The Blind Truth

I set off from Clapham to catch the train to Lancaster where my friend, the Author, would meet me. She would then drive to her house in Clapham. That’s Clapham Yorkshire, from where we would stride out for some good bracing walks, a thing we both love to do.

Turns out that I’d been sold the wrong tickets again, and the train that I’d asked for, and confirmed, my seats reservations on, was not the train I expected. That train had left an hour ago. Just to compound matters my breakfast was now lying on the concourse of Euston station due to an unsecured drinks lid. All of this was rectified by a swift repeat purchase. I am amazed by how fast I can move in the face of missing breakfast.

It turns out that there are two exits at Lancaster station. The Author was waiting at one and I was outside the other one, enjoying the taxi rank banter, when our texts crossed. She would come and find me. The time was not wasted. In my drive to improve my core stability, because diminishing sight tends to challenge balance, I achieved a hands free tip toe stand for ten seconds before my ankles buckled under the strain. I like to indulge in this particular exercise snack every time I find myself in a queue and the ten second challenge has eluded me ever since I began. Who would imagine such a small triumph could bring such joy?

Ankle strength is not wasted, because Yorkshire is a land of hills. While I know this intellectually, lack of three dimensional vision makes the upward gradient a surprise and the descent,  full of even greater surprises.

The Author trotted ahead with practiced agility. She’s fitter than me. I claimed the slow stretch of my pace, as we climbed, a consequence of poor balance. While a blind truth, the greater truth is that speech would have been impossible had I attempted anything faster. I’m not sure if pauses to point out the lay of the land and our proximity to the #five peaks was a kindness born of painting the picture, or an act of preservation less I should expire. Whatever it was, we managed to talk while we walked.

Going up is one thing. Coming down is another thing altogether and out came the hiking pole that acts to give a sense of what the eye cannot see. In all the years of walking I have never had an injury. Priding myself on what is possible rather than what is difficult, we began our descent, when over I went. Winded but unbowed, we pressed on, the pain in my ribs taking a grip. So much for my willingness to take a risk.

“Yep, you’ve cracked your rib and sprained it, ” said the Physio Witch. “I’ll strap that up. I hope you’ve got good pain killers. It’s going to take about six weeks.” Then she got out her acupuncture needles and stuck two of then into my hand to help with the pain. An agony shot through me like chewing on tinfoil. The Physio Witch exhibited no signs of sympathy. “Don’t scream. The cats don’t like.” she said.

I have had to concede that trotting about with a computer in a ruck sack isn’t helping so I’m at home. “Rest up this week,” ordered the practice nurse. The pain killers have kicked in now. I’m bored. I’ve started on line shopping and the new pair of purple hiking poles have just arrived. I’ve checked in early for a flight that will take me away from it all on a coastal walk with sheer drops and plenty of steep gradients.

Worrying won’t help.

My picky friends have pointed out that this blog is full of idiosyncratic spelling mistakes. I plead visual impairment!

Early attempts at reading were centred around the adventures of Peter and Jane who rolled around in the front seat of the family car, chased moving buses and took to an inflatable raft in only their pants. The more I read the better it got. By the time I was becoming an independent reader the expanding cast of characters were dipping their fingers in boiling water, setting fires and testing for an electrical current with their tongues.

I can’t pretend to have ever given much thought to the individual components of words. Sight impairment meant that it was impossible to know, from looking, how many “m”s were in “tomorrow” and whether “silly” had one “l” of two. They all merged into one as far as I could see. No one ever bothered to teach me the rules because no one could imagine that I really couldn’t see what I was reading and I never bothered to tell them.

What I, and many others like me, were doing, was sight reading. I was looking at the shape of the word and making an educated guess, given the context of the story. It’s how I still read. I look at the shape of a world and make an educated guess.

Then came a major shock. It came in the form of spelling lists which had to be learnt by heart. Turned out that spelling was an altogether riskier business than reading. A wrong spelling on the Friday morning test resulted in writing the word out ten time. A second failure resulted in a slap across the palm with a ruler. If Peter could stick his tongue on a live electrical cable I could take a beating.

While I was a print reader I lapped it up. Nancy Dew took risks that surpassed even Peter and Jane. With her catch phrase of “Where is Sir Lock Holmes?” she was the gal to model myself on. Was it a spelling mistake or a clever play on words? She was someone to aspire to. Solving crime seemed a better prospect than the endless mystery of of how many “M”s in tomorrow.

