Hotel and conference centre: Banbury: Sat 16th My dad, known to this blog’s readers as The Doctor, arrived from Lusaka ten days ago and I am afraid, as per usual things, got a little nutso. Immediately there was the 50 year reunion of his old dental school The Royal. (yep, The Doctor did dentistry before he did medicine.) As the only offspring available I am allowed to attend although I am bit edgy as I will be the youngest at the do by about 30 years and certainly the only child in tow.
In the car my dad has managed to finagle from my distracted aunt, we discuss tactics. Iam anxious. They will ask me what I do. ‘Is ‘dole scum’ too aggressive?’ I ask. Dad, who nearly fell off his seat with laughter when I told him I was half way through an 8-week pole-dancing course, suggests exotic dancer. I decide to go with ‘burlesque’ as that sounds faintly circus and a bit edgy.
As it turns out there is enough wine consumed for none of the small talk to matter and everyone seems to be having a riotous time. Dad is in charge of the speech ‘The Next 50 Years.’ As usual he does no preparation, has no notes and, as he is the last speaker has consumed a fair amount of plonk so when he leaps to his feet I find I am biting my nails but his lunatic shaggy dog story about aliens digging up perfectly crowned molars in 500 years time hits all the right notes with this particular crowd of ex tooth-drillers and the crowd cheer. He even gets a guffaw from a passing waiter. Speech! (c) Tanvir Bush
Thrupp: Sunday 17th My beautiful old friend from university has a barge. She and her husband are living in it. With two cats and a roof garden. I am still feeling slightly bilious from the previous night and, captivated with the sunshine glinting on the water and the smell of patchouli incense in the living room, secretly try to negotiate a flat-to-barge swap with one of the cats but the cat is having none of it.
My place: Cambridge 19th ‘What’s a gimp?’ Asks Dad. My friend is passing on her esteemed husband’s suggestion of a more practical equivalent to a guide dog. ‘A gimp is a fetish slave.’ I say gravely. I am thinking the idea through and it sounds rather promising. ‘I could keep one instead of a dog- they will also walk to heel on a lead but the added benefit would be that I would get foot massages, gin and tonics made and wouldn’t need a pooper scooper. …or will I….?’ I look across at my friend for more information but she is in convulsions of giggles having noticed that Dad is wearing socks with days of the week printed boldly along each one. Today is Tuesday but he is sporting one Wednesday and a Friday. ‘Well.. you never know.’.he says mysteriously.
Casa Mio:Italian restaurant: Leeds 21st My dad’s famous cousin is sitting opposite us, still erudite and a commanding presence in his mid 80’s. He is talking about his active service in Bomber Command during World War 2. They were losing planes and people on every mission every week, every day. It was one of the most terrifying and deadly jobs of the entire war. Famous cousin’s father was a stern, emotionless man. When cousin arrived home on his occasional allowed visits, his Dad would quietly ask him ‘How many missions son?’ and then just nod at the answer be it 10, 25, 40 and that would be that.
One day cousin came home pale, exhausted. ‘How many son?’ Asked his father as always. ‘Sixty-two’ said cousin. ‘But that’s it Dad. Its over.’
And his father leant his head against the wall and wept. Then he took his son to the pub for the first time in his life.
We are quiet at the table. ‘I think it was the parents that suffered more then we ever did’ says this remarkable man.
Famous cousin’s daughter is an artist and she gives me a beautiful small piece called ‘a glimpse of the lake’. There is something jewel like and calming about it non?
‘A Glimpse of the Lake’ Hilary Brosch
Agra Restaurant: London: last night. My brother prods me in the ribs. ‘Well when is the next bit then?’ ‘Eh?’ I say trying not to choke on my king prawn curry (I haven’t stopped eating since Dad arrived. I am beginning to look like the cook from ‘Mary Poppins’.) ‘Your blog thing. I want to know if I’m in it.’ My brother grins, evil glinting from his choppers. I gaze with horror at him and then across the table strewn with bits of popadoms and rice, where The Doctor sits embroiled in a deep conversation with my sister who is sipping a large pint with her vicar’s dog collar slightly slipping. (Try saying that fast..) It has slowly dawned on me that they all now read my blog..quite regularly and I shall have to be tactical. Hell..I shall have to be nice about them or risk not getting birthday presents…. Bunch of Bushes (c) Tanvir Bush My family are bloody marvellous! Would I lie to you?
