The Blind Truth

Everyone has a drawer of dud gifts for recycling. Don’t they?

In my drawer are quite a few crystal angels with the power to heal – allegedly.  These were given by people who like to knit their own mung beans.  There is a selection of magnifying glasses I don’t know what to do with.  Some nice people thought of me, while rummaging through the 50% off section, and assumed that another magnifier would be a fun thing to own.  There are also quite a few candles.

It’s not that I’m a candle killjoy.  It’s just that there are things in life that I don’t like.  Top of my list is rice pudding.  Milk puddings are the food of the devil.  If you have cataracts the naked flame flickering away in front of you has all the seductive powers of an ocular migraine and is the work of the devils’ assistant. 

I know there are people that love candles but I’ve noticed that the people who gift them don’t have their houses stuffed with them. I’ve never popped over to anyone’s for a drink to find the house entirely illuminated with scented candles. 

I have a theory that the same people who buy scented candles, buy soft toys for their adult friends.  I don’t want soft toys cluttering up my house to trip over and I don’t want candles flickering away like nasty little optical jabs. Neither of these things are ambrosia. 

My friend the Opera Singer gave his daughter a spectacular pair of suede boots, with heels like stilts, for Christmas last year. She was delighted. Don’t give me shoes with heels. I need my feet for working out the terrain underneath then. Stilettos don’t give enough feedback because not enough of the foot is actually in contact with the ground. Only do it if you want to kill me or intend to carry me. If it’s the latter, I need advance warning.

Don’t buy me books either. I can’t read them. Just because I have a pair of reading glasses does not mean to say I use them for reading. If you buy me a book I might just put it in the dud presents drawer and give it back to you next year. Hats with large flowers on the front don’t look good on anyone over the age of five. A video on canoeing proficiency doesn’t float my boat.  A day spent clay pigeon shooting is lost on anyone registered blind. If I get garlic again (you know who you are), I will leave it behind your radiator. 

If you are thinking of anything without a VPL make sure the cotton content is in all the right places.  I’m receptive to jewellery. I’m positively humming at the prospect of another driving experience.  A really good scent (without the candle attached to it) would be heaven. (Room fresheners wont do) If you’re pushed for cash, how about a nice cup of tea, or a good yomp in the countryside and a chat?

Who can resist the smell of a real tree inside the house? There have to be tree lights, of course, to be switched on occasionally, when I have my back turned! There will definitely be stilton and marzipan. There will definitely be champagne. There will be late nights, late starts and people I love. I’d rather have time with friends, the Son and the DiL (daughter-in-law), than stuff. 

Santa Baby, I’ve been an awful good girl this year. So anything under the tree, for me, please, could it not involve wax!

I have an inherent fear of snakes. Even the most innocuous of grass snakes assumes the status of an anaconda in my imagination.

As a child, I sought out the privacy of a large bush, only to discover that I had picked the very spot favoured by adders. I don’t know who was more surprised, the adders or me. It’s a testament to youthful speed and agility that I lived to tell the tale.

As a student I was once enjoying a moment of privacy in our shared house bathroom when I began to suspect I could have overdone things. The lino appeared to be moving. There was something on my foot. While I could not be certain, I was taking no chances and the sequence of events went; departure from bathroom and house followed by the securing of clothes. It turned out to be a garter snake that I had unknowingly shared several nights in front of the telly with. No one had said a word. I never went back.

On an elephant ride through the rain forest in Thailand, the Mahout thought it would be amusing to give us a close up view of long black snakes hanging from the tree. In an effort to keep me calm, my companion counselled against this course. The Mahout, who had huge pupils shimmering like saucers, was only encouraged. I held on tight as a snake brushed past me. I never saw it until it was literally upon me. My companion had to hold me down.

When I was in Delhi I ambled across a very pretty court yard, narrowly missing a collision with a small unimposing man sitting cross legged on the floor. What I didn’t spot, but my friend did, was the cobra in a basket in front of him. Knowing how scared I would be, he never said a word until after we had left.

