The Blind Truth

As the witching hour broke, I began to roam about the house in the dark, trying not to make a noise less the dog barked, the household awoke and the neighbours cursed me. Then it dawned on me that I was no longer in possession of a phone.

The phone was lying face down in the road and beyond the prospect of a replacement screen. Thus began a week of red faced trips to the #Apple store.

The red face was in part because of my own idiocy in dropping my phone and not noticing, then having to peel its shattered remains out of a plastic bag to give an account of myself. The redder face was the rage of being held in the grip of #Apple power. #Apple does not seem to me, to serve, but to administer its customers. With an annual budget bigger than some national economies, it’s well placed to behave like the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity. It demands compliance.

After the interminable wait, I recounted the manner of death of my phone. A replacement quote was emailed. The insurance agreed to pay.  I phoned the #Apple store to arrange an appointment. The Genius were not answering their phones. No matter, #AppleCare could help. The incomprehensible conversation that followed came to an end because the Genius were still not answering their phone and #AppleCare couldn’t help and didn’t care. Then the phones were not working.

Ready to part with my credit card, I went to the #Apple store and queued for a second time. The moment of truth arrived and I was tantalisingly close to a replacement phone. Or not. The quote was not the quote. “It might not say it, but everyone knows you have to hand over your broken phone for that price”. I didn’t. No one told me. It wasn’t in the quote.

The phone might be useless, but its carcass held value and everyone wanted a slice of the action. The insurers wanted it. #Apple demanded it. Just like a government department that makes a mistake, it was my tough luck. Exasperatingly, I arrange my third #Apple visit. “Don’t forget to bring your driving licence as photo ID next time,” said the Genius.

“Driving is such a popular activity with blind people”. I snapped.

We argued the toss and he suggested I bring my passport and just to be tricky I said I’d bring my bus pass.

“I’ll need your passport.”

“But what if I don’t have a passport? Are you saying that if I don’t have a passport or a driving licence I can’t have a phone?”

“You’ll need photo ID. We accept passports or driving licences.”

“I’ll bring my bus pass then. That’s got a photo.”

“I don’t think we can accept a bus pass.”

“What happens to the many disabled people who don’t have a passport or a driving licence? Are you saying they can’t have a phone?”

There was a stand off while an #Apple civil servant decided to make an exception and allow the bus pass as photo ID.

On my third trip to the #Apple store, I flashed my bus pass at the Genius who turned out to be at school with a friend’s son. He knew about bus passes and “OMG! You know Louise,” he said.

With any process set in stone, it’s who you know that counts. Perhaps this will prove to be useful work experience, should the junior Genius ever want to progress from the state of #Apple to a state of something more benign.

I might be red faced but I like to think it would be genius if the bus pass were right up there with the driving licence and the passport.

My friend, the Dynamo, and I are firmly of the belief that the car boot sale provides the optimum purchasing opportunity for plants. Lovingly grown by amateurs, selling off their excess Cosmos cheap, it’s a joy to behold. All of this can be washed down with a disgusting cup of tea, sitting on a plastic chair in a car park.

My personal car boot joy is dependant on being whisked to the car boot in someone else’s car, in order not to have to trudge home with arms weighed down by bags of potting compost and squashed plants. My friends are remarkably obliging in this respect; the Dynamo, Mr Dynamo and their son Dynamite, amongst them.

After this weeks’ expedition, the Dynamo offered me a lift home, via #Homebase where she had a pressing appointment with some sticky back plastic.

#Homebase was not much of a draw for the rest of us, not even with sticky back plastic on offer, so Mr Dynamo, Dynamite and I, elected to wait in the car. Adult chit chat did for Dynamite, who turned the volume up on his play list, so loud, that Mr Dynamo and I were forced to leap from the car for the good of our ear drums.