Following my last blog, I have been asking myself, ‘well why DO you write you loon? Explain yourself. After all you do tend to spend a hellish amount of time with what I call ‘writer’s block’ and other people might call ‘the television on’.’
Then it hit me. I write because of days like Tuesday. Let me explain. (It’s a bit of a long read this one. You can skip to the ‘conclusion’ if you are in a rush.)
Tuesday could have gone either way. I had had a bad night and woken up grouchy but then wrote poetry on the train in to London. Not saying if it was any good (actually it was so horrible it made the pen leak) but this invariably means something interesting is going to happen. I rarely get that compulsive need to write verse. It needs a change in the weather, a metaphysical prod, an uncanny ‘click’.
So I was thoughtful when I arrived at Kennington and slid into my role as a volunteer facilitator. We (from the charity Photovoice) are running a series of photographic workshops for blind and VI people. We are in the 4th week of a new course but on this Tuesday three new people stood patiently waiting to join in. A tall Jamaican lad, blind from birth, a short, streetwise North African with his guide dog Frankie and a gentle Haitian-English man with his dog Bill. As everyone else was hyped up to go on a field trip I stayed in to work with the three new men.
The older man asks what is often the first question. ‘Why should blind people take photographs’?’ I roll up my sleeves and begin. Over the two hours we explore the possibilities of communication between sighted and non-sighted communities, discuss language and how emotion can be conveyed through image and combinations of image, touch, scent and sound. We discuss sight; our sight, how we lost or are losing it, what limits us. Then we explore the camera basics through touch and take the first series of photographs using touch and sound to establish the composition and I show them how to place the camera on heart, chin or nose (using the head as a tripod pivot) to take steady and simple pictures.
One of the young men remembers that when he had sight as a child in Africa he loved to watch the birds flying in the dawn skies before he went to school. The sound of them…. ‘I want to take photos of birds,’ he says We discuss British bird song. We discuss what it might be like to layer bird song with images.
The tall Jamaican lad, blind from birth says he would rather photograph lions. ‘But I also love the countryside,’ he says. ‘I want to photograph Kent.’
But then the day swivels on its heel. When the rest of the group arrive back glowing from an outing to the Imperial War museum, it is apparent that the three new men are too many for the course and will have to leave. There will be another opportunity in a couple of months but they have been so open with me, so enthusiastic and hopeful that it is a blow to us all. I am too angry and I wonder if my own struggle with my diminishing sight is causing me to become too emotionally bound up with the participants.
I glance at one of the group photographs the young African man took in the park. There I stand next to the others, a small odd-looking woman in my over sized glasses and daft cap, looking cowed and uncomfortable in the sunlight, handling my cane like a dead snake. A blind person in a group of blind people. For an inexplicable reason I am horribly shocked by the photograph, my perspective skews wildly and I realise that I am gearing up for a panic attack. I haven’t had one for over three years..not since trying to commute from Cambridge to Reading for work (nearly 4 hours each way) and eventually losing it at Paddington station.
My heart beats up high in my throat and I feel nauseous. Bollocks…if I am going to have to breathe into a paper bag I am NOT going to do it here. I don’t ask for help, can’t really. The rest of the facilitators are sighted, experienced Londoners and I don’t feel I have time to go into the explanations. I make my excuses (I wonder afterwards if I actually pointed at my own head and made twirling motions….wouldn’t put it past myself!) and run.