At a picnic table outside Cairns, the then sixteen-year-old son said to me, “whatever you do, don’t turn round.” I turned round to find myself nose to nose with an enormous python. On the upside, it was good to know that I had lost none of the agility that had saved me from the adders. In a seamless maneuverer, I vaulted the picnic table, sweeping away a picnic for six. I took out at least one of the small children sharing the table with us before ending up face down on the ground.

Amidst the crying and gasping, hysterical laughter, cheering and clapping all around me, the Son was not sympathetic. “I told you not to turn round.”

Recently I fear I spent a night in close proximity to a snake in a vivarium no one told me about. I enjoyed a perfectly good dinner and nights slight in ignorance of this fact. Had I have known, I should have immediately left. Knowing it now, I put my trust in my friends coming clean next time around.

It is one of the quirks of sight loss, that in trying to make sense of the visual world, and being hard wired to spot danger, I cannot help but let my initial assessment of the situation scream a warning. My initial assessment is not always the most reliable. In the rolodex of possibilities that runs through my mind, and on the limited visual image available, first thoughts don’t always turn out to be right. A flashing thought that I am standing next to a bear on the Northern line sends my stomach into a lurch. Fear is quickly tempered by a rationalisation that this is a person in a fur coat.

When the Lady in the Van spotted a Boer constrictor on Parkway, everyone laughed, but she turned out to be right. You can never be too careful.

A conversation about unemployment rates amongst disabled people of working age reminded me, not only how lucky I have been, but of the sheer lunacy of prejudice. If it weren’t quite so serious it would be funny.

My teenage ambition was to be a criminal defence barrister. I was not an idiot. I’d seen #Crown Court and what’s more I came from a family of lawyers and already had the wig. My aspiration was met with two questions: “How much do you weigh?” and “Have you considered basket weaving?” As careers interviews go it was not an unqualified success, even by 1970s standards. My teacher lit a cigar and picked up a copy of Playboy. The interview was over.

That was the first and last time I got careers advice. It was the first hint that the world of work may not be as eager to receive me as I was to embrace it. I would have to wing it.

My Grandmother was vocal on the subject of my future: I would have to get a job because “no man will ever marry her,” on account of perpetuating the defective gene, and my “goes without saying” sorry looks. I would need a job and social housing. The solution? Physiotherapy. I had other ideas.

Being too blind and too blond has got me into all kinds of trouble: It transpires that men are not as picky as employers, when it comes to blonds with sight loss. Having got into one very particular type of trouble I needed to get a job in order to support myself and the product of the trouble; the wonderful son. Opportunities were not thick on the ground. I winged it.

In my mid thirties I was head hunted for a job, but when I turned up on day one, I knew I was doomed. As she wielded the axe, my manager said, “I can’t put you in front on the client with your glasses. It’s so negative…. You need to do something about the way you look…. You look cheap and brassy with that hair….” It was the nineties.

Somewhat shaken by this experience I was telling a neighbour, who worked in HR. she said, “that’s terrible. How horrible.” Then she added, “I can see that you would be a health and safety risk. That’s why I wouldn’t give you a job.” Everyone knows that if you can’t see much you are far more likely to spontaneously combust. I combusted.

As I climbed the greasy pole and got my first board job a colleague expressed his surprise, that I should be elected. Ironically, he couldn’t see how I could possibly read board papers. He thought that finance must be completely beyond me. As I explained the principles of reasonable adjustments, and assistive technology, he pulled a face. “You need to see people’s faces,” he said, “otherwise how will you make a judgement?”

“On the evidence I should think.”

As it turns out, there are quite a lot of people who sit on boards who don’t feel the need to read the papers, and who are perfectly happy to put their views forward without benefit of the facts.

