WHAT TO DO WHEN HAPPINESS STRATEGIES FAIL.

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!

“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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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

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.

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?

A DANGEROUS SLIPPERY SLOPE.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).