were alone and I was praying he wasn’t going to show me exactly how strong he was by grabbing me in an iron grip or crushing a cream cheese between his fists. Mercifully he confined himself to chatting about his elbow and let slip that he carried heavy shopping.

“That’s it”, I said.

“I bet you’ve got tennis elbow and if so I don’t reckon it’ll go without treatment”.

“But I don’t play tennis”,

Protested George. (Not his real name). Don’t you just love it when talk show hosts and journalists say that? It gives the game away straight away rather like leaving the hall light on for burglars! You know fine well that the person you thought was really Dave is.

“You don’t have to play tennis to get it”,

I said when he let me get a word in and normally folks I have no trouble with that but on this occasion it was like two people vying for a parking space and he had the bigger car.

“It’s caused by lots of things including knitting”.

“I don’t knit either. Big strong man like me. I’m afraid of needles”.

By now I was edging towards the door when he noticed I hadn’t got my Labrador.

“And where’s Esme”?

“I told you. She’s had to be re-homed as I can’t look after her because I have plantar fasciitis”.

My turn now to go on about my feet which is exactly what I intended to do. After all what goes around comes around and I’d clucked sympathetically about the poor man’s elbow but could I tell him how painful they were? Could I tell him I was having physioterrorism at an alarming rate? Could I tell him how I miss my darling old girl? Could I tell him how I had to get home to bake pastry blind? (a lie anyway since I never bake pastry so no need to run round to my doctor Fred)? Could I tell him about my blog? Not on your life boy! I felt cheated. I’d done all that listening and advising, sympathising and pointing to the place on my own elbow so as to determine where it hurt which convinced me all the more it’s tennis elbow and now I couldn’t even chat for a bit about my plates of meet (cockney rhyming slang for feet for the unaware).

“You know June I’ve an awful pain in my elbow did I tell you”?

Shades of “There’s a hole in my bucket” where you go round in circles again and again. Just then his phone rang. I can’t say I ran out of there or else I’d be guilty of exaggerating but I hobbled off with a friendly smile and a nod. Then I ran into someone who said:

“Where’s Esme”?

“Well you see I’ve got ‘’’’’’”,

Remember now June unless you want another earful possibly about backs, bowels or buttocks “never explain. Never complain”.

THE FAR COUNTRY.

2008-10-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

The callous sun beat down from an expansive cloudless sky. Relentless, merciless and strong it just carried on until its strength was gone and then it set. Chem, the old fisherman contemptuously kicked the dead crabs back into the sea from whence they came. He stared down at the lifeless rock, so cruelly robbed of its life force and ruminated on yet another failure. The rock, both barren and deserted filled his heart with pity. Sadly he rowed away as he thought of how his skill had not been as strong as the sun and left the old man to clear up the debris with his scythe and sickle.

Emme was born and brought up here. This to her was paradise – Endless sea and sand; palm trees and coconuts – Everything in balance. The occupants of this paradise never warred but instead lived in quiet contentment. The army patrolled, looking for trouble but there never was much to speak of. Emme’s parents, now resident in the far country never left until the demolition squad came in and took away their homes. Emme was safe for now. She loved to row and dream and went wherever the waves took her. She was now in Middle Ocean. One peep through her binoculars told her the landscape was changing ever so slightly. She didn’t mind or think it worth worrying about. When she reached the shore she saw them – The two disgusting crabs, Mal and Mel. They swam endlessly, waiting to quit the waters of the salty sea and swim the river Flemsy. They seemed to grin at Emme – To goad her and to tease, to menace and to come too close for comfort. Last week she felt the first stab of a claw as one of them appeared on the sand. It nestled where her child had once fed.

She’d seen him then while in the shower, vulnerable and naked. She surveyed the rock where a dark blemish had appeared on its surface. The landscape once visible through the lens of her binoculars was now in close-up. Still Emme toiled. Weeks had turned to months. Then one morning as she ran her fingers through the sand she found a little hill. She tried to flatten it. It would not disappear and then an ache began – Dull at first, increasing in intensity. Mal and Mel had really come ashore; had gained a claw hold; had found a home. Panic had seized Emme and she sailed alone to look for Chem the fisherman who may be able to rid her of the crabs. When he had seen her last she was in robust health but now she looked so changed. She was thinning in inverse proportions to the hill which was turning to a mountain in the sand.

“You’ve left it a bit late you know Emme,

Chem said.