The evidence that glasses are negative, natural blonds look cheap (or have more fun), disabled people are a health and safety risk or that blind people can’t sit on boards or understand finance, doesn’t exist. That’s the point about prejudice. It’s not evidence based. It doesn’t let the facts get in the way.

Weirdly, I quite like walking uphill. There is no denying that age, expanding girth and lack of fitness make this more of a challenge than for the younger, thinner and fitter, but as my friend, The Big Cheese, would say, “none of us are getting any younger or any thinner”.

Downhill walking has had its day. After the rib cracking incident I’m for the climb up and working up a good sweat. There is no better place on earth to do that than The Cinque Terra (Five Villages) on the north west Italian coast. If you can do it in thirty degrees of heat, surrounded by hoards of tourists running past you like goats, you could grab yourself a little bit of heaven.

As leg stretches go, it can be a challenge because the unmatched beauty of the coastal path is well and truly matched by the gradient of the ascent itself, of which there is a lot, not to mention the precarious nature of the ground under foot, which I can’t help but mention. This is not a stroll for the half hearted walker but the determined hiker.

With only my cane and friend Max shouting warnings about death and destruction, the long drop and some nasty looking barbed wire, off we set, reaching the first village by lunch time. We even met another blind hiker who was better equipped than me.

As the afternoon progressed we met lots of people coming the other way who had a rather better view of our graceful progress than those behind us. “My, you’re brave,” people said to Max. What about me? I’m the one exercising blind trust here.

“Oh boy,” said a pesky American. “That’s quite a responsibility you’ve taken on there.” I can’t repeat what I thought.

“OMG. I feel sorry for you.” Max bared her teeth.

In a bid for solitude we veered off the coastal path and hiked in the National Park where we met a couple of walkers and a lot of lizards. The great thing about lizards, unlike people, is that they get out of the way and say nothing.

It was only a half hour stroll to the village, a quick train journey and a swim. We were on safe ground for a good lunch with lashings of wine. How wrong can a guide book be? Very wrong. We were two of only seven other people who didn’t know about the vertical descent, or who had possibly read the same guide book we had.

An easy half hour stroll turned into a two-and-a-half hour step by step narrated guide down one of the most treacherous paths I have ever walked. Ropes and crampons would not have been out of place. We sobered up fast. “Move and you’re toast,” said Max.

“Do you need medevac?” asked another hiker.

“We need a drink,” said Max.

“You need water?”

‘Not that kind of a drink,” said Max.

It never occurred to me that this was anything other than a straightforward exercise in logistics. I had an expert guide and was still flush from lunch. My trusty cane substituted for the hiking poles I couldn’t be bothered to pack. Much like everything else in life, it all confirmed that ascendancy is always better than descent. If you have to descend, make sure you drink enough to do it with grace or a general sense of no self awareness.

We took all this exercise and dicing with a sheer drop, as a licence to indulge in Italian food and just a sip of wine. We might have been said to have eaten like Lords. We ate more like maiales (pigs), or was it that we ate a maiale. Whatever it was, we showed absolutely no restraint and enjoyed every second of it.

Here’s what my long suffering companion had to say on the subject:

Notes from a guider:

I mostly see Anna in her natural habitat where, unless told, one would hardly notice her visual impairment. Foreign fields, or in this case challenging cliff top hikes, certainly presented another dynamic to a friendship. This holiday needed me to be more aware of my physical surroundings and so it enhanced my Italian experience enormously.

Here’s what I learned about guiding

I’m not one for rambling on about rewarding pursuits and do gooding. So I won’t. We all guide our friends on their way forward, as they do for us. It enhances friendships and could bring new ones. Try it.

My hosts were in their usual good form. The food was excellent. The wine was flowing and the slow gin homemade.

The conversation was about the local fishmonger and the aspirations of young adult children, holidays taken and the long awaited driverless car. How the world has changed since we were young.