We were the loud people with all the doors open and the music blaring, who were now shouting at each other. “Let’s dance,” yelled Mr Dynamo. So we did….in the car park…..at #Homebase. The boy racers, making a fast getaway from the hotdog stand near the bins, could not have been more conspicuous than a couple of middle aged would-be rockers with no rhythm, no coordination and, for at least one of us, no sense of where her dance partner was in relation to herself.

None of this deterred us, and as Dynamite slammed the car doors shut in disgust, we got into our stride and our second number. Not that this turned out to be any different from the first dance. Having got the hang of it, I was hardly about to vary the moves, which may explain Mr Dynamo’s observations: “We are getting some very funny looks”.

“What kind of funny looks?” I asked.

“Oh, just funny,” he said.

As qualifiers go, “oh, just” isn’t that helpful.

My friend the builder says, “when you walk into people they look furious. They think you’re an ignorant selfish so and so.” This is more helpful. I know where I am and how to respond. “Well, they’re not my friends so in the scheme of things I’ll live with it.”

Not being able to see people’s faces as they scowl and curse is not much of a loss. Funny looks I’m curious about. Were they amused? Did they envy our sense of freedom dancing in a car park, giving free reign to the handbag over my shoulder? Did any of their faces betray an admiration for our moves? Were they laughing with us, or at us? When it comes down to it, who cares what other people think? Could not knowing offer a kind of freedom for judging eyes?

It was all too much for Dynamite to bare. His embarrassment was complete. He switched the music off and did a bit more door slamming. The Dynamo came back, carrying more sticky back plastic than Lesley Judd could shake a stick at. Mr Dynamo and I caught our breath and got back into the car as if nothing had happened.  I doubt we have a future on #Strictly.

I carefully closed the door, lopping the heads off the Cosmos in the process, leaving the blooms as a tribute to our impromptu dance and taking the roots home for possible cultivation but probable disposal.

Flying has been a feature of my life. I cannot begin to calculate how many flights I have been on. Not all of them have begun in Luton.  There is one flight that could be described as a short haul flight that has turned into the longest haul flight in the history of flight. You might say it is a flight with teeth.

If the Wright brothers could establish the principle of man and machine acting in perfect unity, how hard could it be for one small girl, propelled by billowing folds of only a brush nylon nighty, to also achieve flight?

Take off went according to plan. Lack of depth perception meant that a wall I thought was somewhere over there, was in fact now in contact with my face and my days of independent flight had come to an undistinguished end.

After my ten-year-old friends had picked themselves up off the ground and before they had stopped laughing, I retired wounded and humiliated to nurse my bleeding mouth. If only I had seen that wall.

Pound for pound, that short flight has turned out to be more expensive than a first class Emirates ticket to Sydney. It has proved to be considerably less pleasant that the hospitality of Emirates airline. My girlish cavorting resulted in the death of my front tooth and the indignity of a crown.

While the dentist may feel smug about the longevity of his work, I have excellently curated the aforementioned tooth with daily flossing, skilled brushing and a regular polish. My shortcoming is that the same vanity that led me to think my brush nylon nighty would keep me aloft, led me to think that I do not have accidents. The available evidence would suggest otherwise.

My knees have never been quite the same since I went headlong over a tow bar I had not spotted. After my thirty something year old companions picked themselves up off the floor, and before they had finished laughing, I retired to nurse my bleeding knees. If only I had seen that tow bar.

Confident in the knowledge that the pavement I was on was not coming to an end, I fell off the end. When my fifty something year old companion picked himself up and smothered his amusement at this slapstick moment, I did not retire to nurse my bleeding mouth, but dabbed it with a tissue and carried on. 

I concede there was a horrible moment when I thought I might have knocked my teeth out and lamented the uselessness of my cane as it languished in my handbag. It would seem that I do make mistakes after all.

A nagging sense that all was not well with my tooth led the Dentist to x-ray it. “That’s strange, it looks like a serious trauma injury,” he said.

I shook my head, dredging the depths of my memory for possible causes.  Smashing my face on the ground never occurred to me as one of them.

