Fell off the radar for a bit then guys, this has been mainly due to a stream of hospital appointments and coping with the heat as well as working and maintaining order at home...which I am failing miserably at!
Two weeks ago Mum and I went into London to see Space Shambles at the Royal Albert Hall. I finished work at 1.15pm and Mum and I caught the 2.35pm train into London. Considering our usual calamities we had a calm easy run and found ourselves sitting in the usual restaurant with me eating the same thing I order every time. I'm not really one to drink, but they have these glass fridges and there was this bottle of pink wine at the front and it looked lovely so Mum and I had a glass each with our food. Trouble is, I'm not used to drink anytime of the day, so late afternoon on a very sunny day, after a day at work, with a belly full of pasta...well, lets say I was very relaxed!
As we sat there chatting, the place began to fill up with, well without being rude, not the usual customers I had grown to expect to see stuffing their faces with pasta in a small London restaurant. These were slightly oddly dressed, confidently eccentric and overly enthusiastic people. So, there were two ladies sat on the table to our right and a man and woman (presumably, husband and wife) sat to the left.
As I am always on high alert, I tend to tune into whatever is going on around me, that's my excuse for listening to other peoples conversations.
Anyway as these couples chatted, it became clear that they were also going to see the Space Shambles, which was lovely, but what I hadn't counted on was how excited they were to see some extraordinarily clever mathematician and how wonderful it will be to understand more about Quantumphysics.....I suddenly felt my one glass of pleasantly refreshing wine turn into one hell of a hangover as Mum and I sat there in silence looking at each other with our mouths hanging open as we realised that Space Shambles wasn't going to be anything like what we were expecting.
To be fair, I didn't really know what I was expecting, but was looking forward to something a bit different, and oh boy was it something different.
We left the restaurant quickly and giggles our way all the way up to the RAH, got ourselves settled in the familiar box and waited for the Hall to fill up.
Literally every single seat had a bum on it, and there's well over 5000 seats. I have never seen it so packed and with in the first 15 minutes it seemed Mum and I had found ourselves in a nerd convention. I tell you all now, we were way out of our comfort zone, and when everyone started laughing at a joke about PI, Mum and I were laughing hysterically with them, not because we understood why it was funny but because we had literally no bloody idea what was going on at all, then when they started measuring Pie with PI, that was it, we were both crying! When the maths bit was out of the way, they asked if there was anyone there who went to the Science march last year, everyone around us started cheering, waving and jumping up and down in their seats, while Mum and I sat there as still as statues trying not to be noticed. However, Science, space and astronauts are way more interesting than maths....although I get that maths is a really big thing when it comes to science, but anyway, I found myself leaning forward in my seat as they interviewed Rusty someone or other ...the astronaut on Apollo and they talked about the sun, planets and the stars. The science saved the night for us really, and as we sat on the train home with a carriage full of pissed blokes, reeking of stale beer, fags and Kebabs, I was so glad we had an educational night instead of a drunken one, for the following day, those blokes wont even remember what pants they had on let alone the crap they were banging on about all the way home, whereas Mum and I were full of knowledge, and there's no better power than the power of knowledge.
I really have enjoyed our trips to the Royal Albert and I've loved writing the reviews for the RNIB. The next batch of tickets is for the BBC Proms...cant tell you how relieved I am to be safely back in the comfort zone! Just hope a few tickets come my way!
I was having a conflab with some friends a few weeks ago about as humans we are always 'on the edge' in whatever we choose to do and how people in their day to day life forget how quickly life can be taken. When we are young we take for granted that we will live until we are old, and last week I heard about a young girl who was on the way home from school, she crossed the road in front of her house and was hit by an electric car that she just didn't hear coming. That young girl as far as I know is still in hospital and unresponsive. Despite having a couple of run ins with electric cars myself, I still wondered how the hell she didn't hear it. that was until yesterday.
Yesterday morning I had to go for a scan at Lister hospital, my appointment was at 8.10am so we got there about 7.30ish and parked on level 4 of the multi storey car park. There was hardly anyone about, so we parked fairly near the lifts. When I got out of the car it registered how dark it was on that level, but I felt comfortable as it was so quiet, I couldn't hear any tires or car engines so I started to walk ahead across the car park towards the lifts when this huge black chunk of metal flies past me. I swear, there is literally NO noise, this cannot be safe, this guy in his sleek black electric car had very nearly taken me out, I didn't see or hear it and for some reason the seem to move faster! I know that seems a crazy thing to say but, you know, as I am a science geek now, id say there must be some truth in it!!
