Excerpt Chapter 34. Coast-to-Coast
‘We drive the final miles to Whitely Bay. This is the end. A satisfying sense of relief follows but for people like me the end just leads to new beginnings and the end of the pain now rekindles a desire for future adventure.
I decide I shall have to do something wild once a year and my justification will be charity work. Sky diving, car racing, zip wire walking – wing walking.
The three of us gaze at the sea and say nothing’.
Excerpt Chapter 36. Listen
‘…Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth. They would rather hide in comfortable delusions and false hope.
So I repeat the same questions. Many people in the early stages of blindness go into denial. They are afraid to face up to the reality of a future without sight.
Sometimes it takes an alarming experience to shock them into taking action.
‘Are you getting out enough? Are you meeting up with others who are blind? You need to’.
‘Do you get out enough Anthony?’
‘Yes’ I say defiantly.
‘Tell me one interesting thing you did recently since you are deaf and blind’.
‘I went wing-walking for charity’.
‘What’s wing walking?’
‘They strap you to a chair on the top wing of a biplane above the pilot. And then the pilot does loop-the-loops’.
‘Isn’t that very frightening?’
‘Not if you take a sedative first’.