Mal and Mel have bred. Ever moving sideways they have multiplied, causing chaos in your paradise home. How did they get such a firm and vicious hold”?

Chem asked.

“I failed to grease the rock”,

Emme admitted. Chem frowned. The seaweed growing on the rock had gone. He’d stripped it all away while trying to kill the crabs. Mal and Mel had metastasised. They were draining the river Flemsy dry as they engaged upon their feeding frenzy. They were killing the army which had kept the peace in paradise for so long. They were destroying and devastating their and Emme’s home without thought of tomorrow. The sun competed with the other source of heat. Men with pick axes gouged lumps out of the rock and drew their own lines in the sand but Mal and Mel clung on. Moving ever sideways they clung on, burrowing, breeding, consuming – True parasites in paradise. When they retreated it was just to plan their strategy, to gather and to mobilise anew. Emme knew that when she ate in order to maintain her strength she was sustaining her adversaries too. Her army now was all but defeated. Her children gathered as she slipped in and out of sleep. Sometimes she fancied that she heard her children saying:

“Why did you never grease the rock? You should have greased the rock with the oil which would have stopped the crabs from clinging and kept the callous sun at bay”.

Mal and Mel were laughing in her dreams. Assuming goblin shapes they too hacked away and struck at Emme’s form.

Eventually the men made Emme lopsided, returning with new pick axes and shovels. They saw though that there was no part of the river unpolluted. While Emme tried to sleep Mal and Mel just partied. Drumming sounded loud between Emme’s ears. The street lights flickered and finally went out as she appeared to be giving up the struggle. The phone wires had been cut and sustenance was brought in via a tube. Chem’s power too was waning. This obscene orgy of the crabs was almost over. Then Emme opened up one useless eye and gathered her last vestiges of strength as Chem made one final bid to save her. Mal and Mel were on the run once more, almost scurrying back into the open sea. However, Mal and Mel now had so many relatives to help them win the battle that Emme’s feeble folk were overwhelmed; their spears were as match sticks in their hands. Eventually she was lain waste and spent.

Chem, along with Emme’s grief stricken relations, stared at the devastation. The river Flemsy had now ceased to flow. The rock was put into a boat which was covered in barnacles and set alight by other men. The generals in the army were also dead along with the crabs which colonised, metastasised mobilised. In the darkness of the night the moon shone from the far country as the stars danced to a tune as yet unheard by those of us still too far away to hear. There was singing, dancing and celebration as Emme was greeted by her parents. They were shocked to see the haggard cragginess of the vital rock whose life force they once celebrated the beginning of so very long ago but which now had become spent long before its time. In their celestial arms they gathered her, comforted her and greeted her like an old friend from whom they had been parted for so long. They looked down to our earth at other crabs swimming, waiting, waiting, waiting for a chance to come ashore and the question which would not leave their haunted eyes was simply:

“Why oh why oh why oh why! Why did you not think to grease the rock”?

Only the waves of their tears, which we call rain, breaking on the surface of the water as it falls, is all that we shall ever have in answer.

POND WHEAT!

2008-10-07T14:25:00.001-07:00

When I lived in C my dear old Wheat found a pond. Now as any dog lover will tell you dogs love water – No not the nice kind with dog shampers added so they can have a nice bath and smell less Labradorial or anything like that, but rather the filthy stinking kind, full of mud and assorted decaying rubbish and the more disgusting it is the more appealing.

My gran who died at almost ninety-seven, came over to see me which meant a journey on two buses, which she did till she could no longer manage it at age eighty-seven. When she arrived there was no rest for she helped me free run Wheat and it was on one of her little free runs when she found the stinking pond. In she jumped, with all the enthusiasm of an Olympic swimmer and then dread of dreads for me at any rate, she consumed a rather plentiful quantity of this water, muck and all which guaranteed that later on she’d throw up all over the carpet and need a bath as well!

Poor Nan ended up bathing her for me but had gone home before the delightful sound of dog being sick could be heard by me alone late in the night. I had a terrible job clearing this up and had to wait for someone sighted to appear – Possibly or almost certainly days later in order to find out whether I’d been wholly successful.

I got so fed up with this, even to the point of thinking of returning her to Guide Dogs that I sent word to one of the instructors who came down from the training centre to see what was going on and how we could stop it. The man I’ll call Tom had a lovely Northern Irish accent and when we went out, Wheat looked at the water and trotted straight past without a second glance.