“Come back on Monday for a scan and we’ll discuss your treatment plan.”

I think it might be vanity that has led me to this place.  It’s a double edged sword. Vanity makes me believe there is always a way to do things, it’s just a question of how. Vanity may  be what makes me leave my cane in my bag when sometimes I shouldn’t.  Vanity may have benefits but comes at a price.

Implants are an expensive business. There’s bound to be a way to pay for this. A treatment plan? I might look into crowd funding. Whichever way you cut it, I won’t be flying anywhere for a while, unless the anaesthesia has something to offer.

I went to have a cuppa with my friend The Big Cheese. He’s always late so being punctual gave me ample time to navigate the “patrons only” use of the loo rule, before I became a patron.

The deal is that there is a code on your till receipt that is the code for the loo. I didn’t yet have a till receipt and was reluctant to stake my place at a table with my coat, just in case someone my size fancied that coat as much as me. So, at the counter I didn’t look much like a serious prospect but more of a chancer. Not to worry, the code, I was informed, was stuck to the door.

The code was indeed stuck to the door, just above the keypad. Both were impenetrable. Back to the counter, still wearing my coat. I explained my predicament. It gets dull after a while, to have to keep saying that you cannot see to do such and such and need a spot of help. The incredulous server looked puzzled. “You can see. The code is on the door,” she said.

“I know it’s on the door,” I laboured while crossing my legs. “I just can’t read it because I cannot see it. The problem is me.  I cannot see. Can you help me?”

“No,” she said. “The code is on the door. You can see it.”

The Big Cheese ambled in. “Never mind,” I said. “My friend is here. He can do it.”

“Take me to the lavatory,” I demanded.

“Hello to you too,” he said.

“Can you operate the code for the loo?”

He punched in the numbers.  There was a bit of muttering because he couldn’t get it to work either.

“You don’t need the code. It’s open. You just need to turn the handle,” said a passing member of “the team”.  

For a man who is all teched up and who once gave me a laboured lesson on how to turn the telly on, this was a humiliation. He muttered a bit more and went to buy the tea.

Now all I had to do was work out how to lock the door. If all else failed I could ask the Big Cheese to stand guard. His powers of deduction might have also been able to explain why there was soap coming out of the paper dispenser and no paper in the soap dispenser. Luckily I am always prepared for this eventuality but have recently had to adopt new tactics since I have started to worry about my personal #wet wipe contribution to the #fatberge blocking London’s sewers.

For those who like to be prepared for the mysteries of public loos, and the paucity of resources they offer, and who have not yet embraced the #ecco friendly wet wipe, help is at hand. Your mobile phone can take the strain.

While the mobile might seem an unlikely salvation in these kind of emergencies, it just might lend a helping hand.

#TapTapSee is an app that takes a pic and then describes what’s in the photo. Other apps are available (#CamFind and #Talking Google) but that’s the one I’ve got. The idea is that it compares what’s in the photo with a data base of known objects.  Soap dispensers and loo paper should be amongst its library.

Now this is all well and good if you do tech, but I still need a technology big Cheese to tell me how to work the damn thing. It’s a great idea, but on balance I’m prepared to put up with the muttering of friends, and the strain on family relationships, my technological shortcomings have caused.

I’ve been to Gateshead, where despite the chill winds, skirts are still high. Northern women are tough, resilient to the elements but not without a soft side.

The receptionist at check-in asked me to verify my details on the bit of card they always hand you. I said that I’d be grateful if she could read it to me. She asked me if I needed my glasses. I said I didn’t as they wouldn’t help, but if she could read the card to me that would definitely do the trick. She leant over the counter and read my address to me in hushed tones, which was thoughtful given that the assembled throng was milling about at close quarters.

Check in complete, she said, ” I hope you don’t mind me asking. Are you partially sighted or blind?” I explained that I can see but I’m registered blind. She said it was incredible because I was looking right at her. I said it was all in the training.

