My Story

 Good morning everybody.

Welcome to my blog The Blind Sailior. I am blind and an ex sailor, I served in the Royal Navy. I have decided to chronicle my life since becoming blind and take you through my life as it is with the helpfulness and unhelpfulness of the general public and the professionals in the hope that my experiences may help others. I shall review places I visit and tell you what it`s like for blind people.

I currently live in a communal block of flats in the south of England, one of forty flats run by a local housing association it`s quite comfortable but for a blind person it`s not safe. I`ve had one bad fall resulting in my recent transplanted kidney to not work properly, the fall was due to a trolley being left in the corridor which I then tripped over, this is down to peoples lack of awareness. If you are blind or partially sighted you are probably having the same experiences as I am having and there`s nothing you can do about it.

My life as a blind person is a challenge but not a problem, nothing is a problem, in future posts I will tell you how I have adapted. I became blind almost overnight I am sixty two years old and happily divorced. I try to enjoy my life with the help of my family because there is no other help really, with the professionals it`s all about ticking the right boxes and not really caring, i`m the only blind person in this block of forty other people, mostly elderly and they get looked after with their coffee and cake, god forbid you end up in a place like this if you`re disabled or blind!

I live on the first floor which means I have to use the lift, I can`t use the stairs as it`s too dangerous for me, we`ve had several power cuts which means the lift doesn`t work so I am confined to my flat. This isn`t about me moaning this is about what we can do about it and what we can do for ourselves and don`t worry about anything else.

I served in the Royal Navy for ten years and it was the best part of my life, so i`m quite adaptable and not a lot of things phase me...except rudness, that bothers me. Wondering around a supermarket, which I can`t do anymore, you would of thought wearing dark glasses and carrying a white stick people would realise that a person is blind but they don`t, they rush around pushing in...it`s a nightmare. So then there`s online shopping, this is OK but when it turns up I can`t see where the tins are, I can`t see expiration dates on the fresh food. Luckily though I have good family, four daughters, a brother and a sister and inlaws, so I am well looked after but I wonder if other people like me are as well looked after as I am.

I don`t know what it`s like to be blind in other countries, maybe you are treated differently, I would love to know.

I will run through eventually how I became blind, I woke up one morning with blood in my right eye, this was in 2019, I started going for treatment but nothing worked, I have no vision at all now in my left eye and all I can see in my right eye are shadows, I can`t make things out, can not watch TV, it`s just a blur. I listen to the radio, my phone is set up for voice control so i don`t need to see it. There are some great gadgets around that can help you, it`s just a case of finding the right ones for you. My blindness is affected by the light, the lighter it is the darker the glasses I have to wear but I need a bit of light to make things out, once it starts getting darker I can`t see anything at all.

I think life could be worse, there are people a lot worse off than me, I understand that but I do think there could be more help/awareness for blind people, in the future I will dig into that further and hopefully it will help other people with similiar disabilities. If you have any suggestions that may help out then please get in touch and let me know, I would love to try them out.

Anyway, it`s Saturday the 5th October about 11am and thank god for Alexa, this was just a small introduction, I will try to do this weekly depending on hospital appointments and various other things because I have to record this on a voice recorder and give it to my brother who then uploads it to this blog.

Any suggestions please let me know and hopefully i`ll talk to you all soon.

Ray,