My vision is as if I’m looking through a heavy mist, so everything is very distorted. When I get up in the morning I’m unable to choose my own clothes because I can’t match colour, can’t match the tie with the suit. My wife has to help on that. I can’t see to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, I have to feel that, and then of course a key issue is any reading, so I can’t pick up a newspaper and read that, I can’t read the mail, the post as it comes in and if I drop something off a table, then I have to feel around and that’s quite difficult to find. 

Eating is also quite a problem because I can’t clearly see the food and frequently I stab a fork and find nothing on it when I put it to my mouth. It’s the practical living and the lack of independence. The difficulty of not seeing my wife’s face and her expression and particularly the grandchildren, this is a great loss.

It’s really the whole loss of freedom to do what you want and depending on others to have to do it, and I think an important point is the disability on one person is a disability in your wife, your partner. The thing I’ve really missed is independence just to move around.

Another difficulty is of the social situation. I can’t see when people are directing conversation towards me and it’s very difficult in a fast-moving conversation. The loss of social interaction is quite a disadvantage.

The Beacon Centre provides a whole range of support to people like me. First of all on the technical advice in relation to special computing equipment where if I can use my limited vision, I have large print – the letters are about an inch high – but more important, there’s a speaking programme that speaks as I type and will speak a sentence and the whole page as I need to. My emails come in and they speak to me because I can’t read those and that’s a vital form of communication, so training from people at the Beacon Centre to be able to use this sort of equipment is essential. 

Then the other support I’ve had is provision of a reader. Volunteers offer to read an hour at a time, so I have a retired policeman who comes every week, and he’s come for many years, and he reads whatever I ask him to read, whether it’s a medical document, or just a general document.

So it’s general support, technical advice and social support as well. There’s a whole range of services from the Beacon Centre which can help enormously to come to terms with and try and adjust to the frustrations of being visually impaired.

Frequently you come up with problems that you don’t know how to solve and it’s a great comfort to know that I can ring up somebody at the Beacon Centre, someone who can advise on it, or even meet a visually impaired person who has solved that problem.

The great advantage of Beacon Centre for the Blind is that it is local. We would be devastated if it wasn’t there to support us. It’s special because of the tremendous camaraderie among the members of staff, and the tremendous commitment that they have to trying to help people like me who are severely visually impaired have as normal and happy life as we can – and I very much appreciate that.