“How sad,” she said and leant over the desk and squeezed my hand.” Never mind, we are here now and we’ll look after you.”

Resisting the temptation to poke her in the eye with a white stick, I asked if someone could show me to my room. Matthew appeared.

“Alright? You wanna elbow?’

“I’ll just follow on,” I said and off we set.

Matthew was a natural. He offered to give me a tour of my hotel room. It was well worth it. I have never had such good instruction on how to use the remote control. I’m challenged enough by my own remote control. It’s been in my clutches for more than four years now and I still don’t know which button does what.

Matthew gave me lessons in the use of the remote that I would’ve benefited from a lifetime ago. Who knew that my hotel room could offer the delights of instant switching between news on the telly and news on the radio. I’m addicted to the news. It offers all the escapism of a soap opera, just the right light touch of political analysis when my eye lids are drooping, and more information about sport than I feel is necessary to keep me awake.

“I’ll draw the remote on a piece of paper with all the details for you”

Why have I never thought of that?

“You can call me if you get stuck,” he said.

I usually resist the urge to call a friend. Friendship can be tested by these kinds of demands at 10pm. 10pm is the best bit of the day, for news hounds, forced to chose between news streaming on just about every medium. It’s also the moment when my news enthusiasm is bound to result in a bit of channel hopping. Inevitably, I go fifty fifty on the which button does what, and end up disabling the entire system as sleep is upon me.

Every hotel room should be blessed with a large laminate instruction on what the remote control has to offer. It might prove instructive to the people next door, who seem to follow me from hotel to hotel, and have their own troubles in operating the the volume button on their remote control.

As I lay in bed, I pondered the possibility of giving Matthew a quick call to ask him if he could pop next door to offer my neighbours some assistance or possibly draw them a picture of sleep deprivation.

Having bottled it, I had to resign myself to other people’s late night viewing, which offered just the right balance of football commentator excitement and crowd enthusiasm to keep me awake well into extra time.

My garden shed has been gently dissolving into the ground for some time now. In every cost there is an opportunity.

Having sat down with the Right Hand Neighbour to consider our shed options, I settled on a modest affair just right to stuff old ironing boards in.

Yvonne (not her real name) adjusted her head set because she was having a bit of trouble hearing what I was saying but we got there in the end. It was time to part with the long number on the front of my credit card. Yvonne instructed me to punch the number into my keypad. I said I’d rather tell her the number as I would find it tricky blah blah because blah blah.  The previously composed Yvonne exploded. “You cannot speak the number. It’s GDPR. It’s the law.” She was incandescent.

“If you can’t see an exception…”

“It’s the law’, she bellowed. “It’s illegal for you to tell me your card number.” She was very loud.

“I am absolutely certain it’s not…”

“And I’m telling you it is. You have to punch it in to your keypad,” she barked.

I thought I did rather well in not rising to the fray. Blind or not blind, there was no negotiating with Yvonne.

You get three attempts to punch your details in correctly, I got mine right on the third attempt. If you get it wrong #Argos don’t want your money any more.  If you are at a lose end, you could waste a lot of time, and theirs, playing this game.  

I expected the flying squad would burst through my front door at any moment. #Argos could keep the police busy with all my illegal tendencies around paying for sheds.

We got to the end of the call and I agreed a day far into the future when I would be available to wait in for twelve hours in the hope that the shed might turn up.  I hope it’s a whole shed this time, not a shed that comes in three parts over three days, necessitating the sacrifice of an entire working week, like last time. Then I pushed the envelope and asked to speak to a supervisor about the illegal speaking of credit card numbers.