“Well now June, I can’t see a problem with this wee dog. Now you know most Labradors and Retrievers love the water don’t you know but she’s a little angel isn’t she”?

I hastily pointed out that I had called him out simply because she loved the water but he seemed so taken with her angelic qualities and devotion to duty that he just couldn’t get his head round that.

Rejoicing outwardly at least but inwardly not convinced, I phoned Nan and said:

“Perhaps she has learned her lesson since being so sick and stinking to high heaven”.

Not so. When Nan came again and suggested free running the little madam, she made straight for the pond and was in it before either of us could say “Jack Robinson”. Luckily it was a warm and very sultry night and knowing what was coming I made her go outside on the balcony where she stayed till she threw up.

The day that Tom came was the one and only time in that dog’s life with me that she ever resisted the temptation of that filthy pond and I swear she knew he was one of the instructors from Guide Dogs. For all her craftiness and deviousness, for all her artfulness and love of ponds and despite her penchant for rolling in all kinds of disgusting stuff I loved her as much as Esme or Cider though I didn’t have Cider long and Esme is, by comparison a clean and ladylike Labrador who is much more of a goody two shoes or four paws. Wheat was a real character but then again so are they all. There’ll never be another one like Wheat and likewise there’ll never be another one like Esme. These dogs are as individual as people and in many cases preferable to some! Except perhaps when they’ve had a “dog bath” in the pond that is.

POWER-STEERING.

2008-10-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

(dedicated to the special and dedicated people who prepare us for, and train us with our guide dogs especially Alison Rampling who inspired and has heard this story).

I suppose nobody will believe my story. They’ll think it too fanciful for words but it’s true. As a result of what occurred I was forced to give up my job”.

“I hadn’t really thought of it as doing good works. I saw this advert for a rehabilitation officer and thought it might be interesting so I trained for it. I had previously worked abroad but never before worked with blind people and wondered what that would be like. Till I did I’d imagined blindness to be restrictive and confining, making people dependent and helpless and without the right training and intervention from properly trained people it can be but doesn’t have to be. Once I’d qualified I trained people to get out and about to places of work, the shops and even to the pub! Sometimes it was slow work – Long and laborious like waiting for spring in December and always it requires patience and sensitivity. Each person’s needs and capabilities are different and their levels of ability differ. One of the first and most essential things I learned was never to treat them as a single entity but to see them as the individuals they are. There’s a fine line to be drawn between being warm and approachable and yet professional too and it’s vital to never cross that line but instead to keep a professional detachment without appearing cold and uncaring. Although I did take individual people to my heart I could never show favouritism. I was happy in my work particularly when I’d managed to free someone from their homes where they may have been confined for months or years, enabling them to attain a previously impossible level of independence. This made my work worthwhile and I’m sure I’d still be doing it today but for one client who changed everything for ever. It’s very satisfying to know it’s a mixture of the determination shown by the person you’re helping plus your own skill which has brought about such a positive change in circumstances and although I’m not power crazy I realised I had enormous power to change things for people.

‘I’ll see you at the chemist’s then Joan’ I’d said. With an understandable degree of apprehension Joan set off. She was the only client I’d ever had who made me feel somewhat uneasy. The blind eyes that stared out of her face were cold and aloof though her voice was always warm; the handshake too was deceptively firm and friendly. My shoes, equally soft, were always worn so I could shadow her without her knowing exactly where I was. She was doing all the right things, listening for traffic when at kerbs, manoeuvring the correct way round parked cars at opposite sides of the road, sweeping the up kerbs with the cane so she didn’t bang into posts etc. Eventually she reached the parade of shops in which the chemist’s was situated. I watched her pass the shop several times, retrace her steps and make off in the opposite direction until a member of the public attempted to assist her. Silently I waved her away, indicating she was learning how to find the shop unaided in case nobody was around. Eventually she found it and stood outside waiting for me and I appeared at once to give her praise and encouragement. My downfall was to admit I’d waved someone away when they offered to help. I gaily explained that if I’d not she’d have found the shop sooner. This admission was nearly to cost me my life. For a fleeting moment I thought I saw anger in her eyes as she said with a smile

‘Oh did you Gwen’”

However it was so momentary that I thought I’d imagined it and dismissed it at once as we stood around chatting about how the route went and then set off for our return home”.

