Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Visual Impairment”
I finish my shift at Citizens Advice Bureau and head out into the wind whipped rain, my head down and all my thoughts on how behind I am on the script writing and then I notice that there is smoke all around me. I step up out of the underpass my heart racing, I can hardly see through the smoke…where’s the fire? I spin around…..it must be massive…..where are the sirens..where are the panicking crowds?
I am standing in front of eleven blind and visually impaired teenage boys. Watching my clumsy attempts at warm up jolliness is the PEO…the Provisional Education Officer (Special Needs) who has accompanied me on this venture on behalf of the Permanent Secretary for Education without who’s nod I would never have got to do these interviews at Munali Secondary school. This was a school of note and was set up in the 50’s with a resource centre for disabled children. […]
Japanese cars. Thousands of bloody cheap Japanese cars in pastel colours all called things like ‘Big Horn’ and ‘Yakult’ (well…possibly) have been flooding into Zambia and now in the capital Lusaka the traffic grinds into grid-lock twice a day every day. There is much building work too. Many of the derelict sites that had been there when I left 4 years ago have been bought up, tarted up and stuffed with glass. The supermarkets have almost everything (bar pork pies) […]
On Monday I was asked to review a play for the Radio 4 programme ‘In Touch’. It was called ‘The Blind’ and featured 6 blind and VI actors. (there is a theme methinks…) Turns out the opening night was in the depths of Stoke Newington near no station I have ever heard of. The studio theatre was outside, round a corner and down some raggedy ass steps and in a basement. The irony being this whole trip would have been […]
Several people have asked me if I am looking forward to my trip back to Zambia. Well yes, I love Zambia, the light, the beauty of the country, the wit and wisdom of the people, the life, the soul of it all even given the appalling poverty, tragedy and corruption (insert Miss World speech here) but, for me, there is this: Macular cystic oedema. I have it badly today. It hurts and it blurs my vision and it comes and […]
Interesting weekend. Ended up at a very jolly party with two magicians, one of whom seemed quite depressed. The depressed one was also a hypnotist and it turned out an amateur ventriloquist. After a few drinks he disappeared suddenly and returned with a large and rather ugly ventriloquist’s dummy called ‘Dave the Dog’. He manoeuvred the dog’s mouth open and shut but no sound came out of either of them. ‘Are they already named when you buy them?’ I asked, […]
It turns out that I have a cousin who is a forth year medical student at Nottingham university. She is a member of the StopAids society and they invite me to screen my HIV/AIDS documentary ‘On the Frontline’ at the medical school. This is all very exciting and I rise to the occasion by finally getting my hair trimmed. Unfortunately, on the Thursday morning I wake to find my eyes on strike. They are sore, swollen and I peer at […]
Dirty Windshield (In Space No One Can Hear You Scream.) The screen is cracked, Two bullet holes and The blackened spidery cracks Like septicaemia Creep Towards the veins and brain The shield is almost down, captains. Nothing can stop the Eleven Million Mile High walls of night Rushing at twice the speed of any light. We are the fragile gnat And just breath could now knock through And rage bore wider holes And the whisper of air As you rush […]
Its funny but no one can say the word ‘innovative’ when they are excited. Just something I noticed today.
It’s Monday and I have lost the will to live. I have had no response at all from the last lot of job applications. Not even one of those ‘thank you SO very much for your application BUT ’ letters. I haven’t the energy to do another lot (although I will, I will..) and I have a deadline for a short story competition that I am nearing and here I sit, plucking out all the fruity bits from my trail […]