After a bit of mood music, Fiona (not her real name) came on the line. If #M&S and #John Lewis routinely got people to speak their card numbers, I couldn’t understand why #Argos thought it illegal. Fiona agreed. She said that this was the first time anyone had raised this since the introduction of #GDPR.  She could see that this was unworkable if you can’t see. She would call me back later. She didn’t. She didn’t email me either. Two weeks elapsed and so I followed up. I emailed again. She didn’t reply. I emailed again. She replied to say that if it’s too tricky to punch in your credit card number on your telephone keypad, you can take a trip to your local #Argos store or go on line.  Now why didn’t I think of making my life easier by popping into town rather than picking up the phone? I said so. I never heard back. How rude is that?

If only the silence of #Argos had been replicated in my garden as the shed went up. “You’re an idiot,” and “I’ll finish that later,” and “I know what I’m doing so shut up,” were the precursors to lunch. I just hung around and watched the entertainment while the lunch went past its best.

You’d think they’d make it easier to part with your cash than your temper. No, that shed has left me smarting. Let’s hope Yvonne has calmed down.

Nowadays it’s not uncommon to have a job that is part of the grand scheme of your career as well as a job on the side, that might be a way to make money or it’s just about something you like doing.

I met a man whose main business was shady nightclubs and whose side hussle was philosophy discussions in the pub. I’m not sure how much pub goers were willing to pay for philosophy. I thought that was the point of the pub. Everyone’s a philosophers and you get the benefit of their views for free. My friend the Artists’ side hussle is wedding bunting. She is not short on customers. Like plumbers, you can never have enough bunting.

My friend, the Dynamo, and I have been thinking about a side hussle. This has involved a couple of bottles of wine, a pot of tea and a lot of up and down to throw another log on the fire. Stoking the fire did not inflame our imaginations and we are none the wiser but we might see if a good dinner can move things forward.

If all else fails, I’m considering a move into crime. Like all the best ideas, I stumbled on this one by accident.

I went to #UniQlo to look for T-shirts. After the changing rooms contortions I settled on a pair of trousers and agonised about the need for this purchase as I lingered in the queue for the till. With the doubtful trousers in an oversized bag, I made my way to the exit. There was a bit of a kerfuffle as a group of teenagers made a bid to get past me and out of the shop in front of me. As I went to move round them I found myself being hustled. The “hustle” to steer me towards the street was merely a critical move in their criminal “hussle”.

The teenagers piled out onto the street. With me snapping at their heels, the alarm went off. The teenagers sailed on. I stopped dead in my tracks. In the absence of a tap on the shoulder I wandered off.

“Hey! Stop!”

Could he mean me? Still nothing happened, so on I pressed.

“Stop there!” yelled the disembodied voice.

Cane in hand, I looked around but still couldn’t work it out so turned and set off for a third time.

The teenagers were now in front of me, jabbing at me with their bulging #H&M bags flapping in my face.

“You need to go back,” the first one said.

“Yeah, go on. Go back. You set off the alarm.”

“He’s gonna check your bag. Go on. Go back.”

Then they did a nifty backwards walk up #Oxford Street while I did the walk of shame and, in full view of anyone who was interested, had my unnecessary trouser purchase rifled.

“She’s alright,” bellowed the relieved #UniQlo assistant. “You can go,” he said and turned on his heels. He didn’t want the hassle of this hussle.

In the seconds it took for this rouse to unfold, I was a passive player. Why didn’t I finger the teenagers? Whatever made a middle-aged woman with a cane in her hand a more likely suspect than a gang of teenagers? Was it easier for the shop assistant to stop me than have to deal with them?  Could everyone see what was happening but me?

Hiring myself out to shoplifters could be an excellent side hussle. It would have to be on a cash basis. A share of the booty won’t do it. Teenage fashion does nothing for my middle-aged frame.

I’ve examined my soul. I’m taking the trousers back and getting a refund.

Now I’m alert to the risks that public parks present me with: stray dogs with large teeth that will “hound” you for your lunch or even a takeaway tea, small children on scooters who can neither swerve nor break, teenagers on bicycles taking a short cut at top speed, joggers, beggars, hawkers and pick pockets. To the ever expanding list of hazards I can crash into, trip over or be robbed blind by, add the game of “boules”.