“I rolled out of bed rubbing my eyes. ‘Gwen’s coming today’ I thought. For about eight months now I’d submitted myself to this torture. I hated them all – These laughing sarcastic instructors who had the power to reduce me to a wreck. While they were free to come and go as they pleased in their nice warm cars with electric windows, carrying their mobile phones with them, all I had was this hateful inanimate cold badge of blindness in the form of this loathsome white cane with its reflective strip which showed up in the dark and advertised my difference to the world. Gwen was by far the best of them or so I thought. She’d listened to all my woes as well as noting my mobility problems which included a painful back and she’d been discreet and patient. I liked her. Gwen was the bad apple in the barrel theory reversed. In other words she was the good one in a barrel of rotten ones or so I thought.

It started about a fortnight before I was asked to go to the chemist’s. I’d turned down a wrong road instead of crossing it.

‘Where are we off to then Joan’?

Gwen asked in that cheery voice of hers. Although her voice was playful, containing no malice at all I felt my temper rise. She corrected me by making me go over the same section of route a few times and all I wanted was to get home. It was cold and I was becoming irked. When we finally got home I offered Gwen tea but first went to close a window without indicating my intention to her. Gwen, thinking she knew me well enough to joke with me said:

‘That’s not the way to the kitchen Joan! You know what that signifies – Bad orientation’

Because I suffer from retinopathy of prematurity, an eye condition linked in many professional people’s minds with poor spatial awareness and had been labelled that way from childhood onwards, that phrase was like a red rag to a bull. Like a fly in a colander it went round in my head all night. Did Gwen really think of me that way in spite of her protestations to the contrary? Was she really like all the rest of them? Unable to sleep I switched on the radio, only to hear a ridiculous woman on a phone-in programme saying that by the power of thought one can bring about one’s desires. When I rang in I was told I had ‘the sight’! She said I probably possessed not only the gift of prophesy but the ability to move things at will especially when motivated by strong forces of anger”.

“I got to Joan’s on time as usual but noticed at once she looked tired.

‘Are you okay Joan’?

I asked her”.

“No. I have this pain”. I ran for my parked car which I brought to her immediately.

“You needn’t walk home Joan. We’ll do that route another time when you’re feeling better”’

“Did you say you actually waved someone away who was prepared to help me”?

“Yes, as you know that’s all part of the procedure and it gives me an indication of how well you can manage and reassurance that if nobody’s there you’ll be able to manage alone”.

“Just then I noticed my petrol gauge indicated that I needed more so I pulled up at a garage to fill up. As I was about to drive off Joan told me the smell was making her feel sick. Naturally I stopped and opened her door so she could grab some fresh air. I did the same and then to my horror I saw her slide over into my seat. I jumped in beside her but wasn’t quick enough to grab the ignition key. The car seemed to take on a life of its own, weaving in and out of the traffic, gaining momentum and speed as it went. “Stop”! I shouted. “Stop or you’ll have us both killed”. Joan was heedless and driven by some force I didn’t understand but which I knew was evil. We zigzagged onto and off the pavement, hitting a post and finally sped down the cliff road until the two front wheels of the car disappeared over the edge. Incapable of thought never mind speech, I was aware Joan was like a demon possessed. Eventually she began to rave and shout at me, having switched off the car engine as though she sensed our predicament and highly dangerous position.

“How dare you wave people away from me when they offer their help! Well now I’ve got the power – The blind having power over the sighted. Do you know what it feels like to be me? How humiliating it is to go in and out of shop doorways with all eyes upon you? I bet you’re sitting there with your mouth open like a goldfish. Who’s immobile now eh”

Like many blind people who have not been corrected in childhood, Joan occasionally rocked. I’d not seen her do it that often but now, with the car’s front wheels over the cliff edge she was rocking violently as she unleashed her pent-up anger which was a consequence of all the unkind and emotionally damaging treatment by people who ought never to have been involved in blind welfare. Eventually the inevitable happened. The car somersaulted over and over, coming to rest on its roof and eventually burst into flames. Since it was raining nobody was out and about to hear our screams and cries for help. It was then that I woke up.

When I handed in my notice on the Monday after this dream which incidentally I’d had on Halloween – A significant date because all dreams I’d had then invariably came true – My boss was horrified and distressed. When I went round to see Joan to tell her I was leaving and to say my farewells she said with real feeling and tears in her eyes:

“You’re the best mobility instructor I’ve ever had”.

I thanked her for her kind words, telling her she’d been a pleasure to teach but not about my dream. Can you guess what I’m doing now? Why fiction writing of course!.