SHARED FEATS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SYMPHONY OF LIFE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE COLOUR PROBLEM.

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

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

A DOG IN THE DISTANCE?

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

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

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

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

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

INDEPENDENT LIVING?

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOUR LEGS GOOD – ONE TIP BAD.

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

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

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

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

MY NAME IS LINDA.

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

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

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

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

“Is there any tea in the pot, Sam”?

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

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

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

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

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

“Put your case down here, love”,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The end).

THE EPSOM CONQUEST.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MY LORD! WHAT A MORNING!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHARITY BEGAN AT HOME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALMOST HUMAN – A TRIBUTE TO ESME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BITTER-SWEET.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IT CAN BE DONE.

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

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

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

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

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

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