Anyone labouring under the illusion that boules is just bowls with a French spelling, had better think again. Boules is no sedate game, played in the warmth of a continental evening in areas reserved for old men to meet and chat about the important matters of the day, while nonchalantly chewing tobacco and casually rolling a wooden ball about. Oh no.

Boules is a fiercely competitive game in which metal balls are liberally hurled about like cannon balls. Players aren’t fussy. They’ll play it anywhere. For a good impromptu game, the intersection of pathways in public parks provide just the right sort of playing arena, perfect for the reach of determined players to aim and dispatch a large heavy metal ball at a small heavy metal target ball, strategically positioned for a bit of competitive throwing.

If you don’t know this, and are not alert to the dangers of boules and you can’t see those metal balls hurtling towards you, you are at risk of having your legs shot out from under you. You are at risk of being bowled over.

Coming back from a quick cup of catch up tea with a friend, I was purposefully striding through the City Gardens in Sofia. Wanda, my speaking google map, was giving directions in my ear. “Turn left,” she said, and so I did. What Wanda didn’t tell me, and could not have known, was that I was marching into a game of boules that was in full competitive swing. I was oblivious because I could not see it. The players were oblivious that I was oblivious because I did not have my cane in my hand.  In my defence, an extended white cane would probably not have made any difference to what happened next. I was not in Kansas anymore.

In my oblivious state I wandered on to the pathway intersection, otherwise known as the field of play, and managed to kick a few metal balls about without noticing. That’s what comes of wearing sensible shoes. After a good deal of waving that I could not see, and a fair amount of yelling “stop” that I had not understood was meant for me, I was struck in the thigh by a metal ball, thrown with force, in order to put an end to my marauding, inconsiderate, arrogant foreigner ways. 

Having been stopped dead in my tracks, and clutching my thigh, I began to look for clues as to the source of the assault. “Sorreeee,” came a chorus of sarcasm.  “You should look where you are going.”

“No vision,” I said, pointing at my eyes and shrugging my shoulders in an “I didn’t know you were there,” kind of a gesture.  “Sorreeee,” I said.

I was beaten back by a flurry of cannonballs bouncing along the ground and past me. I might have destroyed their game but not the accuracy of their aim.

Who would belief that boules would be such a serious business? The people who play it I imagine. Who would believe that someone wandering about, alone, in the middle of the afternoon, couldn’t see where they were going? The person doing the wandering I suppose.  

Making sense of it all depends on the view from where you are standing.

I discovered I might be wearing the wrong reading glasses.  I might have been wearing the wrong prescription for more than a decade.  I’ve been using glasses that are designed for reading a book. I have long since stopped reading books. I read my computer screen.

Wearing the wrong prescription is all the rage: My chum The Doctor has been wearing her contact lenses the wrong way round. She’s been wearing the lens for distance in the eye she uses for near vision and the lens for near vision in the eye she uses for distance vision. “What idiots” she thought, when her monthly disposable lenses started to arrive with labels on them saying “L” and “R”. It took her a year to get round to going to see her optician to explain that she thought her sight had got worse. She had to sit through the indignity of being told she was wearing her lenses in the wrong eyes. It wasn’t her sight that was the problem.  It’s a good job she’s not a surgeon.

What works best when the optician loads different lenses into the impossibly uncomfortable “is that better or worse” glasses, as you sit in the dark and glare at the inviable alphabet on the wall, may have a marginal benefit when sitting in the calm of the examination room. It can offer a worse outcome in the world at large when all the moving parts are moving.

After my first close encounter with a bus the optician gave me a serious talking to about the importance of wearing glasses on a daily basis. Through the “better or worse” test, we settled on a prescription and off I ventured. The startling change in my daily life was that I could no longer walk down the road without feeling dizzy. It was just like the head rush after a deep drag on a cigarette.  Feeling wobbly on your feet does not help when navigating your way around traffic. Whatever the benefits of staring into space in my new glasses, daily life just got a whole lot harder. So it came as a relief when the Sisters’ dog ate my glasses.