This approach has got me into big trouble. It’s got me into trouble because the apparent contradiction of being able to read without being able to see what is written on the page is a belief too far for most people. It’s got me into trouble because these days I don’t even bother to attempt to write text messages. I dictate them and then I read them back at break neck speed. A knock knock joke turned itself into an unintended expression of romantic intent. An offer to cook supper became an aggressive carnal overture. Is it luck that my friends assume it’s a typo?

If I haven’t seen the word in its component parts, and even if I have, but have forgotten, then much of the new language of the digital world is pure guess work. As I’m writing, I make a mental note to look it up later but somehow it gets forgotten in the detail of a good story.

The spellchecker is my friend, but even friends can misunderstand your intentions or let you down. An explanation of relative values turned me from Joes “niece” to Joe’s “nice”. It turned Joe from my “uncle” to my “ankle”. Twisted ay!

I suspect that Peter and Jane have long since met a sticky end. Biff, Chip and Kipper are oh so dull by comparison and are much more likely to suffer death from social pho par than from life’s real adventures. I’d rather wire a plug.

An old family friend left a message on my answer machine that went something along the lines of; ” I’ve been to look at your old school…it really is a super retirement complex now … they have everything there…you wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to see….they’ll look after you….I’ve given your number to the sales office and Vicki is going to call you…I’ve told her you can’t see much…there will be lots of people who have problems like yours so you won’t be alone…they even have a mini bus if you wanted to go to the town… honestly everything is there…I don’t think you’d ever need to leave….I’m 86 and it wouldn’t do for me but you’re 55 and I thought it would be perfect for you.”

As my jaw slumped, a tightening knot in my stomach reminded me that life is short. It was 10am and although I had been awake since 5am, because I am 55 now, I was still in bed. I had better get up.

I’ve run a business, raised the Fabulous Son, travelled, run a house, have a social life and friends. I am still actively considering how to change the world and am far from ready to go and live in a retirement complex because my sight is rubbish. What is it then, that makes Old Family Friend think that I am ready to spend the the rest of my life in an institution?

I cannot help but think it is the same thing that made my friend Bless Your Heart (known by this handle because she is always saying it) declare that the growth of cataracts would mean I’d have to stop working. Come to think of it, she’s been telling me about the things I won’t be able to do for the last forty years. By what wisdom does she know this and yet get it repeatedly wrong? I suspect it’s the same attitude that made her snap up a bargain commode while she was still in her forties.

They both see the limitations of sight loss and don’t take into account the complexities and resilience of what it takes to live a good life.

Some people are just constituted with a bunker mentality and some of us are happy to take our chances under the sun. Most of us struggle to integrate the contradictions of an apparently limiting set of circumstances with no imposed self limits. I have no such difficulty.

What’s the critical difference in thinking between those of us who are prepared for the blistering heat and those who bunker down?

“Confidence” is the cry I hear, but it’s not that. Confidence is only a question of faith. Faith has no basis in skill or capability or knowledge. It’s easily shaken. “Resilience” is the common factor in leading the best life possible. It’s the art of developing enough inner resources to cope with, rise to and deal with the inevitable problems, knock backs, challenges and set backs that face us all and which visually impaired people face many fold over.

Do we build enough resilience in our young blind and partially sighted or are we still focussed on confidence? Is having everything at your fingertips, and never even having to board the mini bus the best way to live, or should I keep going until my brain and my knees give out?

Vicki never did call, but a brochure arrived. I put it in an envelope with an anonymous typed note to an old school friend. Life is short. We had better life it to the full if we are not to end up where we started.

Sometimes I feel like a dysfunctional travel correspondent. My tales always seem to involve the extraordinary. I’ve been abandoned on aeroplanes, been refused assistance at train stations and once threatened with arrest for trying to buy a ticket at journeys end because I couldn’t operate the ticket machine at the start of my journey. My reply: “Fine, while you’re calling the police I’ll call the Daily Mail”.

My tactic at railway stations is to go to the ticket office and if the queue is likely to take longer than fifteen minutes look for a customer service rep to operate the ticket machine for me. It’s not failsafe.

I did this at Liverpool Street station and ended up with a ticket that cost more than double the usual cost. Time was marching on so other than joining the queue, that I probably didn’t have enough water to sustain me through, I’d have to swallow the cost and get on the train.

Two revenue inspectors sat next to me so I quizzed them: The ticket machine was not set up to sell me the ticket I needed and the only way to avoid the inflated cost was to go to the ticket office and queue, but if I went to the ticket office at Shenfield I could change the ticket.

