The Blind Truth

I had lunch with a friend in an Italian place in Oxford Circus. We ate a good lunch and laughed a lot. As my friend got up to leave he asked me if I needed a hand with anything before he left. I didn’t but would guard his goods while he nipped to the gents. Needless to say, his absence made me reflect on parental advice. “Always go before you leave”. Signage can be a challenge for anyone faced wit...

The infamous man drawer, that drawer in the kitchen which men claim for themselves as the place to store spent batteries and old light bulbs, is not the sole preserve of men. Michael McIntyre is not the only one who can order a Chinese takeaway on a Nokia 3210 and pay for it in currency that is no longer in circulation. If ever there is an exhibition I want to see, that’s free to Blue Peter badge...

As if it’s not enough to be shouted at by people, who in the face of some obvious revelation feel the need to defend themselves by yelling, I now find myself being challenged by machines that speak. A few years ago I invested in a speaking alarm clock. It’s a small plastic box that takes an age to set. Once done, it remains silent just long enough for sleep to begin to wrap its folds around me bef...

Wimbledon seems to have come round remarkably soon since the last time that our screens were saturated with incomprehensible grunting and invisible action. I know there are plenty of blind people who enjoy following sport. I’m not one of them. I prefer to follow writers and poets and the changes in GDP or what interest rates are likely to do. I follow what happens in parliament. I follow politics....

After a considerable amount of effort to plan a self guided walking tour, of revered places of worship, in Borgas, Wanda (that’s google maps to the uninitiated) and I set out. Tripping out of the hotel Cheap and Noisy, over an invisible step into four lanes of moving traffic, Wanda told me to turn left and then turn into the traffic. What I did not know, and Wanda did not tell me, was that I was s...

A long long time ago when God was a boy and before I had teeth, I can remember sitting on the counter in the green grocers while he weighed out sugar to be bagged up in a heavy duty blue bag sealed shut with tape. Now that I have teeth and want to preserve them, I have stopped buying sugar. The flatmate and I have been the proud owners of the same bag of sugar for five years. In the intervening ye...

A nice woman came to my house to begin the process of long cane training. I was tense. She introduced herself with a name that sounded just like the Bulgarian word for “it’s not important.”. The flatmate and I would have thrown each other a look. We both thought the same thing. “Kak?” which means something altogether different in English than Bulgarian and it’s not “What?”. My nice mobility traine...

The Blood Bank, where I bank, is keen on inviting people in to meet their Relationship Manager. These are nearly always people who are in training and supervised by those who are licenced to advice on products that they can not advise on. These supervisors work like close protection officers. The Blood Bank brings out the worst in me. The twenty or so Relationship Managers, I have had over the yea...

Each time I’ve gone to vote, I ask where the large print ballot paper is that every polling station is obliged to display by law. It’s usually pinned on a wall which means that just about anyone who needs to read large print won’t be able to get near enough to read it. Polling station staff are obliging and generally proffer a close up look. I have no qualms about disconnecting the large ballot pa...

A friend of mine called me up at 8.30 in a Sunday morning. He said that he was parked outside my house and would like to invite himself to breakfast. His car was packed to the gunnels with old garden machinery he had hoped to car boot. It was raining and blowing a gale so he gave up and opted for my house. Together with his hairy retriever puppy and not so hairy son, we ate breakfast, and spent th...

Last Saturday I got home to find the milk was off and the cheese I thought might last the course of my absence, was now cultivating penicillin. There was nothing for it but to head to the market on a dreary afternoon when I’d much prefer to have been listening to my book in front of the fire. Luck, it seemed, was on my side. Just as I reached the bus stop I heard the bus creeping up behind me so I...

When I first started travelling to Sofia I used to fly Air Bulgaria from Gatwick. Once, having answered the call for those needing assistance to come forward now, I stepped forward and did not get quite the help I expected. What I got was a good telling off because the Air Bulgaria official thought “You are a liar. There is nothing wrong with you. Sit down immediately”. Passengers were boarded. Th...