My glasses have met their end in many different ways over the years: In a moment of absentmindedness, the Sister accidently grilled a pair of dark glasses, thinking they were fish fingers. I left a pair in a pizza restaurant where no one ever found them. I like to think that there is some clever opportunist walking around in my glasses feeling as dizzy as I did in the glasses I had before the dog ate them. I have left them in a Thai taxi and of course, I have sat on them. I have even trodden on a pair while looking for them after I dropped them.  None of it was worth breaking into a sweat over. I’ve given up on prescription glasses.

There is one type of glasses I’m addicted to. Just about everyone else I know loves them too. Dark glasses are the must have specs. It seems counter intuitive, so If you’ve ever wondered why people who can’t see much favour the tint, it’s to keep out the glare. It’s why I like to wear my dark glasses in the rain.

I’ve developed a scarcity mentality about dark glasses. A few weeks ago I bought a pair I didn’t need to add to the already enormous collection. All of them are different and all of them have a different association. Just like anyone who has a lucky pair of pants, I like to think my tints can create just the same feeling of wellbeing.  I choose carefully, depending on just how lucky I feel!

The Plumber was moaning about the cost of running a car. I told him that this was something outside my experience. He told me that his Father, who is registered blind, has three cars.  What is it that makes people who can’t see much, or even anything at all, want to own a car?

The Plumbers Father has a people carrier that his wife drives him around in, in the endless rounds of house clearing, trips to the supermarket and dog walking.  Then there is a little natty number that she nips in and out of traffic in, that’s low to the ground and easy to park. He likes the feedback that being so low on the road gives him. It reminds him of his youth. Then there is the sports car, top down wind in his hair job. Being a passenger is no bar to enjoying a bit of speed.

A friend of mine, who I shall not name as I want to protect my sources, drove himself to the optician to get his diagnosis of legal blindness. True, he could still see something, but not enough to drive. It didn’t stop him from driving himself home or to work the following morning, before his wife put her foot down so to speak.

My chum, The Tech, grew up in a family where everyone loved cars. From the age of fourteen he was driving on private land.  By seventeen, he could properly drive, he just couldn’t see a car, let alone a number plate, at twenty-five yards. It was the first time in his life the law stopped him from doing something. When all his friends were learning to drive, he was banned from doing something he could already do. He felt miserable about it. That, as they say, was not the end of that.

While his friends were selling pizzas and pulling pints to pay for their driving lessons, he became a rather successful second hand car dealer. He knew all there was to know about three-year-old #Mondeos and spruced up #Golfs. When perspective buyers were tempted he had all the patter. When they fancied a test drive and asked if he could take it to the slip road and they’d take it from there, he’d explain this wasn’t how it was going to happen. No one seemed phased by the notion of a partially sighted car salesman.

One or two of his customers thought his lack of sight was a tragedy. Surely something could be done? A prescription windscreen perhaps? He had the last laugh. He made a packet.

I met a man who lost his sight in a car accident. His ambition was still to drive a formula one car. There is something magical about being in control of a powered vehicle on your own. My exploits in friends’ cars don’t count because I was never alone. The most I ever managed was the sit on lawn mower. I enjoyed taking the corners too fast. Apparently lawns should not have tyre marks on them or islands of tufted grass where I “missed a bit”. I was banned from the family lawn mower.

#Steve Mahan was the first person to ever drive an autonomous
vehicle.  He went to a drive through and ordered a taco, then he
picked up his dry cleaning. Steve is blind.
https://youtu.be/peDy2st2XpQ |  

The zazazoo of putting your foot down and ratcheting it up a gear is hard to put into words. Just maybe driving autonomy might be coming to a town near me before I turn up my toes.