As we filled in the forms, did the money exchange, got the contactless payment to work, I got a text from the friend who was picking me up. “What are you doing in there?” “I’ve been driving round the block waiting for you.” The Rolls Canardly (a vehicle that rolls down hills and can hardly get up them) has the turning circle of a small bus. She was not happy.

Essex is a much under rated county but road works took us to parts I have not been to before. By the time we sat down to breakfast there were people ordering lunch.

The friend and I can chat. By the time I set out for home it had to go smoothly because the Flat Mate was doing supper which meant I needed to buy the supper and prepare it because that is the deal when the Flat Mate does supper. She’s not one for cooking. I was now running late.

On the jubilee line, the announcement system wasn’t working so I asked the man next to me if he could tell me where we were at the next station. “No problem,” he said. “Bermondsey”. I unfolded my cane in readiness for London Bridge.

As I got to the door a man, slightly the worse for ware, said, “is there anything I can do to help you?” then he planted his hand on my left breast. “No.” Pace was now the order of the day.

As I got to the stairs he asked me again. Was he following me? “No,” I said. At the escalator he said, “Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?” “No,” I said and got on the escalator. “You really are a very independent little thing,” he said and made a clicking sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth before vanishing.

A ticketing system that works has been promised for years and still hasn’t materialised. Helpful travellers can save you from missing your stop. Nothing could save me from a drunken touch up. Would it have happened if I was not using my cane?

There is something cringingly uncomfortable about making your mistakes in public: I have a long and distinguished experience of being the subject of public amusement. It’s not a comfortable place to be. Not looking or behaving like other people’s assumptions, of how I should look or behave, has landed me in some testing situations.

Getting off a bus one day, the door opened next to a concrete bollard that was invisible against the pavement. The bus driver didn’t believe I had a sight impairment so thought he would put his theory to the test with a spot of strategic parking. Pivotting on a bollard is surprisingly painful. It’s also extremely funny to the casual onlooker in a kind of slapstick way. The queue of people waiting to get on the bus couldn’t help themselves. They laughed until they cried while I dangled over the top of the bollard with a pain in my stomach like I’d just been punched.

On a trip to the cinema I elected to cross at the zebra crossing just outside the cinema. When I got there a van was parked on the crossing. I asked the driver to move his van. The gist of what he said was that he would not. I explained the problem and asked him if he would give me a hand crossing the road. The gist of what he said next was that he would not. The gist of what I said cannot be repeated before I walked back down the road only to find myself back at the crossing, on the other side of the road and the van gone.

A car pulled up and sat stubbornly on the crossing. The traffic wasn’t moving. I walked round the back of the car. What I didn’t know was that it was pulling a trailer. I discovered this hidden gem because my right knee, then my left knee, got caught on the tow rope and over I went. The woops and cheers, honking and pointing demanded nothing less than a bow and two fingers to the driver.

Clapham High Street has a wide selection of crossing points. They are loved by pedestrians and cyclists alike. If you are crossing the road and estimate that you have only seconds to go before the lights change and the traffic recommences its merciless progression, the last thing you want is to find yourself knocked off your feet by a cyclist taking the opportunity to nip to the pavement on the other side of the road or dodge the waiting traffic and plough on regardless of pedestrians. In Waterloo Road, cyclists have started travelling in packs across crossings.

A despatch rider who stopped me on a zebra crossing to ask me the way. Cane in hand I explained that I might not be the best person to ask on account of not seeing much, but I’d have a go if he was willing to take a chance. The gist of what he said was that he wondered if I was trying to be funny. The gist of what I said was “No”. The gist of what he said was that I should not mock the blind. Very politely I explained the situation. He said, “I’m an idiot,” and rode off.

Going across a crossing with a friend of mine who is a long cane user, a man walked up the entire length of my friend’s cane until they were nose to nose. The gist of what what the man said cannot be repeated but was along the lines of “people like you should not be out in public”. An unwitting flick of the wrist silenced the man. The gist of what my friend said was “people like that should not be out in public.”

I had lunch with a friend in an Italian place in Oxford Circus. We ate a good lunch and laughed a lot. As my friend got up to leave he asked me if I needed a hand with anything before he left. I didn’t but would guard his goods while he nipped to the gents. Needless to say, his absence made me reflect on parental advice. “Always go before you leave”.

Signage can be a challenge for anyone faced with the decision about which door to pick. I can never remember if the triangle points up for a woman or what the symbol is for male or female. Then there are the signs that are in relief and the same colour as the door. How do you know if you are about to enter into another country?