I know our safety is down to ourselves but seriously, the worlds gone mad!
I have to go and walk Ralph now the sun isn't so hot....ohhh I forgot...the boy has had a hair cut, he is behaving like a little pup again! xx
This morning, while I was trying to force myself to have a lay in, I was flicking through Facebook on my phone when a article about gardening popped up!
Now, any one who really knows me will know that my garden is my happy place. I have a bit of a thing going on where I buy cheap plants from the bargain bench at our local garden centre, nurse them back to health and fill my front garden with beautiful very cheap plants that have lost their labels on the bench so the pleasure is not only buying a cheap plant but waiting to see what the plant is like.
Anyone who dares to touch my garden without asking me first is a very brave person! So, when I discovered that using the lawn mower to cut the grass just wasn't comfortable anymore, I was a little bewildered. I say uncomfortable, by that I mean, a couple of times I very nearly mowed over the electrical cord, and for some reason the ground seemed further away. It was one of those jobs I used to be able to do without thinking, but now I had to really concentrate on not missing bits and not electrocuting myself!
I know that its also one for those jobs which I could ask someone else to do, but its MY garden. So over a few weeks I slowly, and I mean really slowly, dug up the grass! Like you do!
I did one side of the path first, got rid of all the grass and mud by filling the old fish pond with it in my back garden. I continued to buy cheap plants and plant them scattered about where the grass once was. Then I brought a roll of that black plastic stuff that stops weeds growing and covered the garden making little holes for my plants. Finally I ordered a large bag of large shingle and I covered the black stuff with the shingle. Then I did the other side of the path and before then end of the month I had successfully removed all the grass, covered the garden in shingle and new plants and jet washed the path...and the front door...and the walls...and the bird bath...and the windows...and a small child who cycled past on her bike....but once you start with one of those machines its really hard to stop!
Mum suggested that I put a chair out under the kitchen window so I could sit out there in the evenings and catch the evening sun. So as the Buddleia was really tall and all my other bushes had grown it was kinda private, so I put a couple of plastic chairs out and perfect...since then the sun hasn't come out and my errrr lets call him 'neighbour' as I cant think of anything nice to say, decided that my Buddleia needed hacking back......Anyway, this article was about gardening for visually impaired folk, and it made me chuckle, because all the things it suggested to do were things I am already doing. Without realising I had already made the adjustments needed for me to still enjoy the garden. I had made my front garden 'blind person' safe, with out any thought I had put plants with contrasting colours beside each other, taken up the grass, and somehow, and I truly don't know how, had managed to buy plants which smell beautiful. Beside my chair is a Jasmine climbing its way up the porch wall, smelling wonderful and every now and then there's a whiff of lavender from the little plants dotted around in the shingle. I have already stopped using gardening tools with long handles and am so much more confident and happy with a trowel, which is why taking up the grass took so long, because I used a trowel. There are no deep or wide boarders, seems I am more clued up to this blind gardening thing than I thought.
Because I have been so busy in the front garden, the back has started to look rather shabby, Thursday I had a awful day and came home feeling incredibly useless and lonely so I got changed picked up my trowel and gardened for hours, it still needs a lot of work and I need to buy flowers to fill some pots, but I built myself a table beside my garden rocking chair out of some bricks I found behind a tree and a old paving slab! I had an productive and therapeutic afternoon and felt better for spending time on my own and just letting my thoughts flow.
I still have grass in the back garden but I am going to start making a sensory garden, somewhere for me to sit and enjoy the smells and noises of the garden, I have always had a thing for wind chimes so I am going to look out for some special things to hang from the trees and make it a happy relaxing place for me. I'm glad I stumbled across the article, as after a week of negativity its nice to know I've been doing something right xx
I just want to talk about path parking. There has been a lot of chat about banning parking on paths and giving out heavy fines for those caught out. I actually believe there should also be a ban on leaving your wheelie bin in the middle of the path too, but that's a different story....so, yes banning parking on paths, before I began to loss my sight cars that were left parked on paths didn't really concern me, if I had the girls in the pushchair, I would simply cross the road and if I was on my own I would maybe just nip round them on the road.
Until everything changed and now I get why parking on paths is so dangerous and ignorant. A few years ago when I had my training to help me regain as much independence as possible, one of the most valuable things taught to me was how to cross the road when there isn't a crossing. The safest place for a blind person to cross is by a parked car at the kerb of the road. Whether I have my cane or not I still follow what I have been taught. You find a parked car, and you use it as a marker and boundary. I tend to find the front of the car, just in case the bloody thing drives off while I am trying to cross the road, then I slowly move forward until I am at the headlight of the car which is furthest into the road. The width of the car already brings me close to the middle of the road, it gives me better visibility and there are no other distractions like there would be if I was trying to cross from the path, and I am nearer to the other side of the road than I would be if I was crossing from the path. The car being parked at the side of the kerb also tells me exactly where the kerb is, if the car is parked on the path, how am I supposed to know where the kerb starts and the width of the car doesn't put me in the right place in the road for crossing safely.