Everyone should clear out things they have not worn or read or paid any heed to for more than a decade. It’s oh so easy to hang on to things because they evoke the feelings of another time or an event. There comes a point though, when the original moment has long passed and the feelings they evoke are the feelings you had last time you considered showing them the door. There is no particular reaso...

The snow this week prompted the son and I to remember a freezing February when he lent out of his bedroom window and broke stalagmites off the edge of the roof to suck on like lollies. We remembered building igloos and snowmen, and lying in the snow at dusk, flapping our arms and legs to see if our bodies could make the shape of angels. We could not. We generated a nondescript imprint that looked...

I was riding high and in a hurry to get to an appointment, but drearily cruising Bank Station. Bank Station always has spawned all kinds of interesting interactions that I would never have had if I had the wit and sight to work it out for myself. It’s proving to be a rich seam for unintended adventure. In the hunt for help I stumbled across, well let’s call him Brendon. Brendon was what you might...

It might be cold but the sky is blue and the sun is out and casting long winter shadows over the landscape. This is the weather for walking, and on Thursday afternoon I bunked off and went for a walk and a talk with my sister. The sister never leaves home without her penknife. I never leave home without a lipstick. She is academically gifted but once put her finger in the blender and switched it o...

I am a great fan of the bike. I have a bike. It lives in my shed and has flat tyres and never goes out. It’s a sit up and beg bike that I bought when my sister bought a hugely expensive mountain bike and all the gear because she was going to take up serious cross country cycling and offered to come out with me. We went cycling once together before she refused to go again. She refused on the ground...

Banking is a dirty word these days and Bankers have come in for a pasting. Bank Station, with it’s ongoing improvement work, huge levels of public investment and disgruntal travellers is not a bad metaphor for anyone mystified by Banking. It’s confusing. It’s a constantly changing terrain down in Bank tube station, with it’s temporary signage that is like the small print in a loan agreement and ju...

I did something rather wonderful this morning. It involved Grand Masters and there was not a golf ball in sight. Golf is a whole other story: I once went for a golf lesson. I have no idea how blind people make a go of this inscrutable game. I found it impossible to line the iron up with the ball and spent a frustrating hour beating the hell out of thin air and terrifying my coach. After the lesson...

I’m about half way through reading ‘My Brilliant Friend”. I say I’m reading it. I’m actually listening to it as an audio book. There are those that say this isn’t reading at all and that it’s a lesser activity. These people are predominantly people who can see to read a Penguin Classic, which, lets face it, not many of us can do when you consider the meanness of ink and paper involved. Even in the...

Some boroughs provide assistance with the cost of taxis to their blind residents. It gets people out and about and if you can’t use public transport it can be a lifeline. The idea is that the taxi comes to you rather than you having to find the taxi. Much like an Uber. I’ve never tried the Uber but given the alternatives, a light went on in my head and I thought I’d give it a go. My current taxi h...

A couple of days ago a friend of mine invited me out to Lunch last minute. She’s always to be relied on to pick a good place to eat. Thursday was no exception. The choice was not an easy one. Should we go for a starter as well as a main course? What was the difference between the kind of chicken we normally eat and a black one? Should we try something with truffle? Should I be really self discipli...

It might have been Joseph Heller who said something along the lines that just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Call me paranoid: It was the middle of the night and it was a desolate bus stop at Luton Airport. I was alone. There was just me, my red suitcase with huge white spots on it that is easier to see than a more restraint style of luggage, and there was my ca...

The young are all blessed with beauty. I admit that beauty is a subjective judgement. I think that my god daughter, who is keen on an orange skin tone, is a great beauty, although I have not, until now, been a great fan of orange. I wish I had known all of this when I was young and not at all bad looking. Now I have to remind myself that I will never be any younger or better looking than I am toda...

The older we get the more common the experience of meeting people that you have met before and then having the same conversation with them that you had last time you met them. One, or both of you, cannot remember that you have ever met. I once delivered a training course in the Europa Hotel, Belfast, with a super friendly participant.  At the end of the day he asked me if I remembered him. I did n...