For any woman who has ever been caught short, and found themselves compelled to make a dash for the only available loo, there is one sure way to know if you are in the right place. The sniff test.

Undeterred by not being able to read the signs and work out which was the men’s and which the women’s loo, I opened both doors and sniffed. Then I plumped for familiar territory, where I sat, enthroned, handbag at my feet. I was having a moment of quiet reflection when I heard the door open and a pair of size tens stopped in front of my cubicle. There was only a handbag between our feet. Someone had a made a mistake.

All I had to do was sit tight, handbag on lap, and wait for the man to leave. The door opened and what appeared to be a coach load of men tripped past. No matter. My plan was still a good one. All I had to do was wait for them to leave. I waited. I waited some more and while I waited I would treat this as a fly on the wall experience and would emerge the wiser for what happened in the gents.

What does not happen in the gents is much in the way of hand dryer action.

I waited some more, more men. Plan “B” was called for if I was not to spend the rest of the afternoon trapped in the loo. Moments like this are exactly what the white cane is for. I would wait for the sound of silence and then emerge, wash my hands and leave with my dignity, and my cane, in tact.

To burst forth onto an unsuspecting public is not an easy thing to do under these circumstance. It’s not like Cilla Black shouting “surprise surprise”. The longer I remained concealed the more shocking the reveal.

After what felt like an eternity the moment arrived. I opened the door and looking neither left nor right, and with nothing but an educated guess as to where the basins were, I emerged and guessed right. I washed my hands, went to the dryer and realised that I was not alone.

It’s important, in these moments, not to flinch from the inevitable astonishment of others. Never apologise. It was hardly my fault that I found myself in a space that was the preserve of men and had failed the sniff test.

I hope I put all those men to shame with my ritual hand wash. I don’t mind that they probably heard the sound of running when the door shut behind me.

As the world gets more complicated and the arrival of new signs to indicate a new order in the use of public loos is upon us, spare a thought for the confusion of those of us who have enough trouble making sense of the old signs.

The web is awash with suppliers of easy to read LARGE signs and #RNIB have lots of good advice.

The infamous man drawer, that drawer in the kitchen which men claim for themselves as the place to store spent batteries and old light bulbs, is not the sole preserve of men. Michael McIntyre is not the only one who can order a Chinese takeaway on a Nokia 3210 and pay for it in currency that is no longer in circulation. If ever there is an exhibition I want to see, that’s free to Blue Peter badge holders, I know I have one. It is simply a matter of finding it.

I am a firm believer in the woman drawer. In mine, are a number of antique spot concealers, various plastic keys for opening gas meter cupboards I cannot see, and no longer need to, because I have a SMART meter. There are also a selection of money off vouchers, that I also cannot read, but imagine have long expired.

The challenge with the woman drawer is that it is the repository for a number of tiny items that might otherwise become lost. After more than fifteen years of wondering what two small black stick looking things in a plastic bag were, I threw them away. As I heard the bin men set about their work, what they were crystalized in my mind.

Being organised is an essential part of household management if you can’t see much. I depend on a wonderful cleaner, who ensures that I don’t live in a slum. In the early days she would re-tune the radio to Christian radio and I’d have to wait for someone, anyone, to re-establish radio four as the dominant voice on news and views.

Opportunities for reminding the lovely cleaner, that things must be returned to the place, where she found them, have diminished since she discovered the antidote to the ban on Christian radio. She is now plugged into the radio app on her phone and listens to uplifting talks about faith and practice while she cleans.

The order on my dressing table is delicately balanced. One slight of hand and I’m stuffed. Gloss and Shine cannot be substituted with body lotion. Buzuka Verruca would do nothing for the bags under my eyes. Pumping Jelly Hair Gel cannot pass for After Sun.

It does not matter how many times I make the plea to those involved in slum prevention, or to those I have lived with, or those just passing through. Everything has its place. If you leave your coffee cup on the floor I will tread on it and grind the contents into the carpet. This is one of the many reasons I keep the carpet cleaners number in the woman drawer. I just need to find it.

When the Uncles come to stay they always reorder my fridge because they say my fridge scheme is illogical. Then they encase everything in carrier bags, making the fridge incomprehensible. The bathroom becomes another country. No one wants to find themselves brushing their teeth with shampoo.