Then of course you get the very obvious problems with objects being left on paths that shouldn't be there. If a vehicle is parked on the path, its dangerous to step into the road to walk around it, especially with the invention of electric cars which don't make any sound. Scotland have announced a ban and I cant wait for it to happen here, and it should be 24 hours a day, as navigating our way around in the dark is hard enough without having great lumps of metal in the way, and while they are at it, there should be a rule that when you park up your vehicle, you put the wheels straight, I cant tell you how many turned out wheels I have walked into and tripped over, and they hurt like hell when you collide with them. So, if you are a path parker or wheel turnerouterer, then please take a moment to consider the people using the path, not just people like me but wheelchair users and pushchair pushers all struggle when people park on the path. It doesn't help that there seems to be more cars on the roads and less places to park these days, and new housing estates are the worst for cramming in as many houses as possible with tiny paths and no where to park cars. Just today I was taken to a tea room in a little village, its in a house with a massive front garden, the garden is all set up with tables and chairs and the garden is beautiful. but there is no where to park except outside the tearoom, and there is no path. The folks going to the tearoom had parked as close as they could to the flower beds of the garden making it impossible to walk on the inside of the cars safely. What's that saying....'as you are now, so once was I'...I was that person that would have parked on the paths, left my wheels turned out and abandoned wheelie bins in the middle of the path, not because I am a hateful human, but because I really didn't know! I ploughed on with my busy world, unintentionally ignorant. Please try and get into the habit of not using the paths as a car park before the ban arrives here and you end up with a £70 fine slapped on your windscreen.
Wheelie bins are a different matter, partly because Ralph thinks he needs to take a pee up each and every one we pass, but mainly because on my very worst days, or when the sun is shinning brightly, I just don't see them, once the bin men (bin persons) have emptied them they are scattered all over the paths making a walking even a short distance an obstacle course.
I will be happy if I have made just one of you re think your parking habits, and I will have saved you seventy quid!!
Speak soon xx
Why is nothing ever easy? Don't you ever wonder what it would be like if there were no complications, and every corner you turn the sun is shinning brightly? But that's not real life I suppose, and most of the corners we turn we are faced with storms. Which is why I have spent the last two weeks wondering if I was ever going to find the corner with the sunshine again.
We have, a very old back boiler which heats our water and radiators. I say very old, I mean very very old, like over 40 years old. We have loved and nursed it along in the hope it would just go on forever. So, when the pilot light went out at the beginning of last week, I got the feeling only someone whose boiler is forty years old and knows its living on borrowed time gets. Fortunately, I had the gumption to pay an monthly insurance to cover call outs and repairs, but not the cost of a new boiler, so I glumly rang British Gas and as I am on the list of what's deemed as being vulnerable I had an engineer out the following day who simply relit the pilot light. All was well for a couple of days until it went out again, so, I had watched the engineer carefully and figured I could fix this myself, and so relit the bugger myself. My happy cockiness at lighting the thing myself soon turned into misery as I realised the thing had gone out a few minutes later , no amount of fiddling about was going to relight it and I pronounced it dead. All in all, we spent another three days with no hot water, luckily we have an electric shower. Anyway, on the fourth day out came the engineer again (I seemed to have slipped down the list) and he replaced the Thermo couple, and TADAAA hot water was restored with the reassurance that the boiler was still ticking by ok, so goodbye and good luck.
Literally, the engineer had been gone less than an hour when I could hear water dripping out of the over-flow pipe from the loft onto the conservatory roof. So I Googled 'water dripping from over-flow' and it said the ball cock in the water tank was probable stuck and just needs a little nudge.
So, up I go into the loft with my torch, cos I am a woman (a blind woman, but nether the less a woman, and I got this) and find the tank..its the great big square thing with a lid on it, under the lid is a butt load of water and a orange ball connected to a bit of metal, so I get the torch in the right position and I give the ball a little wiggle....WELL...imagine my surprise when the ball and its bit of metal detached its self from the tank and a shit load of water began pouring through the hole filling the tank quicker than the overflow could deal with. To be honest. It took me a few seconds looking at this ball in my hand and then the pouring water before I could move my arse into action, and then I am pretty sure I just jumped out of the loft hatch as I don't really remember using the ladder, and running down the stairs screaming to anyone and everyone to turn the cold water off at the mains. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I could no longer hear pouring water from the loft and relaxed a little until I realised that the dish washer and the boiler was still on...with no bloody water, so another mad dash to turn off the timer for the boiler and the dishwasher.
