Out of Sight..again.

The thing about being visually impaired is that you can’t see very well. I mean not see very well in the ‘usual’ sense. Most visually impaired and blind people I have met are often a lot more insightful, focused and aware then others with their full 180 degrees of vision. They have to be. With a visual impairment it becomes more important to be able to suss voice, intent, energy and potential action of people around you to avoid ..well ...potential death lets say, as i don’t want to be too dramatic. (i.e. if you can hear someone screaming and a noise behind them that sounds like a trumpeting insane runaway elephant it pays to have that heightened awareness and a glimmering idea of where to run for safety. ) image from internet

For me there are two annoying side effects of having no peripheral vision.
1. I have to stare intensely using my 10 degrees of central vision. Staring intently is not most people’s idea of blindness. I also seek and lock eye contact. This can be disturbing to people especially when I stomp over to them at railway stations, peering hard directly at them and then proclaim fearsomely ‘I need help. I can’t see the Signs.’.

Photo (c) T. Bush 2010

2. Things disappear. Usually my bloody magnifiers and magnification specs. Which is ironic. Also cell phones, black marker pens, keys, glasses of gin and tonic, £10 notes and sense of humour. Strangely I can always put my hand on the biros that don’t work that I was sure I flung out last time. Always. I must have a breeding colony of defective biros.

Anyway – I am in Radstock. Here for the week to try and wring out some more words of this bottom heavy thriller. It’s going slowly but at least it’s going. A lovely catch up with a couple of MA friends yesterday assured me that I am not as off kilter as I had thought cartoon from internet

On Skype, Dad now has a fuzz of white hair and is looking a little less translucent. ‘I’m sure it’s grown since yesterday,’ I say reassuringly peering into the screen. His blood counts need to grow faster too though. Those are harder to see from here.

In the evening I wander woozily into my sister’s veggie patches with the watering cans. I stub my toe, drop the can, soak my dress, refill and do it all over again. She has a good load of salad courgettes, tomatoes, herbs and sweet peas, rhubarb, roses, maize and at least one triffid that keeps whacking me from behind the poly tunnel. I am rigorous and steadfast and although have to pluck several bits of twig from my hair and wash off the ants stuck to my cocoa buttered legs I am proud that I have saved the garden from a parched withering.

That night it rains.

image from internet

Pooling Resources

There has been a disruption in my blog flow and I must apologise. I am having a rather hard time with a minor bout of depression due to my continually walking into things I am sure I wasn’t walking into a few months ago. This, exam-material hand-in-time, Tories, Dad’s illness, phone bills, and weariness from the Bath-Cambridge commute have all conspired to dull any creativity or witty banter these last couple of weeks. But fear not! Summer has struck and I am rallying.

Iris In Rain (c) T. Bush 2010

Also I am happy to report that Dad has got through his first stages of treatment and although it was very tough and at times pretty hairy (well no longer ‘hairy’ sadly...but it will grow back..) he did it and the doctors did him proud! He is on a rest now for another couple of weeks to build his strength and weight back for the stem cell infusion. His partner D has been by his side all through this time and doing an excellent job of care, cajoling and encouraging. She is force feeding him steak and chips as I type!

Last weekend was glorious and although I was stuck inside on the computer I thought it only fair to buy Grace a paddling pool as she was struggling a little in the heat. Being a black dog she absorbs heat like an fat eskimo in a burkha.
At first she wasn’t sure.
Suspicous in fact...

But then she figured it out. (check the tail wag!)

Grace and Pool x 2 (c) T. Bush 2010

Holey father.

My flat is too small for my father.

He is a guest so gets the only bedroom. I get the futon that seems to be made of rough chipboard with added concrete and I set up camp in the living room.

Each morning at 7:30 he is already awake and bored and ready to continue his holiday. My father has worse ADHD then a small child with a coke problem AND he is my father and wants constant companionship from whichever of his children is closest…….right now that would be me.

My dad is a big chap, over 6 foot and broad but his knees are a bit dodgy and he has a bit of a stagger so, what with me being visually impaired and this flat being rather tiny, we are both continuously crashing into each other and tripping over all the piles of clothes and books and plastic bags full of recently acquired stuff to take back to Zambia that now cover the living room floor (when I am not sleeping on it.)

Within two days I am haggard and looking and living like a bag lady, rummaging under chairs for spare socks and desperately, continually searching for lost earrings, keys, mobile phones, my notes for work and my sense of humour. My dad says he is worried that I am ‘letting myself go’ and suggests I let my brother’s beautiful Brazilian girlfriend, 18 years my junior, give me some fashion advice, then, without noticing I have gone puce and am trying not to howl, he sits himself down in the middle of the living room blocking all exits and starts watching reruns of Top Gear with the sound up so loud the ceiling vibrates.
When he gets bored we will go somewhere to feed on dodgy prawn masala then hit every pub on the way home for medicinal brandy.

I will lie, holding my stomach and groaning on the chip board futon until dawn and then at 7:30 we will begin all over again.

My Dad is one of the greatest intuitive doctors of his generation with an OBE and various other awards cluttering his sideboard to underline that very fact. He saves lives..all the blinking time. He is hopelessly over generous and although he has been working tirelessly for 40 years he is still easily taken in and his hospitality and gifts have been so constantly abused that he is nearly broke himself and certainly will have to carry on working well into his 70’s. He is a very good man but he is also irresponsible, sometimes cowardly, childish and needy. He confuses nobility with sanctimony and is scared of emotion and naked truth. I worry about him all the time.
He makes up puns so bad they can make your nose bleed. His humour is forever warped to the tune of the Goon Show circa 1958.
I think I am like him and I hate that. I think I am like him and I am deeply, deeply proud.
In other words…my dad is over for a visit..the flat is too small and I am losing my mind.

He is in London for a couple of days and I will try and find where I stashed my toothbrush and my only clean T-shirt. I think they may be under recycling bin in the corner……