Dear LPG,  

I recently read what PC had to say on the subject of Crochet which has very little to do with what I want to talk about today.   Although it did give me a bit of an idea about what I might be able to do for a friend of mine with a little You Tube instruction and a lot of patients. 

She was one of the many people who found out that she was going to go blind with very little notice.  

About 15 years ago she talked a lot about how her view of the world was changing to her friends and family but she put off getting an appointment to see the optician for too long and, by the time she attended, all they were able to do is warn her that she had pretty advanced glaucoma and her sighted days were numbered.  

Back then I was one of many a busy working woman who visited her as she tried to make the best of what would be, and she has always been an upbeat person.  But over the years I have seen her optimism wane somewhat although she puts on a brave face for her visitors.   Before the lockdown in 2020 she attended a couple of day centres each week which included exercise, braille classes and other activities.  They gave her a few things to talk about and focus on, but even though many of her friends have suggested it over the years, she was never a canine lover and will not even entertain the idea of having a guide dog.  

Now, she rarely ever leaves her house even when invited and that only ever happens if a car or taxi is waiting at the end of the front garden.  

Now that I am retired and can visit more, we have deeper conversations than I ever had time for when I worked and I can see how hard things must be for her.  Like all her other visitors, I help her do a few of those things that she has never really adapted to.   I can also see that a lot of what is happening is happening because she won’t let us help her as much as we would like to.

I read a letter to her recently which was quite personal and I realised that, there are some things that we all would prefer some of our friends not to hear.

It sparked a conversation.  About why she did not go back to her brail classes.  She spoke about feeling stupid because, it was frustrating and others always seemed to be getting on faster than she was able to.  

PC’s message gave me an idea though.  When all this first happened, she started attending brail classes for a while but, in spite of buying a brail typewriter she never pursued her attempts to learn the skill.  That somewhat personal letter got us talking about it again and I looked it up on line.  

We will be bringing different skills to this venture.  I can see while she can’t but her sense of touch is much better than mine after her decades of depending on it and, what the internet has taught me so far makes it look straight forward while what she learned previously will give her an advantage.  I am working on the theory that it’s just like riding a bike; once you learn you never forget (?).   So I have talked her into a couple of hours a week of following an internet video course.  My theory is that even though we are as ignorant as each other, we each have something to teach the other when it comes to this skill.  

I agree with PC’s theory when she says that setting ourselves a task which will pose challenges for both of us and where we are both starting from scratch might give her focus and that sense of achievement might be the first step to her feeling a little more independent…

This experience should be interesting; I will let you know how we get on… 

SF, Forest Hill.

 SF shares some beginners notes…

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