Then comes the panic of the cost of repairs and finding someone to help me. Enter in my dear friend and her lovely husband who came to my rescue and two days later we were up and running again. By now we had spent most of the week without either the hot water or any water at all, and found ourselves queued outside my Mums bathroom waiting for showers for two nights.
Anyway, just as I thought it was sorted, there was the dripping again on the conservatory roof, at the same time my phone buzzed and it was a text from my friend asking if all was ok, so I said we had a drip. Within 15 mins, my friends husband was back rummaging around in my loft. WHO would have known....I have TWO bloody tanks in the loft and fudge me if the second ball cock wasn't as rusty and buggered as the first one!
Luckily this was also fixed quickly and by Saturday morning we had hot water again and everything appears to be running as normal. Although it seems that we are going through some really testing times at the moment, I kind of figure someone was looking over me when the ball cock went for if we had been away when it broke the damage it would have caused to our home is unimaginable, and judging by the rate the water poured through the hole our home would have been floating down the High Street within a couple of hours, so yes, I suppose I feel lucky!
This positive feeling led to me deciding that I shouldn't leave things to chance and stop putting things off because who knows what might happen tomorrow. So, when I tripped down the stairs on seemingly nothing but fresh air on Saturday morning I was bemused. I checked the stairs, running my hand over the carpet to look for objects I hadn't seen, as I sat back on my knees with my feet in my trainers tucked underneath me horrible images of tripping over a mouse..or worst still...a FROG (ewwww) came flashing into my head, shaking the image out of my head I went to stand up and realised the little rubber bit on the front of my trainer was hanging off...Phew, no Frog...but bugger I need either to glue the little rubber bits or go shopping. I tend to buy the same style of trainer each time because, 1) they are a familiar fit, no real changes so I don't have to compensate and 2) My balance doesn't seem to like different shoes on my feet and for some reason my brain sends all sorts of strange messages around my body.
On further inspection of the old trainers it seemed I had walked a hole in the bottom of them too! These weren't a cheap pair and I have only had them since March, but whatever, the fact is I cant wear anything on my feet that might cause me to be more of a hazard than I already am.
TKMax caught my attention (as I hate shopping, especially on a Saturday) it seemed the quickest option. Do you think I could find a similar pair of trainers in TKMax...not on your bloody life! In the end I brought a pair of Sketchers, they fitted well and were comfortable so I parted with £40, and we were home before lunch, perfect.
Now, I know, if I buy anything that I am not familiar with I have to practise with them, so I needed to get used to the grip on the bottom of them and the overall feel of them, they are very light and spongy, but they sort of tip you forward onto your toes, so I need to make compensations for that when I am moving outside of my house with them on. Its a bit like driving a car with your wellies on, you would have to concentrate harder on feeling the peddles through the thick soul of the wellies, I have to do exactly the same only I need to concentrate on feeling the floor, and I need to feel the floor to feel safe. I did not feel safe wearing my new trainers!!
Monday I wore them to work, this was a very bad idea, my balance, which was already dodgy from tripping down the stairs was completely off, and I spent a lot of time mis-judging things and tripping over. By the time I got home I had a banging head ache and I felt sick. I went to get a glass out of the cupboard to make myself a drink and I'm not really sure what happened but I went to shut the cupboard door but my face was still in the way and I shut my head in the door...sounds funny, but it was the last straw, so I sat down and didn't move until bedtime. But bedtime did not bring sleep and the constant motion in my head was feeling unfair, I wouldn't have minded if I'd had overindulgent night on the beer, but all I'd had was a new pair of trainers!
So, today I stayed home, partly because my balance still isn't right, but mostly because I cannot function without sleep. I have been practicing walking around in my new trainers and even managed to walk Ralph around the block without too much trouble, so I seem to be adjusting to the new feel. Ohhh how I miss the days of chucking on the first pair of shoes that I find, not having to worry about what effect they might have on my day. Gone are those days, if only losing your sight meant just loosing your sight and not all the other unseen stuff that goes with it, stuff that people just don't understand or realise.
At the moment I haven't slept for twenty-four hours, so I've no real idea if any of what I've written makes sense or what the spelling is like, so you will have to forgive me and I'm off to bed.
Speak soon xx
