"It's not just me"

I remember in the late 1980s going to the local train station with a friend who was also blind. I ordered the drinks and, when we sat down at our table,  he expressed such relief and fascination, saying ‘it’s not just me-  Thank Christ it happens to you too’.

 

He had noticed the way that the woman behind the counter spoke just a little louder and  slightly slower than to other customers, the way that she gave me just that bit too much information but using  a tone of voice which suggested that, while I am obviously under-age and inferior to her, she was nonetheless going to do me a particular favour in serving me. She then made more of a deal than she needed to of offering to carry the drinks over to our table (making sure she was heard by others in the room).

 

My friend had thought that it was just him who was talked to in this way and I will be writing a lot about this in my blog over time as I come across this way of being spoken to and engaged with so much in my day to day life.

 

My father recently spent his final weeks in hospital and I was struck, not by the fact that a number of staff used the well-established patronising infantilising, sing-song  bedside manner (although it was sad that my Dad had to put up with it in his last few weeks of his life), but by the fact that a significant number of staff across different roles and levels of seniority in the hospital did not.

 

It was strange being an onlooker for once and hearing groups of staff working with my Dad, some very obviously speaking to him naturally, respectfully, adult to adult, while colleagues (often only one) speaking to him in that stupid voice where every syllable is over enunciated, where the rise and falling inflections span a substantial range in pitch, where certain words are given greater import and stressed I wondered what each thought of their colleagues