Good morning afternoon or evening, wherever you are in this
land of earth. Not sure you can receive my blogs in space, but if you can and
you are there right now, hey there. I once received an email from an astronaut
so you just never know. Mind you I’m sure he was writing from earth…….
Well, Hub got up at silly hour to go to work. I lay in bed.
I turned to him and asked him to give my LC a kiss from her Mummy before they
both went to work.
Oh.
My heart was hit like a bolt of thunder had just struck it.
I felt sick, guilty too. Poor poor Hub. My stomach sunk and my chest hurt. His
sad voice as I apologised. Oh God it hurt. Never will I learn to think before I
speak. How long will it last before we stop saying things like that? She has
been gone now for eighteen days. I don’t, I can’t believe it! It’s not true I
don’t want it to be.
Hub used to get up out of bed with a spark. No more. It’s
now a duty. Thank goodness he hasn’t had much travel to do for work. Only once
and that was cut short. Thankfully there is a lot of budgeting to do in his
office so not much train journeys elsewhere.
This Thursday he is to stand in our town with some of his
colleagues and hopefully raise money for Guide Dogs. He is taking my little
Wagga. He won’t be able to use her as a guide, so not sure how he will get
there and back, but we will see about that. Wagga won’t be working in our town
so she will be OK. As she can’t stand doing that. She can’t cope. She is so
fragile. Doesn’t like loud noises at all. Well, she is fine with music it’s
just traffic. I don’t think she was subjected to that in her puppy walking
days. She certainly has never been on a train. I was talking to a puppy walker
not long ago who said she was told not to take her puppy to the cinema. Please,
why? That was my question. Apparently she was told by a puppy instructor not to.
So why? Do blind people not go to the movies? Any puppy walkers out there,
please, listen, we do. We are like you, just we can’t see. So we go to the
pictures, theatre and we do travel on trains. Most puppy walkers do know this,
but the odd one doesn’t. As we were talking to a lady last year once again, we
asked her what kind of places she takes her guide dog puppy to be trained. Her
answer was around the shops and cafés.
Our LC / Suki, was amazing. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She
would get Hub out of the worst situations. She went on trains, aeroplanes even
boats. Our little girl did the theatre and cinema too. Not pop concerts though,
but she did do a brass band concert two Christmases ago. Both of our dogs are
known to frequent the church or in LC’s case, the Cathedral as well.
I listened to a radio interview about how blind people are
treat and, what it’s like for blind people in the UK.
It did annoy me a little. So many people said how good their
lives were. Well, that is fantastic. I’m here to tell you all of our great
days, and you know we have had a lot of those, but I’m real too. I will tell
you like it is when times are so dam difficult.
There is nothing worse when you are first blind and you hear
how good life is. I’m not joking. There is being positive and being real. Life
isn’t a bowl of cherries. We come across so many obstacles. We don’t just do tasks,
we achieve them.
Life can be easy, but not as easy if you can see. If you are
newly blinded or have been blind for some time now, or even all of your life,
you will still have down days. Those hot summer days when all you want to do is
have a picnic. But how? It’s not the easiest thing to do in the world.
You need bread milk from your local shop. You head out on
that winter morn. And half way you discover there is ice. What to do? Go home,
hoping you miss more ice, as you don’t know it’s there until you slip. If you
go home, you still have no bread and milk. So you continue. You are terrified of
falling. One path has thick snow that hasn’t been cleared away. Where is your
path now? It’s hard to define.
You are to go to your child’s school play fair or a meeting
at the school. Try doing that with your eyes closed.
I remember when I used to take my son to his football. Oh I
hated Sundays. He would put me yes; put me, on the field. Give me a kiss and
tell me he would come to me at the end. So there I was. Standing there. Slowly
the other parents would come. No one in the early days would stand even close
to me. Which way to face? There were the children playing football one direction,
the other way there were siblings also playing, who weren’t in the team. So in
which direction. Concentrate. Listen so carefully. See if I could hear a name
being shouted I knew were in the team.
Shouting, whistles. Parents in the distance groaning with
deep breaths. Obviously a child had been injured. Who’s child? Was it mine? God
I don’t want those days back.
Empty birthday cards. Who from? As for the work place? Even getting a job. Well,
before you get employment these days almost every job a blind person can get
you have had to have had experience before. How to get that if no one will
employ you?