As a slave to pubic transport timetables and as someone who never goes anywhere without a pack on my back, a bag in my hand, or both, the driverless car offers a seductive freedom of movement that people with sight impairments can only dream of. Imagine being able to go wherever you like, whenever you chose and not having to carry your worldly goods on your back or ask for a lift or plan ahead. “Sign me up,” There was general incredulity that I could not see enough to drive, although I was not the only non-driver at the table.

In a seamless manoeuvre, a conversation unfolded in which my dining companions articulated their inner most fears of what would happen if they went blind. I seemed to be invisible. It wasn’t my conversation. My blind story tops yours would not do. I sat back and listened.

A man, of woman next to me acquaintance, had lost his sight over the course of twenty years. “It was a tragedy”. He had been good looking and now he couldn’t see his own face in the mirror. I fleetingly thought about tips on the application of mascara. Probably not helpful. “Can you imagine not seeing your own face. You’d be lost to yourself. You would have no idea who you were.” Luckily for me my sense of self does not derive from the blur in the mirror.

The poor unfortunate friend went from being able to read a menu to having to have the menu read to him. That seemed reasonable to me. He had to count the number of steps from his front door to his front gate. That sounded sensible. I know exactly how many steps there are from my front door until I need to start to tap my toe to look for the top of the first step.

I don’t want to under estimate the havoc and sorrow that losing your sight brings. That’s real, but it need not be the end of a good life. If you come from a position of being fully sighted you cannot imagine a life without seeing. I get that. for them it was a binary position. You can either see or you can’t. Most blind people have some sight.

“My God, that’s no life” said one of my fellow diners. “If I thought I would lose my sight I’d kill myself.” Most people grieve for the loss of sight and find a way to come to terms with it. Death is not the inevitable outcome. Human beings are hard wired to survive the best way we can. Most of us turn out to be swimmers, or doggy paddlers at the very least.

I’m a bit fuzzy about whether all this reflected a view that visually impaired people have no value in the world or whether it was just good old fashioned fear. Who knows what life will deliver to us. If it’s not one thing it’s another.

For better or worse I held my counsel and sipped the slow gin. I was in a slow gin kind of mood and it was excellent. Life is sweet, sweeter than slow gin. No doubt that helped as I counted my way home.

I like to think I am a woman in my prime. The evidence does not necessarily support this position. There are those that think I have the technology skills of an Edwardian, retaining something of a fondness for pen and paper. I hanker after #Basildon Bond and the letter. That makes me very old and not at all in my prime.

Technology is supposed to be a liberation; enabling my computer to speak text and enlarge font at the touch of a button, so that blind and partially sighted people can participate in the world of work, and reading for pleasure, and lets not forget social media and flirting.

I am not a reliable user of technology. Yesterday I inadvertently recorded a chunk of “The Bottom Line”, as a text message, and then accidentally sent it to my son. “Are you drunk?” was the reply. At least he didn’t ask if I was senile.

I have social media and the trouble begins once I start to try to use it on my phone. It’s super easy to #tweet a copy of your latest utility bill. Luckily I have few followers. I also confess that I used to love a bit of flirting along with the giant font, and so do those around me. That is to say, others have unexpectedly read my texts because large print is the text equivalent of shouting.

People often ask me what I can see. I have no idea. I often wonder what they can see and they have no idea. Neither of us have a clue how to bridge the gap but I think I might be learning. Size, it transpires, matters.

A colleague of mine told me he could read my handwriting upside down and across the table. My notes were not for sharing but just prompts because I am old and forget stuff. This is a definite way to lose bargaining power. I’ve learnt not to do it. So why not apply the same rules when urgently texting?

In the heady early days of a new love affair, the object of my insanity sent me clear instructions on how to upload #WhatsApp to my phone. I was clueless but game. I managed to disable all of my devices, disable any further downloads and upload the football results. The source of all my troubles said, “it’s a start”, and saw the football score as a useful bonus.

