Archive: November 2016

2016 has been another busy year of touring the country with the story of The Blind Man of Hoy. From The Edinburgh International Book Festival to The Petworth Literary Weekend, via disability awareness symposia and broadcast round table discussions I have been delighted to find audiences full of people eager to hear a blind person’s perspective on the world and keen to build a more inclusive society in which those with disabilities can take a full and active part.

It was the ‘can do’ spirit of the London 2012 Paralympics that got me off the sofa and convinced others I could climb The Old Man of Hoy.  Just as in London the extraordinary success of Team GB Paralympians like Steve Bate, in Rio this year has caught the public imagination, encouraging people to look beyond the disability and focus on the individual; to see us as differently-abled not dis-abled; dented not written off.

It is vital that we act on this, not just from an equal rights point of view, but for our own physical and mental wellbeing.  With a recent study reporting that over 40% of Blind & Visually Impaired (BVI) people suffer from mental health problems (myself included) and bearing in mind the well-documented link between physical inactivity and depression – it is clear that the mobility issues and low expectations associated with sight loss create a toxic cocktail.  While it may work for some, there needs to be an alternative to the traditional model of passive stoicism.

So next year I will carry on beating the drum for active involvement by BVI people.  Not only do we need to be visible but we need to show people what we can do and how they can help us do it better.  With this in mind I am preparing a TED talk aimed specifically at secondary schools that examines perceptions of disability and the need to focus on what you can achieve rather than seeing only what might have been.

In between the book talks and tub-thumping I have tried to keep active with regular climbing and wildwater swimming trips (including a hypothermic attempt to become the first blind swimmer to complete the Henley Classic Thames swim) and a much more successful white-water rafting expedition down The Grand Canyon.

Having just returned from a bruising climbing trip to the white limestone cliffs of Southern Sardinia it is time to plan new challenges for next year and to devote some time to my (rather neglected) next book: a spooky, cautionary tale about a middle-aged couple who abandon their metropolitan life to live the rural dream in Dorset.  Provisionally titled The Darkening World of Arthur Rouse.

I am also taking bookings for next year so should you wish me to speak at your literary festival, school, university, bookshop, library, climbing club or WI please do not hesitate to contact me via my publisher (keara@sandstonepress.com) or through the contact link on this website.

Red talks with triple Paralympic medallist Steve Bate about cycling, climbing and focussing on what you can achieve rather than on what Retinitis Pigmentosa has taken from you.

I am delighted to announce that the owners of The Arch Climbing Walls have kindly offered to let me do all my training at their excellent facilities. With winter approaching and the outdoor rock climbing season coming to an end what better way to maintain your hard-won climbing fitness and work on technique than with regular bouldering sessions?  Read how my eyes were opened to the benefits of bouldering as I prepared to climb The Old Man of Hoy back in 2013.

http://www.archclimbingwall.com/journal/2016/11/2/training-for-trad

It would seem that all-out war has been declared on New End.  The levels of noise and destruction, of heavy machinery and boots on the ground certainly indicate that an army of occupation has moved in.

The old nurse’s home has been reduced to rubble, the road closed for at least six weeks, The White Bear (a registered community asset) remains boarded up and all for what?  The construction of more yuppy homes hiding behind iron gates.

Oh and then there’s the closure of East Heath road so that some oligarch can have the wall to his big house rebuilt (will he use the opportunity to put razor wire and glass on top of it?).  One man’s whim causing chaos for everyone else and pumping traffic and pollution through Hampstead’s narrow backstreets.  Oh and then there are all the basements being constructed not to mention the Chinese lions that have taken up residence in Gayton Road! What is going on?!

When I moved here back in the 1990s it was to enjoy the village life I’d grown up with in rural West Sussex amid the amenities and vibrancy of London.  Hampstead was a happy mix of those who’d been born and brought up here, those who worked in the area, those just passing through and those who like me fell in love with it’s laid-back vibe the moment we stepped off the 46 bus. What I remember from then is the diversity of ages and backgrounds I found among my neighbours and people’s willingness to stop and chat as they meandered down its quiet, leafy streets.  There was a genuinely vibrant sense of community.

Nowadays you’re lucky if you can hear yourself speak above the screech of drills and pounding of pile drivers, let alone breathe for all the brick dust and diesel fumes.  A trip to the mini-market in New End is like a game of Frogger with skip lorries, and any health benefits I might have got by given up smoking are choked off by the unacceptable levels of man-made pollution.

And I repeat, what’s it all for?  A handful of luxury flats that only fat cats can preen themselves in, with a subterranean carpark for their oversized ego carriers and a gym so that they don’t have to mix with the hoi-polloi at any of the local amenities.  

And who benefits.  Neither the casual visitor hoping to enjoy the tranquillity of this historic area, nor the shop-keepers who depend upon their passing trade.  And certainly not us.  Not the resident population who ho love the tree-lined, sleepy old Hampstead and appreciated the fact that the nurses in our local hospital had a place to live in our community, that our firemen didn’t have to drive down from Milton Keynes every morning because they can’t afford to live in the area, that our shop workers didn’t lose their first two hours wages each day to the cost of commuting in to work.  They alas have all been driven out like so many red squirrels by the rapacious greed of property developers who are turning Hampstead into a habitat for an acquisitive, non-native species of grey squirrels who view property not as a home but an investment to be capitalised on.

Hampstead feels less and less like home with every square foot that gets tossed into the skip of memory.  I realise that we live in a conservation and not a preservation area, but no place should ever become the preserve of a narrow section of society.  Sometimes it feels like the rapine development of Hampstead into an area of gated communities and subterranean bunkers has been designed by its architects to be as noisy and unpleasant as possible (the US Army employs much the same tactics to achieve its ends).

So next time a skip lorry laden with New End spoil threatens to crush you into the pavement, or your throat and eyes burn with brick dust and you head throbs to the percussion of jack-hammers, ask yourself just what is being demolished here, a few old buildings or is a community being deliberately besieged?