I tell all those employers out there. If you interview a
blind person and you think that they will be great for the job, you I’m sure
will have a very loyal employee. Normally we go that extra mile to prove we
can. We are so capable if we have the equipment in place which really isn’t much
at all. Just open your minds to us and look at our brains.
Going to University for blind people is so difficult. Finances
for one thing. We can’t really get a part time job in a shop or bar as I’ve
touched on before.
So for that radio five live this morning. Great to the
people who can’t see and are happy, but for those who were listening at home,
you aren’t alone. You are not the only people who can’t see and who don’t feel confident
enough to leave your homes. My blog is for the silent voices.
The trouble is with so many positive people saying they are
happy being blind; never will we have a cure or treatment for those who don’t
feel like you. So yes, be positive, that is great, but please, try thinking out
of your own box. Lift the lid of others and take a look into their lives.
So that rants over. On with my day. As I took a shower, and
got dressed. Searched for black jeans. I have two jumpers the same, one dark
green, the other red. Hmm. With jeans it doesn’t really matter what you wear,
if I wore black trousers, I don’t think I would wear dark green, though it wouldn’t
be a disaster. Navy trousers and dark green would be. But I wanted to wear red.
Red and black are lovely. Also I was to wear my black shoes and black jacket.
Got my card to pay with. I know that card now. So don’t get it confused with
other cards in my pack of jokers.
I decided to put some washing in the machine before leaving my
house. So fun with the colour detector. A shirt of Hubs read, it was pink, purple,
blue then it said yellow….. So OK, I was doing pastels. So it wasn’t dark or
white, so that would do. Now what colour was it? I then went to my Tap Tap See.
That is an apt on my IPod. It’s great; it costs but its fine. See, if you have
sight, no need to pay for things to tell you colours. Anyway it read the shirt
was lilac. Most things today I was OK with and remembered the colours. I have learned
it’s easier if I don’t allow the washing basket, to get too loaded. So less daunting.
Put the washing in. Goodness knows what number it went on,
but nothing has shrunk yet. You can get rubber like dots for your washing
machine. They are orange and you get a sighted person to put them where you
want them on your machine. But we don’t have that. On our last washing machine
we did.
I filled the dish washer wiped the kitchen down emptied the
inside bins and picked up my shopping bag just before letting Wagga out to the
toilet as don’t want any doggy doodles on the way.
Then went to the front door. It was an hour and a half since
teen left for work. He hadn’t locked the door again. I wasn’t pleased.
On my way to the shop. On my way there were a few
distractions for Waggatail. She if I hadn’t told her a, would have took me
another way. A path to another dog I could hear in the distance. I corrected
her and around the corner and over the road we went. Someone was across the
busy dangerous road. She started to head their way, really, I wasn’t happy with
her. Another correction and a firm no.
Then our lovely neighbour came to speak with me. She is so
sweet. She’s a Muslim so I’m conscious of my Waggs. As dogs don’t have any
religious views everyone is their friend and everyone is there just to stroke
them… So a strong hold on little Waggs. Some
sweet words were exchanged and on my way. I was slapped by wet huge autumn
leaves. Poked by end of summer bare branches and teased by dying thorns,
telling me they would be back next year to rip at my skin….. Unless of course
there is a cure or treatment then I will see them coming and I won’t bleed on
my way to the shop….
First stop was our chemist. Well. I put a box in there two
and a half weeks ago for Guide Dogs. You put in a pound and take out a badge of
a paw. I asked our chemist, how many
badges were left? Just in case it needed collecting.
It was still half full. Not half empty. Haha haha. Such a
positive Fifi.
I bought some blister plasters. For five, three of them
tiny, it was £5.40 shocking.
Tablets for Hub just normal pain killers for a head ache.
Then on to the shop to buy some fish for Teen.
There are new staff in there and I’m not impressed. Young
people who need teaching about blindness. Basically, I was asked what I wanted.
She went off to get it and I hate that. Normally I would tell her I was coming
but I only needed one thing. So she got it shouted to me to come to the till.
OK. What till? There were three and lots of noise. Anyway little Wagga made
sure I headed to the tills. And the girl on the till was an oldie, and called
me to her. Waggs did well in finding the tills. She would. There’s always food
under there. Haha.
Back home, spoke with another neighbour. Such a friendly
place to live. I love it.
More to write later but for now, remember an open mind to
the blind. X