This technological shambles necessitated a trip to the phone shop, where I declared that I thought it all a waste of time. I saw no advantage to this new means of texting over the traditional form. The sales assistant took the opportunity to explain the advantages of end to end encryption. Such alternatives, he whispered, were favoured by those hoping for a somewhat racier form of communication and asked if it was a man who had made the suggestion. I went pink but signed up for lessons on the spot.

WhatsApp may be encrypted but if you are typing in huge font, on a train in rush hour, you should know that the person behind you will know when you lie about what you are wearing. They will know long before you that this is not a great love but a giant con. They will know that you could probably do with exercising better personal judgement. They will make all kinds of assumptions about the person you are because they have read your text exchange.

Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine what others can see. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean to say that they can’t either.

I was in a pizza restaurant dithering over what to chose. “My God,” said my newest colleague. “Your eye sight is terrible. You should go to Pakistan and get that fixed. My wife had terrible sight. Not that bad, but she really did have trouble.

She went to Pakistan and got it sorted. She can see fine now.”

I said that it wasn’t an operable thing and that I had made my peace with it a long time ago. He leant in and wagging his finger at me said, “Have you been to Pakistan?” I said I hadn’t. “Well there you are then. If you haven’t been to Pakistan how do you know?”

I explained that I was in no doubt that it wasn’t operable. “But you’ve never been to Pakistan,” he said leaning back in his chair and throwing the menu down on the table in a kind of “I rest my case” gesture.
“If you were serious about it, you’d have been,” he said, shaking his head and frowning.
“I’m not,” I said and that was the end of that.

People have interesting ideas about what they feel able to comment on:

On holiday in Thailand, a Brit that I kept bumping into, bounded up to me while I was waiting to cross the road. He leant in and in a sort of sideways voice asked, “what’s up with you anyway?’ I looked quizzical.”Well, there’s clearly something up with you.”
I was genuinely mystified. “I’m fine.”
“You’re obviously not. You can’t see. Have you been to see a doctor because you need help.”
“Go away,” I said, or words to that effect.

I had arranged to meet a friend in a pub. He wanted to introduce me to someone he thought I might enjoy meeting. As I came through the door of the pub my phone rang. I checked the screen to see who was calling. “It’s me,” he said. “I’m at the bar. Walk straight ahead.” So I did.
Before we had a chance to say hello his companion put her hand on my arm. “I don’t know if you know this, but you’ve got a serious problem. You need help.” Then very slowly, she mouthed the words “I’m a doctor. You need to see an optician because you cannot see. You have a problem with your eyes.” My friend had his head in his hands. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this,” he was muttering. “She knows…. She Knows….Oh God.”

While buying sheepskin slippers recently, the woman who was serving me asked if I had cataracts because she would recommend having them removed. “I’ve just had mine done and it’s fantastic.”
“How wonderful,” In an effort to keep it simple I added that cataracts weren’t the problem.
“Is it glaucoma?” she asked enthusiastically.Before I could get to the end of “No” she said excitedly “Oh,” and now she was clicking her fingers with the general sense of being nearly at the answer. “macca something…I know it…. don’t tell me…it’s mac-o-something.”Her husband interjected. “Don’t be stupid. It’s something to do with your hair isn’t it?” I knew what he meant so said “Yes,”
“I knew it the moment you walked in. I’ve seen your people before.”

Curiosity is a powerful driver. It never ceases to amaze me what people will do in the quest for knowledge. However poorly executed, of all the intrusions into the detail of my personal biology, my exchange amongst the sheepskin was, I think, born of a genuine desire to try to understand and help. What’s more, I got 20% of the price of my new slippers.

Here’s a great link:  https://fcunitedtom.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/youre-not-blind/

There are lots of apples falling off the tree in next doors garden. There is an abundance of windfalls, in my garden, that the local wildlife like to avail themselves of. In my efforts to deter the marauding intruders with fur, tails and long yellow teeth, I have just been out to pick up the rotten fruit and put them out for tomorrows compost collection.

