Winter Edition 2004 , Summer Edition 2004 , February Edition 2004 ,
Download a Journal , Summer Edition 2006 , Spring Edition 2007
Hello everyone, my name's Derek Snell and I've been asked by Randall, the Editor, to write a piece for each edition of this Journal. In the next few editions I'll be talking to you about a number of subjects that occur to me, hopefully being of interest to blind and partially sighted people.
Just briefly, I lost my sight about ten years ago suddenly, after having been able to see the bottom line of a sight chart, this happened to me very very quickly. In my view, there are three different sections of people who are either blind or partially sighted. One is like David Blunket who lost his sight immediately from birth and has never known sight at all. The second category is people who have gradually lost the main part or all of their sight therefore has had some notice. The third category of people like myself who had no notice at all, it just happened suddenly for many different reasons.
Now, one of my sayings is that, my definition of blindness is that 50 percent of the problem is blindness. The other 50 percent is how people think you come across, whether they're friends, relations or acquaintances, how they deal with you once you're blind or partially sighted. British people are not noted for dealing with disability very well, as against the American and the Australians, who I understand are brilliant, and have no problem with disability at all.
I was not born and bred in the Grimsby area but I've spent the majority of my life in this part of the country, and so I sometimes have to watch what I say because I'm married to Joyce, who was born and bred in this area. I have a saying that Grimsby people speak to you, but you must speak to them first. I think, although it is difficult to generalize in my experience, this is very much the case. This is fine when you can see, and you've got eye contact, because you can open the batting, and I used to do that and get some nice conversations going. When you're totally blind as I am, you can't do that. I still get instances where people who I used to speak to first don't speak, whether they're waiting for me to speak or what, I don't know, but I don't even know they are there.
A quick example of this: I live in a reasonable sort of area of Cleethorpes and most people are fairly intelligent. The man across the road when we go out, and he in his garden, he waves and smiles, it's not a lot of good to a totally blind man when someone's waving and smiling. He fully knows that I've been blind for ten years but that's what he does. I've often said to my wife, "maybe he's not smiling, he might have wind"!
Only yesterday I was on the telephone with someone who knows me ever so well, and knows my situation. He'd got a name and address to give me but he said, "Can you quickly get a piece of paper and a pen please". I said to him, "I can't read and write now", so he said "You can write, but you won't be able to read it". I didn't go in to it, but I felt like saying, "Put the blind fold on and try writing on a piece of paper, you don't know whether you're writing it on you're sleeve or the table cloth, or what you're doing". The point I'm making, it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to understand a blind person's situation, but you try getting THAT across to people.
In the last ten years, I've lost a few friends through this blindness thing, because people can't cope with it, but I've also gained a lot of nice new friends. Also, some people have come, what I call out of the woodwork, and have been most supportive. So there is good and bad in all categories.
Anyway, that's my experience of things. You'll have different experiences and if you feel either Randall or Paul would be interested to hear of your own experiences, then don't hesitate and give them a ring, or pop in to Hainton Avenue and have a chat. This first contribution has been fairly serious stuff, in the next edition I'll be devote my piece to three funny stories. Two of them that are true, concerning experiences with blindness. One by myself, and one that was on the radio, and I think you'll find them quite funny, so It will be a lighter edition from me next quarter. So until then, take care of yourselves and cheerio for now. Article by Derek Snell.