Just as I am becoming doubtful that I will make it to the tube I run, smack bang (literally) into the tall Jamaican and the little savvy North African with his guide dog Frankie. Bizarrely they are going my way and gabbling happily, drag me with them into the depths of the tube station where a woman smelling deliciously of cocoa butter escorts us all into a carriage. The two leap out a couple of stops before me, Frankie’s toenails skittering on the floor in his desperation to get out of the train and the anonymous crowds swell.
I sigh and prepare to be swept up in the mayhem of Kings Cross underground and then…
‘Can I help you ma am,’ comes a voice from far above my head. A huge man in a yellow jacket and collar radio offers me an elbow. It take me three confused seconds to realise the coco butter lady has called ahead for a ‘meet and greet’ and this monster is my escort. I can’t see the man’s face clearly in the low light behind my glasses but I note the tattoos that spiral up his wrist and disappear into his shirtsleeves. He is so big that the crowd don’t even try to squeeze around him but instead wait patiently behind for him, tanker like, to move off. I take his arm..well half of it. My hand isn’t big enough to get a full grip of his elbow. I feel like I am in a Shrek cartoon. We seem to float up to the exit
‘I’ll be fine now, ta’, I say and he kind of heaves me gently over the barricades and I am off up the steps to face the masses in the mainline station and I wince and..
‘Excuse me… may I help you? I actually work for RNIB and I couldn’t help notice you had a cane….’
A middle-aged man with a manner so neutral and insipid that he almost lacks an aura is at my shoulder. Again the crowd part around him as if he has a small force field. My mouth drops open as I thank him and take his arm. We are perfectly in time for the train and he plants me on the furthest carriage and almost bowing, scuttles away so as not to invade my space.
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I think to myself and the various gods that seem to be carrying me home. ‘I was booked in for a panic attack 45 minutes ago…’
‘T is that you?’ A woman squeezes in next to me. An acquaintance from Citizens Advice Bureau. ‘What a bit of luck,’ she says not knowing the half of it. ‘How’s your MA application going? Anything I can help with?’
And so on Tuesday it seems, after a wonderful and terrible day I was actually escorted home by some marvellous series of (coincidence/ angels/ aliens/ Jesus/ Monkey god/ quantum event/ luck).
And to CONCLUDE, if I didn’t write this stuff down I would forget it. (well…what did you expect?) By the way if you just skipped to the conclusion you missed the bit about the naked couple at Elephant and Castle tube station…
Now about that award; As I mentioned it was Val from http://monkeysontheroof.blogspot.com/ Who awarded me the Noblesse Oblige. She writes from the Botswanan bush and her blog is so vivid and beautiful you might never need to go on safari yourself but just check with her every few days! Her work is a commentary on the harshness of beauty of the natural world around her. Fantastic stuff! So here is the award speel!
This award is one of the more thoughtful ones that I’ve seen or been given. It’s got a purpose behind it that really makes you think about why you’re blogging and who has influenced you. And of course it comes from a blogger whose insights and work are creative and humbling. The recipient of this award is recognized for the following: 1) The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervades amongst different cultures and beliefs. 2) The Blog contents inspire; strives to encourage, and offers solutions. 3) There is a clear purpose at the Blog; one that fosters a better understanding on Social, Political, Economic, the Arts, Culture, Sciences, and Beliefs. 4) The Blog is refreshing and creative. 5) The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinking. The Blogger who receives this award will need to perform the following steps: 1) Create a Post with a mention and link to the person who presented the Noblesse Oblige Award. 2) The Award Conditions must be displayed at the Post. 3) Write a short article about what the Blog has thus far achieved – preferably citing one or more older posts to support. 4) The Blogger must present the Noblesse Oblige Award in concurrence with the Award conditions. 5) Blogger must display the Award at any location at the Blog.
Phew! Right all done apart from my nominations. And they are (and in 3D –just like in Cannes!)
Tinku of Tinku Tales: http://tinkutales.blogspot.com/ for her exceptional dialogue on all things contemporary art and culture in Canada.
Susan from Stony River Farm http://stonyriverfarm.blogspot,com/ I am sure she has already been weighted down with awards but this is the blog to tap into if you are a would be writer. Warm and brilliantly informative and often exceedingly funny!