I have a little trick to keep the side gate propped open while I nip out to the compost bag. It has never failed me. It has never failed me until today. I turned around, from the compost bag, in time to see the gate slam.

Three years ago, I was burgled. In my efforts to deter marauding intruders of the two-legged variety, I fitted a gate with a security lock that is operated by a key pad. It was not enough to keep my eighty-year-old uncle the monk from breaking and entering but it has just proved sufficient to the task of keeping me out of my own garden.

Finding myself locked out, I had to dredge up the code from the depths of my extremely addled brain. Entering the code was another matter altogether. What I had not accounted for was that I have never taken the trouble to map out where the numbers are on the keypad, so there was absolutely no way of knowing what to do.

It would be an embarrassment to have to climb over the neighbours’ wall, so I took a stab. I took another stab and came to the conclusion that it was pointless to even try. I would have to ask the neighbours if I could climb over the wall.

It is not that I mind asking my “right-hand” neighbours if I could disturb their supper and whether or not they would be prepared to help propel me over the garden wall. They are not called my “right hand” neighbours for nothing. In the years that we’ve lived next door to each other they have set the boiler, the telly, the Wi-Fi, the radio and numerous other helpful things, not least the disposal of the microwave I set fire to. My concern was much more that I had just seen my “left” neighbour up the apple tree, picking the apples.

The “right hand” neighbour came to the door. I gave an apologetic account of my failed fail safe gate propping system and a rather confused explanation of my need to climb over the wall. I needn’t have worried. The “right hand” neighbour knows the code for the gate. He came around and let me in to my own garden. He did it with remarkably good grace given the number of requests, for the use of his eyes and his brawn, I have made over the years.

The “left” neighbour was still up the tree when I made it back into the garden. “Hello neighbour” he called from his vantage point. “Want any apples?” Such generosity. I should have been grateful but I was not. There are some people you don’t mind sharing your vulnerabilities with and some you would rather not.

In the scheme of things, getting locked out is not so bad. Forgetting to map the key pad out is a bit like forgetting to put the new front door key on your key ring and hoping the old one will do the trick.

“I should have done this sooner,” the “left’ neighbour said. “It’s concrete on my side and apples don’t survive the fall. What was I thinking?”

Perhaps none of us should be ashamed to show our vulnerabilities. After all, we are all only human.

Being a fugitive from justice is a stressful experience. I know, because I experienced this. I experienced it briefly, just for a nano-second, in the REM dream state that most of us experience just before we wake up. My crime? I was caught on camera driving down a North American highway. I was over the speed limit by one mile an hour and caught without a licence. For this, I now faced extradition and a life in a penal colony. On the up side, it was not likely to be a long life under these circumstances. While I waited for my good fortune, in having woken up, to sink in, there was tea.

I confess to having a bit of a green eye when it comes to driving. It used to be, that as my peers got wheels, I got more and more frustrated at the limits that not being able to drive apparently placed on me. What I know now, but I didn’t know then, was that we all exercise our freedoms differently and pay for our freedoms in different ways.

Sometimes you have to ask for what you need. Sometimes you have to queue for it, sometimes, you get rained on while you wait and sometimes everything goes wonderfully well. What you will never have to do is worry about losing your no claims bonus, scratching your paintwork or remembering to have a blanket and a shovel in your boot in case you are forced to spend the night in your car buried under a snow drift.

Now all of this does not mean I have not been tempted to speed down the wide open roads of South Dakota. I did once judder down the narrow lanes of #Danbury Ring in a #mini maxi. It was a short lived stint behind the wheel and culminated in close contact with a hedge.

The Son gave me an off road driving experience. It turns out that this is a popular gift from Mothers to their teenage sons. Despite the Son’s advance phone call, there was still some incredulity that it was me, not him, here to loop my way around a disused aerodrome.

