Unceasing Echoes

In town this afternoon, thought I’d nip into Waitrose to buy a few things.   During my visit, I had to ask two different shop assistants for help. Both were friendly and helpful, they spoke to me without effect and read out all the details I’d asked for without so much as a sigh.   When I reached the checkout, the woman offered to pack my bag, was straightforward and normally helpful.   The whole thing was a comfortable experience. It was frankly slightly unusual that they all knew what my white stick meant without any explanations needed. They didn’t point, treat me like a child  or someone needing over-indulgence. This shouldn’t feel unusual or like a pleasant surprise.

  I loved this one – it has happened almost word for word so many times, but this is probably the longest anyone’s gone without interruption. .   One bus stop episode Me: “Excuse me, would you tell me when you see the 48 or 49 coming please?”   Them: “Do you know where you’re going?”   Me: “Yes, I need the 48 or 49”   Them: “Where are you going?   Me: “Easton”   Them: “Now, you need the 48 or 49. You stay there and I’ll tell you when I see it... Are you going to be alright?... Stay there, it’s not coming yet... It’s alright, don’t panic, I’m not going anywhere... Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when it comes….. Oh, my bus is here now… you’ll have to ask someone else.. I’ll tell this lady..Excuse me, this blind man doesn’t know where he’s going, he needs a 48 or 49, could you look after him, make sure the driver knows about him”.   I still hadn’t had a chance to say anything.    

I first posted this on my earlier ‘Sightlines’ blog on 17 th March 2006. I was struck on finding it again that it is very similar to something that happened to me at a gig in 2019 that I wrote about heare in an early post. You see, these things keep coming around.   At a gig on Saturday – dark  room. Walking through the audience.   A guy starts talking to me in an odd way, I recognise his voice. I said:   “Is that “X”?)   “Yes - so you worked it out in the end then”    

Well, I’ve been doing this blog now for almost two years – I posted for the first time on 2 nd February 2020. This is my 84 th post and I have been pleased and not a little surprised that I’ve churned so much out but more importantly, that people seem to enjoy reading it.   I really hope that people read it, although I haven’t really done enough to publicise it, that might well be my year three resolution.and you readers, please share it with anyone that you think would be interested or enjoy it.   In 2007, I wrote a blog   for a while, but due to the platform changing its configuration (making it less accessible and less immediate to post to) and the old email address being ceased, I couldn’t merely continue writing that one. It is archived at: http://sitelines.blogspot.com   I’ve just been reading it again and reminded of why I named this one ‘unceasing echoes’ (see my eponymously named second blog post.   I might repost some of those that made me laugh or re-irritated here again.

Had a nice walk with a friend last week through the Frome Valley in Bristol. There’s a tea stall at the other end by the old mill that has been there  all of the 30 years that I’ve been going, but it wasn’t the couple who ran it when I used to go often in the 1990s with my children.   I ordered our drinks and then asked the proprietor if he could tell me what cakes they have. He sighed and, presumably pointing:   Him: “They’re all down there in the fridge”    Me: “I’m blind, so will need you to read them out please”   Him (sighing irritably and over-annunciating every word): “It’s written up right by you on the window”   Me: “As I said, I am blind and that means that I can’t see, so I can’t read the sign. Can you tell me what cakes you’ve got please”   Him (sighing again and talking very fast and almost to himself facing the fridge presumably and away from me – clearly not wanting me to hear him): “Carrot cake, coffee cake and (something else that I couldn’t hear properly)”   Me: “One

You might think that a blogger who’s prepared to publicly share his experiences, thoughts, analysis and irritations so readily would be in favour of disabled people ‘telling their stories’ as a vehicle for improving awareness of disability. Well I’m not.   Many disabled people have been asked at some time in their lives, to talk to their colleagues, doctors/health workers etc about themselves and their experiences, on the basis that it will help improve things for others. There are many well-described accounts of how the experience has been far from empowering or impactful on change, but instead personally diminishing either in the experience itself or its reception.   I have serious concerns about what I consider an over-simplistic practice of encouraging disabled people to ‘tell their stories’ in semi-public contexts as a means to improving awareness of disability, and about ‘awareness-raising’ of disability equality through using individual experience to improve disabled people’s po

Voices have been a persistent source of fascination for me and a recurrent theme here. There are certainly aspects of this that are entirely influenced by my lack of sight, but it’s also important to recognise that in the arenas of radio, theatre,  audio podcasting, reading aloud (now popularised through the mainstreaming of audio books), the voice is all (or a significant part) of what the listener has to go on, so I wouldn’t want to leave you thinking that there is merely a visual/aural (sighted/blind) polarity in operation.   The belief (or probably more likely too easy throw-away cliché) that, without being able to see the things that sighted people typically use to pick up on, or judge people  by, blind people must have a somehow more ‘pure’ and less encumbered impression of those we encounter.  Well for my part, there is nothing more pure about not being able to see, it’s just that my observations, interpretations and judgements about people are all loaded onto their voices, How

This blog isn’t intended to be objective, nor to provide a ‘balanced’ insight into my life – which would mean me putting all the difficult encounters into proportionate context with all the positive/respectful/’normal’ experiences. I write about the things that I’m particularly struck by, that irritate, upset, disturb or amuse  me in day to day encounters.   I should own up then that my life is good, it is difficult (often it feels more and more difficult) but I don’t feel that I need to spend so much time on describing all those people close to me and all the strangers who communicate with me normally – I don’t want this to be seen as something strange or to be grateful for and yet sometimes I feel like I do want to affirm people for just treating me normally, fairly, on the level or whatever, particularly in situations where this is unusual.   I want to highlight here the things that happen so often that are not OK, that are weird, that come from positions of hostility, scorn, malice

Regrettably, I’ve posted to this blog rarely this year.  there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, and most importantly, I’ve been ill for a considerable proportion of the year and haven’t been well enough to do many of the things that normally interest me or express my creativity. Thankfully, I’m much better now and expect to be back posting more regularly again.   Secondly, Now, in my COVID-shrunken life, the majority of the day to day interactions that give me material to write about are through my work. Prior to COVID, lockdowns and working from home, I had a busy active life around work, but now, many of the  things that brought me actively into the world are much diminished.   I will not write about encounters at work other than in the most general terms as there are other mechanisms for dealing with these, and a colleague who goes off and blogs about work-time encounters would not invite much in the way of colleagues’ trust and respect.   Ever hopeful, as I did at the end of