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– Either that or he was learning what happens when the big hand is on three and the little one is on nine or am I out of date now?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.