After a safety briefing, the teenage boys and me made our way to our cars. It’s wasn’t a formula one start. No running permitted and rather more anoraks than could fit into a high performance model. Then came the explanation of steering wheels, brakes and so forth, all delivered in a tone of total tedium by the instructor. He did not appear to share my excitement at the prospect of driving round in circles with someone who couldn’t see the road ahead.

I think I was a natural.   “ewww. Speedy Gonzalez……slow down” the instructor said. I did but speed is relative. Of course, I didn’t have the advantage of his view. Pot holes, it transpires, are more exciting if tackled head on than avoided. There is something exhilarating about notching it up a gear. Power steering is a must. The chicane is thrilling if all you have is voice commands to go on. When being driven by someone who can’t see where they are going, have a safe word like “Stop”. Duel controls are a must.

Next time I’m getting an automatic. All that notching it up a gear made my left leg ache for days afterwards.

Meantime, day to day freedoms are exercised on foot, on buses, on trains and taxis. The joy of this approach is that I’m not sitting in my car on my own, but enjoying snippets of other people’s lives and lots of fabulous conversations with strangers that I might not otherwise have had. I’m the richer for it.

I love technology: I love the oven, the kettle, the toaster. I loved the TV I grew up with. That’s the one that had an enormous “V” shaped areal that extended out of the top and sat on four screw in legs. It had a button for turning it on and off and a dial that could be set to three locations: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. The only time we ever spoke to it, (and here I use the term loosely) was when the tube blew up and it had to be taken away for repairs.

I never speak to my desktop, tablet or telephone in the tone we spoke to the telly the day the tube expired. I use slow and measured tones in order that there should be no misunderstanding between us. I pride myself on having articulatory agility, which as every drama student knows, is a desirable ability. Not desirable enough for the technology that I now routinely speak to, which is petulant, defiant and doesn’t listen.

The intuitive claims of manufacturers are either untrue or I am lacking in intuition. Having worked out how to operate the dictation command on my Mac, which is different from other operating systems, that too has demonstrated defiance.

Last week I dictated, and sent, an email to my friend the Artist. It was urgent. It was to tell her that “sin, bed and shit. There is a mistaken paragraph five. Three lying times. Note that.” For good measure I capped it off with a text message that said, “we can spend a softer noon together.” This morning I sent her a text in which I wanted to express my quizzical surprise. “Super warts!” She was surprised and quizzical.

Radio four doesn’t fair any better than me. Siri perked up during this mornings eight O’clock news. I’m pretty certain that Susan Rae didn’t swear and wasn’t speaking to Siri. Siri though, appears to have developed a sort of teenage paranoia. The telephone beeped and Siri sprang into life. and there it was on the phone screen in giant font: The F word. Underneath was Siri’s response. “I don’t know what to say to that.” What is the world coming to when even Siri is offended by something Susan Rae didn’t say?

Since I began speaking to my technology, my friends have changed. They are not the people I thought they were. Who can blame them in light of the way I speak to them? Two of them are almost unrecognisable. Siobhan has become Siob Pain. Beatrice is now Beat Rice.

Making arrangements can be a tricky business. I invited the son, who does not eat meat, when other choices are available, “fir lunch”. Actually, that one probably doesn’t count as he accepts phonetic spelling as logical.

In writing this blog, Dictation has failed entirely for a reason I don’t understand. I will have to revert to the keyboard until the next primary school age child crosses the threshold and sorts it out for me.

I’ve come a long way in my use of technology. From the bad old days when I destroyed photocopiers (happily no longer a feature of my life) I feel I am well on the way to a diplomatic incident.

They say you have to practice in order to get your software to recognise your voice and learn to accurately interoperate what it is you are trying to say. It’s just as important to exercise a little patience and check its work. I’d never make a good teacher as I lack the patience to check, correct and explain or even to do it again. Uncorrected is much more fun!