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Well hello, this is my very first blog entry for Ouch so I thought I should introduce myself, and relive the immense stress caused to you all by leaving you in suspense concerning my disability. I must add that I couldn’t disclose it before due to the fact that I shall be appearing on podcast number 18’s vegetable, vegetable or vegetable quiz. I have a number of highly interesting things wrong with me witch tend to be at the heart of many a blog entry, my main disability is that I’m partially sighted, but I got lots of other stuff going on witch to be quite frank I cant be bothered to bore you with right now, if your that interested listen to podcast number 18. (witch should be out soon)

When my friend Dan writes my biography for me it shall be entitled “Brave Special Different” this is obviously due to my tragic life as a poor cripple and is based on a number of conversations I had with my friend and it all started when I expressed my disgust at a particular incident!

It was the first time I had ever played goalball, at a sort of have a go day style event I was loving it I was surrounded by loads of VI people having fun and getting to hit them with a large and very hard ball. At a break in play a man started talking to me. I cant actually remember but I think his name was Brian, he started asking questions about my eye condition, I mentioned that it’s a genetic thing my mum, auntie and cousin all have the same condition at this point he randomly comes out with “ your very brave”. What??? Where the hell did that come from? There I was minding my own business and I get called brave, in public by a man I don’t even no, surrounded by mates. What makes it worse was that it was me that was labelled as brave just because some members of my family are also VI and at the time when the offence was committed I was stood next to my mate Mat who has no eye’s for god sake!

When mentioning this particular incident to Dan, we started a very in depth discussion about all the different things I had been called that where actually intended to be ‘nice’ but where actually incredibly patronising, second only to the brave incident is the word ‘special’ I have been referred to as special more than any other ‘nice’ word. At school I used to go to ‘special provisions’ to get extra support with handwriting and spelling. I have written on ‘special paper’ used a ‘special calculator/liquid measure/weighing scales’. It’s not special its just yellow lined paper ‘different from yours’, would normally be my response. If anyone ever dared to describe me as special directly I don’t actually think they would live to tell the tale.

The different bit of the title refers to me, so I’m different from the average normal, but if we where all normal’s then wouldn’t life be boring. From a different perspective it also reflects the fact that a lot of everyday tasks I do in a different way, still have the same end result but my method might be slower but easier for me.

In fact due to recent events it nearly became ‘brave special different sweetheart’ this was due to a pharmacist who was just doing her job but said to me when I went to get my first ever anti-depressants “sweetheart if you feel suicidal don’t” witch was a very odd experience at the time but not quite as legendry as the others.

Don’t even get me started on the term ‘differently able’ 


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