Ruh and John of Epicblogue http://epicblogue.blogspot.com/ A bit of nepotism here but this is my Mum and her partner’s remarkable ongoing blog about their adventures in Europe and recent relocation to France. Funny, insightful and sometimes so dry it makes one reach immediately for the wine.
It is light again long into the evening and I am feeling less like a demented Cinderella frantically trying to get home before darkness. Last weekend I went up to in Kinross in Scotland to catch up with a friend from an old (and very weird) boarding school. She returned from Australia a few years ago with a whole family of her own and now they live in a pretty close in a controlled riot of musical instruments, skate boards, school books and fridge lists. Oh and wine bottles! Anita and I haven’t spent time together since we were 18 and stay up all night drinking cava (as you might tell from my pallid visage) and slotting memories back into each others brains like a game of Connect 4. On the Saturday we groggily float over the grass between lazy pheasants and ghosts on the beautiful and spooky Loch Leven Castle Island. Mary Queen of Scotts was interred here from June 1567 to May 1568, and its the place where she was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son James 1V on 24 July 1567. …now the castle roof is open to the bluest sky and thousands of midges sparkle in the sunlight.
photos: LochLeven 2009: Tanvir Bush (c)
Back in Cambridge and I have launched into a bizarre relationship with a massage chair that my local gym has installed. Now, as we all know, most women of a certain age have wide ranging appreciation of things that vibrate however this takes the experience to a whole other level.
The chair looks like a very well padded leather high backed lazy boy. One sinks into it and presses a button at which point there is a buzzing and some of odd prodding as, apparently, the chair, using infrared, ‘checks you out’ for any bits of the body in particular need of deep massage. At the press of another button the chair shifts backwards and sort of…scoops you up into its leathery warmth. Your legs and bare feet are squeezed and pinched gently, released, squeezed again.. the motors start motoring, massaging firmly in throbbing circles from the scalp down the back and into the seat, even under and between the thighs…ahh… and then all the way back up again. One is thrust gently upwards and pulled downwards …and …. Err..how can I explain this? It’s highly erotic.
I don’t think it was intended to be. It is designed to be ‘therapeutic’ which is not a word one associates with languid moaning and it definitely does not seem to be having the same effect on the men. They walk past looking rather baffled, in fact slightly nervous. The long line of women however waiting for their 15 minutes with ‘the chair’ are trembling slightly. They disappear behind the screen and then emerge quarter of an hour later hair tousled, glazed expressions on their faces, floating. There are whispered conversations in the changing rooms. Those that know wink and exchange tokens. I give the chair another couple of weeks before it explodes.
I have been awarded another blog award, the Noblesse Oblige!! Dad da daaa!!!! I am thrilled and proud and very grateful. Thank you Val http://mokeysontheroof.blogspot.com/ who nominated me for this. I am really touched
In my next post I am going to chat more about this award and Val and my writing and nominate some others. Its a lovely award and I hold it close to my heart. As I said to Val, its been hard these last few months and these things make me smile and smile. Thank you so very much and to all of you who read my ridiculous ramblings! Thank you!
Its summer and I know this not just because there is actually sunlight! Not only because everyone is out in vest tops even though there was a frost this morning. Not only because someone actually nodded a greeting at me but essentially because my neighbour opposite has begun to ‘share’ his music. He does this each summer placing his speakers carefully in his windows and pushing the dial up to G20 riot police mode. Luckily his taste is not as bad as the Status Quo fundi down the road or the ghastly fizzy popped mass produced puke flooding from most radios (At the moment it’s Red Hot Chili Peppers; last summer it was endless Mark Ronsen remixes. )
Annoyingly it is still loud enough to overpower my TV even with all the windows and doors shut. There will be reaction. There is every year. Most of my neighbours have small children and after 9pm a lone voice will begin screaming at the neighbour’s open window. Sooner or later there will be screaming back and then potentially – should he not turn the volume down- the low explosion of an air rifle fitted with a nappy silencer.
