Someone has e-mailed me at me_blindfolded@yahoo.co.uk (and you are all welcome to contact me here! Please do!). He asked, ref last week’s blog ‘why did I tap my way around the bus stop?’ Most people, he says, sweep their cane side to side and have a ball arrangement on the end. He is right, of course. I tried the ball attachment a few years ago and it was difficult on the rougher ground that I tend to find myself on when blindsimming/ birdwatching as I have been describing. I do sweep as well as tap however on harder surfaces.

When I first started using a cane many years ago, without any real instruction of course, I thought that tapping was the way to do it and became quite proficient at it. I suppose ‘poking’ might have been more appropriate to me then, going round bird reserves blindfolded with my brother, Chris, as a guide.

Incidentally, when I wrote ‘bus stop’, I should explain that it is a biggish bus shelter with seats in it. You might have imagined just a pole on a grassy verge and wondered how I would have even found it! Probably wouldn’t have, although I have learnt that particular route very well. I always cross the main road to the correct side before going into blindfold mode! And, to finish answering the questions from my ‘correspondent’, I now have a folding stick which just fits into my large handbag, together with my two pairs of blind dark glasses and other things necessary for a day blindsimming out-of-doors, cash but no cards – for obvious reasons.



In those younger days, I remembered that horrible Blind Pew from Treasure Island. I expect you too read it as a child. Chris found a picture for me of Blind Pew, which raised another of my childhood concerns. If people are blind, why do they need to wear a bandage over their eyes? I remember wondering the same about illustrations of ‘Three Blind Mice’



However – can anyone explain how we can upload a photo to this blog, please?

We get as far as uploading the photo into the separate blog Image Field, we click so that the photo then has a blue frame but get no further. Even using the Picasa button, there is no option appearing to deal with Layout or Image size. In fact we can’t close the image even to get back to the draft blog.