BLINDSIMMING LADY

AND SO TO REGULAR UNACCOMPANIED BLINDSIMMING

 

The bird-watcher, Tony, now has my (Chris’s old office one) mobile phone number and I have his. So we make contact during the beginning of the week previously arranged for an outing, nowadays once every three or four weeks or depending upon bird movements! The arrival of winter visitors etc.

 

On one such outing then, as an example, I left home quite early to maximise the time I could spend blind and walked down to our local station carrying, for a start, my old raincoat and caught a train towards the coast. At a town half an hour in that direction, now incognito in my all-concealing raincoat, I got off.

Once blind I can’t consult my watch even if I had it on – which I didn’t, I have a another quick dial on my mobile so I can easily keep track of the time that way, which on this occasion I knew anyway would get me to the bus stop in time for the bus.

I put on my dark glasses and unfolded my cane in the station concourse so that I appeared as a blind person at that point, and then I walked slowly, using my stick towards the bus stop, about  twenty minutes  or so, on the outskirts of the town.

So, once out of the station, I turned right and walked along, passing a round-about on the same side, after which I carried on walking out of the town. Eventually I came to a pedestrian crossing where I had to cross this quite busy road so as to be on the left hand side of the road and thus able to catch a bus going my way. There, once I could see there was nobody close, I  changed to my fully blinding glasses, my 'non-vis' pair as we've come to call them, and then continued, using my stick and other senses to find my way along to the bus stop. Here I nearly always get an offer of help, it being close to a girls school with either staff or pupils waiting for the same bus. In fact, I have heard that people there and on the bus assume I am connected with the school in some way. I don’t contradict them!

I tapped my way around the bus shelter and asked about the bus, pretending that I didn’t know that I was early for it and even so people treated me naturally and were very helpful and chatty while I waited. Now I really have to put on the blind person act, no longer an ‘act’ of course, find my way onto the bus, always with the aid of some helpful person. As I got on and paid the driver, I asked that he gave me a shout when I get to my destination, I can sense that the bus is usually fairly empty by then. This week, at my destination, the driver stopped the bus, came to where I was seated and helped me right off the bus, handing me over (probably with a sigh of relief!) to the waiting Tony. I get a curious sensation on these mornings nowadays that I become a different person, in fact a blind bird enthusiast!

 

Usually Tony is there waiting for me. on other occasions if for some reason he is late, I just stand there waiting, explaining to any helpful people that I am waiting to be picked up. He has always arrived, even if a minute or so late. We haven’t had to resort to our mobile phones to date.

He guides me to his car, drives the short distance to the reservoir car park and then we walk down to the bird reserve, passing and speaking briefly to my fisherman friend, and spend an hour or two bird ‘watching’, I showing off my recognition of water-bird sounds and calls. Then the whole process in reverse. He used to insist that he drove me all the way home but I always managed to convince him that it was good practice, even enjoyable, to be independent and find my own way home alone.

It didn’t take long before he was offering to meet me as described above but then to drive me off to another ‘site’ to see, and hear in my case, more interesting birds. He even suggested buying me lunch before returning me to the bus-stop in time for me to catch the bus on my homeward journey. I felt now that I could trust him enough to accept these kind offers – so I did.

On one of these outings, a lovely sunny morning, Tony planned to take me to a shopping centre along the coast a bit where he had heard there were Waxwings in the trees around the car-park. Never seen them before myself, thrush sized colourful rare winter visitors from Scandinavia, one of the winter visitors that I briefly mentioned before. They have big attractive crests. Of course, I wasn’t going to see them anyway, was I. Gave the options some thought as we went along but eventually decided I would just have to be punished for my silly?! fancies. Heard them though at very close quarters. Very frustrating as you can imagine. We had lunch together at the supermarket itself and, luckily, I had by then become quite adept at eating simple food

Otherwise very enjoyable morning but I had to regretfully decide not to risk going back on my own another day to actually see these interesting birds in case Tony was there on a further visit!