………………………………………………………………………………………
I’m keeping a low profile today as I also upset my neighbours this morning by stomping in a showy kind of way around the block several times holding onto a man who in turn was wearing a dog harness. A nice thick leather harness with a sold lead and chunky silver studs…..and a long yellow handle. Fetishism and all before lunch time…
Luckily I had already been through this ritual humiliation back in 2005 when I first thought about a guide dog so I was ready for the gasps and tutts, the dragging away of the children, the stifled giggles of the crowds around the supermarket. The idea is that the Guide Dog Man (or woman – they call them ‘beetches’) knows the guide dogs are worth a phenomenal amount of dosh what with all the breeding, training and vet bills and so before handing one to a ruffian such as myself they do an assessment of MY walking speed, ability to learn basic instructions and –obviously- ability to ignore a taunting mob. This is to ensure the dog doesn’t end up with the wrong human.
‘Wait.’ I say firmly holding the yellow handle and therefore the nice Guide Dog man. The man waits by the kerb. A passing granny falls off her zimmer frame. I take a step back, raise my arm, gesture . ‘Forward!’ I command, my voice ringing out above the ice cream van and the open mouthed children. I tug the harness and the nice man crosses the road. ‘Good boy.’ I say. He is well over 6 foot tall or I would pat his head.
‘Straight on,’ I call and on we go, a trail of curious teenages following. He is walking too fast. A sharp tug on the harness and a warning ‘Steady’. He slows and I reach for a biscuit. You think I am kidding. I am not.
I can see the pavement at my feet in a clear oval of sight, pale, yellow, paving stones, some cracked and dirty, some shifted and sticking out of alignment. My oval of sight is about ten inches across right in front of my nose. Like all tunnels it expands outwards and by the time it has extended to the pavement it is about five to ten feet across.
That’s enough to see paving stones, edges of pavements, white lines on the road but to see who is coming I need to relinquish my grip of sight on the pavement and like a mountaineer snatch a visual handhold of what is going on ahead. I straighten my head and I can see all the way to the horizon. All the way to the horizon but down my restricted tunnel of vision; thousands of feet of streets and leaves on trees and … a cyclist explodes past me on the right emerging from my clouded peripherals. Traffic booms on my left. I scan trying to grab that visual handhold but my vision slips. I stagger and stop, pretending to look over the bridge at the river below. For some reason I am so tired today I feel like sitting down right here on the wide, pale pavement of the flyover bridge. I could lie down. The paving stones look warm..not too dirty. I know I would sleep.
Its been like this on and off whilst I try and adjust to my changing vision. It is a lot of work walking along a pavement when you can either see your feet or ‘ahead’ but neither of the two together. If I were a cyborg I would have constant data flooding across my monitor. ….humanoid 50 metres ahead…collision possible… possible canine attached..warning warning loose toddler alert loose toddler.. BICYCLE…abort! Abort!… I find myself rubbing at my neck where the tendons have tightened, constantly rolling my shoulders to loosen them. Sometimes I get home and crawl into bed fully clothed too tired to even undo my shoes – just leave them sticking out of the duvet, fall into deep unmoving sleep for 40 minutes and then get up adjust make up and get on with the evening.
Easter weekend: part two:
On Friday night my Dad’s partner rings from Zambia. She sounds fraught, her New York vowels rise. ‘I tol’ him! He won’t listen…I’m putting you on. You gotta tell him T, he is driving me crazy.’
My father voice comes over the phone line, clear but with a double echo. ‘I’m fine!’ he snorts. I did a malaria test. Its not malaria.’ He is shaking so much he can’t hold the phone. ‘Call a doctor.’ I shout. ‘I am a doctor’. He hisses.
The next morning he is on an IV line battling septicemia bought on by a gum abcess. He is still insisting all is well. ‘Ok, yes I was sick..but I am FINE now.’