The last preserve of chaos in my house, is the Woman drawer. A late night hunt for things to eat, led me, in desperation, to rummage through the piles of useful cards, old makeup and mysterious plastic bags, to a eureka moment. Joy was short lived. The last time I tasted anything like this, the Brother and I were pretending to be dogs in the boot of the family Hilman Hunter. I found the dog treats. I do not know what the Son’s Jack Russell is making all the fuss about.

Perhaps I will put my Nokia 3210 on e-bay and see if there are any takers. I just need to remember where I have put the charger cable. It’s not in the drawer where I left it.

As if it’s not enough to be shouted at by people, who in the face of some obvious revelation feel the need to defend themselves by yelling, I now find myself being challenged by machines that speak.

A few years ago I invested in a speaking alarm clock. It’s a small plastic box that takes an age to set. Once done, it remains silent just long enough for sleep to begin to wrap its folds around me before bursting into life and shouting the date, day of the week, time, but not the time for which I have set my alarm. I cannot help but let doubt get the better of me, roll over and reset it just in case I have made a mistake and left the gas on. Then I go through the entire routine of beating the pillow into submission before the clock starts shouting at me again.

Two years ago the Sister bought me Alexa for Christmas. It, (I cannot bring myself to gender it and describe it as ‘she”) has been squatting on top of my kitchen radio gathering dust ever since. A friend of mine, put her mind to making Alexa work for it’s place in my household.

She began by loading the app, to operate Alexa, onto my phone. The accessibility feature didn’t work and so all efforts to give me a tutorial were lost. Next she tried to make Alexa operate my SMART TV. It turns out that my SMART YV is not as SMART as advertised and is one of a tiny number in the range that does not support Alexa. This is a pity as I can see that using voice activation to operate the TV would be a definite upgrade.

Alexa has now returned to its spot in the kitchen from where it can be instructed to turn the radio on and off, which seems pointless to me. Not one to give up and ever keen to demonstrate the range of Alexa’s ability, my friend decided to skill Alexa to shop. This was a miserable failure culminating in an instruction from the sister to “shop for a boyfriend.” The reply? “I cannot purchase anything that you have not purchased before”.

Nirvana was achieved in the midst of this chaos with the delivery of talking bathroom scales. After the trials of last weeks southern Bulgarian hospitality, I had convinced myself that the previous bathroom scales had broken. How could it be possible to put on so much weight in such a short period of time? The answer. Easily.

The instructions for the speaking bathroom scales must have been written by someone who is double jointed. It is not possible to turn the scales upside down, depress the button that was on the right and is now on the left while simultaneously inserting the batteries. After a bit of improvising I managed a reverse manoeuvre and activated them. Then I stood on them. I stood on them by the open bathroom window while my next door neighbour was outside his back door.

“You weigh,” bellowed the scales, pausing for dramatic effect as if the winner of the Oscar for best lead in a drama was about to be announced, before clearly articulating my excesses through the open window. The scales might just have easily have yelled, “well what did you think would happen if you ate the full range of the fruits of the Black Sea and washed it down with red wine? Idiot”

The bad news is that I no longer believe the previous scales were broken which means I have just added to landfill needlessly and wasted £37. The even worse news is that the neighbour is now privy to something that I maintain a need to know approach to. The good news is that I have now managed to operate the volume control. None of this has stopped me eating.

Wimbledon seems to have come round remarkably soon since the last time that our screens were saturated with incomprehensible grunting and invisible action.

I know there are plenty of blind people who enjoy following sport. I’m not one of them. I prefer to follow writers and poets and the changes in GDP or what interest rates are likely to do. I follow what happens in parliament. I follow politics. Who’s at the top of their game and who’s losing their place in the league. The vicious volleys of BREXIT are just as enthralling, to me, as Wimbledon is to some of my less politically absorbed counterparts.

Question Time is turning into the not to be missed tournament of the summer. I’m devastated its finished until the autumn. At least I understand the terms of engagements and can see how the players play their shots, what was a good rally and what is just plain bad gamesmanship.

In the bad old days before I discovered the sport for me, I had a go at tennis. This was tennis the good old fashioned way, long before blind tennis was invented. Check it out. http://ibta-takei.com/

Growing up, I had regular access to tennis courts. They provided amazing opportunities to get up a bit of speed on a bicycle or a scooter when adults were inside watching Wimbledon on the telly. It was the 70s, a decade that heralded the arrival of the luminous green tennis ball. The adults, in their wisdom, thought that this was an opportunity to normalise me, to turn me into a tennis player and I was up for it.

