Seeing the bright side, feeling the benefit

How we laughed that day in Littlewood's Café in Gateshead shopping precinct, the first time Dad complained that his chips tasted sweet and discovered that what he'd thought was the salt was one of those new-fangled sugar dispensers.

What chuckles there were around the table each time Sunday dinner was served with a liberal helping of tinned peaches that had once again been mistaken for carrots - well, it saved dishing up a separate pudding, you know. What gales of laughter there were each time we recalled the occasion when Mam got her boxes mixed up and filled the family twin-tub with porridge oats.

And don't think I was immune once I left the family home and moved up the social scale. Enlivening everyone's pre-dinner nibbles with the old pot-pourri eating routine - I thought it was Bombay mix - or trying to cajole entirely the wrong person to come home to bed ... no, wait, that was nothing to do with blindness.

It can't all be gloom and doom. According to the prevailing political imperative, we're all supposed to be out, proud and upbeat about our impairments. So I got to wondering what the positive aspects are to being blind.

Let's start with the things that people think are downright disadvantages, but which don't seem so to me.

Why would anyone imagine that my inability to drive (make that an inability to drive safely) would be any kind of tragedy in my life? At the worst it can sometimes be an inconvenience, and mainly to my driving sighted wife at that. It's true that on long flogs I do sometimes feel a sense of guilt at not being able to share some of the burden. But it's easily assuaged by my keeping the bairns in the back fed, watered, entertained and quiet: well, it's the least I can do, and infinitely preferable to hammering along endless stretches of motorway.

It may well be that people who were able to drive before losing their sight find it a pain that they can't any longer ... but surely not we congenitals?

While we're on the subject of travel, in London where I now live, public transport is free to us blindies. Free. I've never stopped to work out what my travelcard is worth to me per year, but it is a considerable amount of money. What's more, I know lots of blind people who don't live in the capital, but visit regularly, who blag their way onto buses or tubes using nothing more than their dog or cane as a pass. Nice, eh?

This is probably making those of you who don't live in London spit, especially those of you in rural areas where public transport is either a joke or non-existent. All I can say to calm you down is that tubes and buses have a habit of not delivering the service we'd like because of the sheer weight of traffic and people in our snarled up city. Just because something's free to us, it doesn't guarantee that it works all the time. Believe me, during a three-hour journey which should normally have taken forty minutes, there's very little comfort to be found from the fact that you haven't paid.

But where we're really out ahead of the rest is when it comes to reading ...

During the fall-out following David Blunkett's resignation, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee described the former Home Secretary as being unable to read. In fact, as a Braillist, not only could he read in a format which Ms Toynbee can't use, but both he and I can do it in the dark!

Once, when going through my Braille notes prior to interviewing someone on the radio, my interviewee asked "Is that Braille?" I said it was. "Oh," he said, "did you learn that so you could read in the dark?"

But I discovered an interesting spin-off from this benefit of blindness. Last year, for her birthday treat, my then 7 year-old chose a trip to the cinema with friends. There were too many children for one adult to manage on their own, so there was no chance of me staying at home to listen to the Newcastle match on Radio Five Live. So, with a sinking heart, I went along.

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, my reluctance had nothing to do with not being able to see what was on the screen. It was the thought of having to sit through Elf that got me down.

Fortunately, I have a little portable Braille device called a Bookworm. You load text into it from a PC, which you can then read in electronic Braille on a small display. So, while the pick 'n' mix enhanced sugar rush heightened the enjoyment of the movie for ten or so 7 year-olds, and while my wife dozed fitfully and contemplated the drive home, I sat back with a good book.

Finally, as I always do with the purple nutty ones in a box of Quality Street, I've saved the best till last. The one big advantage of being blind which I haven't mentioned so far is the completely unembarrassed way in which many people, even total strangers, respond to requests from us to be allowed to feel their faces.

You try it. Next time you're in the pub, on a bus, in the street, maybe even at the cinema. If you're blind, just turn to the person next to you and ask to feel their face. They won't bat an eyelid, honest.