‘I tol’ him. I’m tellin’ you, I told him..’ His partner’s voice echoes on the line. She is relieved but still furious. It was a big scare for everyone.
In the background I can hear him ringing the little bell she has given him from the bedroom. The ringing is insistent.
By the next time I call she has confiscated it.
Easter weekend: part three:
‘Why can’t I see the village? According to this map we should be in a village.’ There is no village. We are standing in a wide, stubbled field without a barn, let alone a village in view. I am walking with my aunt on Easter Monday. We are both wincing slightly as we stride. I, trying to impress a supercilious Australian gym instructor, over did my weights in class and pulled something in my thigh. My aunt went horse riding out of the blue after many, MANY years and her butt is..well… you get the picture. Undeterred by our twitching muscles, we have been walking for a couple of hours and are happily lost but running out of ibrufen and in need of a pint.
The sun shines hazily, flickering through the budding trees, glittering along the river by the ancient mill. The open fields are almost empty of other people, grassy and lined with trees with paths disappearing off into the distance. There is so much beauty here that my eyes cannot grab it all fast enough. Taking out my camera slows us down, gives me time to look up from my feet and watch it all.
Look. Isn’t it lovely?
And the pint? We find Horningsea and the pub has just opened and has golden ale on tap and ready salted crisps. (All Cambridge/ Hornigsea photos (c) Tanvir Bush 2009)
Over the past couple of weeks I have started at least five blog posts…I tried writing about my interview at Bath Spa University, the week of training workshops in London, the film I saw the other night, the fact that my local supermarket has started selling the incredibly delicious bison grass vodka for a mere £15 a bottle. But no matter what I wrote I have felt it to be silly and weak. My writing has been sulking.
Stumped on Saturday I went to visit my dear friend C, 88 years old blind and partially deaf with razor sharp wit and vampiric astuteness. We had been talking for about ten minutes when she stopped me and leant in close to my face, peering. ‘You look ten years old today,’ She said.
Amazed I realised that that was how I felt. Confused, baffled by the world, child-like. Not in control of my destiny.
‘I have writer’s block.’ I said.
She nodded and patted my hand.
‘How did she know that?’ I wondered.
C is pretty remarkable. Previously I had been telling her about my hopes and fears for the workshop I thought I might be facilitating, teaching blind and visually impaired people in London about photography and last week she suddenly announced that she wanted to have a go.
‘I keep seeing fences I want to shoot.’ She told me firmly.
Given that C is marvellously fierce I wasn’t sure if she meant with a camera and breathed a sigh of relief when she accepted a trial with my digital point-and-shoot Sony as opposed to me having to go out and score her a Colt revolver.
We went for a walk around the block. She gripping her wheeled Zimmer frame with my camera slung around her neck and shoulder like a gun.
‘There.’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I need to take its picture but just look at it. It…it ..makes me …’
She couldn’t finish but she didn’t need to. We both stood blinking at it.
The white picket fence gleamed in the sunlight- all sharp lines and severity. A dark shadow stretched tentatively from a nearby tree edging into the open gate.
In our conversations we often touch upon how dispossessed she feels by age and mostly by her deafness. How people talk across her, tell her what to do, what she can do, pat her and tell her ‘you’re a good girl’ when she is an 88 year old woman.
And this picket fence seems to capture something in its bright perky rigid gleaming.
She felt the edge of the fence to get an idea of distance and balancing the camera as we had practiced on her chest she took a couple of shots. Then we discovered the Zimmer frame had a seat so she could sit and get a lower angle.
C can only manage the walk around the block but in that short 40 minutes we saw so much and as the light in that soft, spring afternoon changed so everything changed. I knew we could come back here a hundred times and each photograph would be different. Back at the house we were both energised and inspired. I rushed home to load the pictures on to my computer and I asked her if I could show you all couple.
The beginning of some really remarkable dialogue with light and emotion I think. Thanks C.
Please do not adjust your sets…normal transmission will begin again shortly. I promise.