Protection from the sun was required. A ready solution presented itself in the form of an enormous sombrero in black. If you have ever tried to play tennis in a sombrero you will know that there is a very good reason why Serena Williams does not. Standard issue dark glasses, that I still never go outside without, were next. All this was topped off with a good covering of sun block which is about as comfortable as being wrapped in cling film.

“Serve” I shouted to the friend somewhere over the other side of the net. Back came the instruction to go “left”. Tennis racket aloft I did as I was told and missed. I could not find the ball. “Serve” I shouted again and followed instruction and missed again. Now there were two missing balls.

Undeterred, the friend suggested that I serve. I was not bad. The thwack was followed by another instruction and again I missed. Green balls were not doing it for me. They had not proved to be the miracle on my path to normalisation that everyone had hoped for. But now there was a strange swooshing in my head. It did not seem to matter which way I moved. It would not stop.

As we chucked in the towel on tennis and decided to turn our attention to finding other distractions, the swooshing only became more irritating. By the time we were told to come in for lunch I had begun to think there was now something seriously up with me. At least it was cool inside and off came the sombrero and the mystery of the tennis balls revealed itself. I had spent the best part of the morning with tennis balls rolling around the sombrero and consequently round my head.

I admire Serena Williams, not least for her breakout success and for her triumph over her pelvic floor, but I just don’t get tennis. Last night a friend invited to watch Wimbledon on her tiny telly. Why? I have no idea. I’d rather stay at home and listen to political jousting on the radio. Much more fun.

I am so wimble done.

After a considerable amount of effort to plan a self guided walking tour, of revered places of worship, in Borgas, Wanda (that’s google maps to the uninitiated) and I set out.

Tripping out of the hotel Cheap and Noisy, over an invisible step into four lanes of moving traffic, Wanda told me to turn left and then turn into the traffic. What I did not know, and Wanda did not tell me, was that I was standing next to a pedestrian crossing. It must have been bemusing to drivers that, cane in hand, I looked left and right and left again, (I’m in Borgas now) and sallied forth, but not at the crossing point.

Wanda instructed me to turn right into … and here she fell silent. I don’t know why, because she is perfectly used to bossing me about in Bulgarian. It didn’t stop here. Wanda was silent on all street names, leaving me to draw my own conclusions. Not once on our four kilometre walk, to visit St. Ivan Rilski Cathedral, did Wanda tell me she was recalculating the route. She never told me to make a ‘U’ turn whenever possible. Meanwhile I got a little message from an app, telling me that I would not get any more notifications about goodness knows what, while I was driving.

Finding myself walking further and further from the city centre, I still had not begun to suspect that Wanda may have led me to wander off in entirely the wrong direction. I passed the bus terminus and here Wanda instructed me to turn right and with just a hint of smugness in her electronic tones, informed me that in three hundred meters I should have reached my destination.

The cycle track that I was now walking along next to the six lanes of fizzing traffic, showed little promise of the delights that awaited me. In two hundred meters, excitement got the better of me and magnification was called for. It was out with the spy glass. Surely a cathedral would be easy enough to spot. Apparently not. I pressed on. Just as I was about to give up Wanda announced that I had arrived at my destination and up popped a little picture of a beautifully proportioned cathedral on my telephone.

What I had arrived at was an enormous roundabout with an outsized pedestrian flyover complete with a system of lifts for anyone who could not manage considerable number of stairs. Despite the large sign that read “sewer control ends here”, I crossed in the expectation that delight was just beyond the trees ahead of me. What lay beyond the tress was more traffic. Wanda was now screaming at me “You have reached your destination”. A passing pedestrian informed me that my destination was about four kilometres back the way I had come.

All was not lost, I still had three more sites to visit and so I decided to head to number two. This turned out to be back up the cycle track, past the bus terminus and what smelt suspiciously like the end of sewer control as we know it. My luck had changed. In fact my luck was in.

Orthodox liturgical chanting may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For those who love it, it reaches down into the depths of your emotions, grabs your guts, and wraps itself around your senses. For an hour, the choir sang and the priest chanted and wandered in an out of doors that took him behind a huge bank of icon screen painting, from behind which his booming tenor voice erupted, and from where a strange flicker of light emerged.

After the delights of the choral voices, I took a stroll round the church, spy glass in hand, to check out the icons. Turned out I got to see more than I bargained for. As the priest came out to greet his flock, one of the icon covered panelled doors swung open behind him. I was strategically positioned for the answer to one of the great mysteries of the last hour. What had the priest been doing behind screen and what was that flickering light?

The strange flicker was a television, with the beautiful game in full swing. It was the World Cup after all.