Inspiration got sucked away last week in a flurry of London commuting and misguided miscommunication but have ordered some more on the internet and am told it will take 3 to 5 working days.
In the meantime, as I cannot show you MY interpretive dance, here is a photo of a Makishi dancer to convey my current mood! I’ll be back as soon as possible!
It’s been a funny old week. That bloody lorry I talked about in my last post was still deafeningly loud behind me and making things a little sticky. I’ve been a little….self obsessed. A little elbows and angst. A little more irritable then, say, Genghis Khan.
To distract myself I try to be useful. I volunteer to help a PhD student with his research on the correlation between visual impairment and depression. He is a gangly, morose young man dressed in dark brown with some ghastly shiny tie. I smile brightly and the brightness is absorbed into the brown shirt like ink into blotting paper. No wonder this kid is an expert in depression.
First off I have a hangover so the obligatory eye tests are dazzling and make my head throb. The grim-faced young man is used to doing his research on the elderly and so puts me through a dementia test – ‘because it’s the rules.’
‘What day is it?’ he shouts. ‘What month? What year?’
‘Well. I know its spring.’ I twinkle, batting my eyelashes. Turns out he has no sense of humour and I nearly get my dementia box ticked.
An hour of daft and intrusive questions later and I stagger out. I have the impression that he has already decided on his thesis results even with a year still to go. He thinks that visually impaired people are usually depressed and therefore think they see less then they can. He gives the impression that we are all fakers and wasters of the precious time of optometrists. He has not taken into account the vagaries of different eye diseases, the effect of light and serotonin, the differences between degenerative, chronic and constant. How on earth is he allowed to be so blind?
Midweek and I head off to London to support my lovely photographic charity who are recruiting more blind and visually impaired people for a workshop. In my head I have a picture of myself and the other visual impaired facilitators, a cosy darkened room and a slide show but as it turns out there are no other VI facilitators; just myself and the photovoice organiser, M. Upstairs 20 blind and VI people have crowded into a room that is too full of sunlight. I can’t do my talk in my sunglasses though and by the end of the near two hours my eyes feel stretched and swollen. But we win. Even though I think my off the cuff wittering is shouty and confusing, even though no one can see the slides because it too bright and they are too blind, it doesn’t matter. People are fascinated, enthusiastic, energised. Everyone wants to sign up. A great success! I want a hug, a bunch of flowers, applause, a check.
Instead I get Kings Cross at rush hour and a cold walk home. This of course makes me dwell on the fact that I have just done an 8-hour day for £13 train ticket and a bowl of soup. My ‘up’ crashes down. Bring on Genghis.
Well you get my point. The week ends with me howling to my homeopath. ‘I fell like bits of me are dropping off!’ I wail. ‘As my sight is taken so is my sense of humour, my femininity, my self-respect. I am graceless, tongue-tied. I am disintegrating.’
He writes this all down and strokes his beard.
‘Did I do this?’ I ask. ‘Am I making this happen – somehow making myself blind? Its all my fault isn’t it.’
I realise I sound ridiculous. I stop wailing and get the giggles.
He writes this down too nods, tuts and in a wizardly manner opens a heavy, leather bound tome and begins to expound on a potential remedy but actually I feel better already from just being allowed to howl.
I walk home in the glittering, spring light, noting the daffodils on the edge of Parkers Pieces, the shy wave from a toddler on the back of her mother’s bike. The looming lorry falls behind; its engine idling and I feel a weight has lifted.
You may recall that I had a hospital visit just before my trip to Lusaka and they said I had lost more vision. They meant ‘losing’! Holy shit people! I went out a couple of times last week and was completely off balance. Bits of pavement missing, people emerging magically in front of me, invisible cars. This all gets a little unsettling when trying to have ordinary conversations with people in cafes or at the supermarket. One doesn’t just turn desperately to people and share .
‘I must apologise for my twitching and jibbering..it is just that I seem to be losing my sight rapidly on a daily basis and it is so terrifying that I feel like I have a massive juggernaut truck thundering up behind me and I can’t escape. I am sure you understand.’
No that would never do. Instead one says things like;
‘Thank you I’ll have a mocha.’ Or ‘Please would you assist me with the self scanning machine. Its rejected my bean sprouts.’
It is the fear though – that articulated lorry screaming down the road towards you – that comes from knowing something as precious as sight is leaching from your life and there is nothing to be done but swallow hard and buy more magnifiers. I presume the terrible fear is there too for those of us with other encroaching disabilities. I have a wonderful friend with MS. We talked a little about that monster truck we can see if we look over our shoulders. We both came very quickly to the conclusion it is best, for the moment, not to look, just to keep running.
Just an aside about hospitals. If you have to go in for anything I would recommend dressing as a consultant. I did so the other day and got marvellous treatment. Power dressing gets you both attention and respect. (Although perhaps the stethoscope was going a bit far…I ended up doing a ward round.) I once had an ongoing battle with a terminally rude, distant and seemingly bored ophthalmologist. I could never be sure he was giving my eyes full attention. I won the battle by wearing a red push up bra and the lowest cut soft ruffled black top I could squeeze into. At close quarters I could watch the cold sweat dripping from his forehead as he desperately tried to keep his eyes away from my sumptuous bosom (trust me on this one). To prevent a potential sexual harassment case he was forced to concentrate and focus on my eyes at all times. I actually got a coherent and detailed eye exam as opposed to the usual cursory dismissal. Small victories and potentially unethical but I couldn’t think of any other way of getting the little sod to do his job properly.
The kid is looking at me. The whites of his enormous eyes glisten in the gloomy room. He is three and beautiful. He has been picking his nose for the last ten minutes with one hand whilst squeezing a banana to gluey mucus in the other and is now looking for a place to wipe his fingers. He grins up at me with sudden gleeful inspiration.
My face must be a rictus of polite horror – a truly British expression- but I am counselling his mother, am midway through a complex problem and have no training in non familial toddler wrangling.
The child’s mother waves a hand vaguely in his direction murmuring something unintelligible but the child doesn’t even pause and I suddenly feel his small warm palms on my kneecaps. I close my eyes and thank various gods I am wearing jeans and have tied my hair back.
Sticky fingerprints are on every surface in the room including the computer monitor, my magnifier, the walls, the telephone and now me but its not the kid’s fault. We are in the dingiest counselling room in the Citizens Advice Bureau building . It is also the smallest. To be frank it has pretensions to be a stationary cupboard but the charity is desperate for space so somehow someone has squeezed in three chairs and a battered computer desk although the room is too small to actually pull out the keyboard from the sliding drawer. Two adults can barely fit – add a rampaging toddler and things will get sticky.
We are in the room for over an hour, opening the door every now and then to let in oxygen and allow the small boy to race frantically around the waiting room. Its been a long day. I have seen one other case, debt, but its complications took up the entire morning and this one is no better. Cambridge at the moment is a particularly joyless place. Debt, redundancy, domestic abuse, mental illness…
I slouch homeward and as I walk through the desolate shopping centre I note how people’s eyes slide away from others or rise in challenge and anger. I walk faster and stumble and get my cane out. The sky is low and grey, the light harsh. Crossing the road I feel as if everyone in every car is staring at me People are every where, looking tired, anxious and I am sick of the endless concrete, the smell of piss and old cigarette ash.
At home I look around my flat and make a decision. It is time to move again. I don’t know where and I don’t know how but I know another year here won’t work. Having made the decision I feel better. I take deep breaths and whatever it is gripping my heart lets go. I look down and notice the tiny sets of fingerprints on the knees of my jeans. Two perfect sets, five prints on each knee where the little boy came over and leaned on me, looked up into my face and smiled unaware of the grotty room, the distress of his mother, the tension in my face. I remember the smile now and it makes me grin too. I remember I am an idiot. That all this will pass and that if you look for misery you will find it. Sometimes ones perspective needs a good tweaking by a snotty, banana encrusted three year old. Ta kid.
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