Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Monkey completely loves the web. No. Monkey completely loves blogs - the blogosphere, if you will. Further, Monkey loves what people write in their personal blogs about disability, especially if they're not disabled-up themselves.

Here's a goodie from this week's collection. It's from a blog called .

You know how disability trainers like to selotape people's eyes shut or wrap bandages round heads to show people what it's like to be blind? It's usually for professional reasons like for those training to be social workers. This guy is just blind curious though - and why not? Oh and do you think blind people see in their dreams?

In he goes into great detail about the sightless challenges he sets himself when walking down the street. Quite brilliant.

"I've often wondered what it's like to be blind." He starts.

"I used to do this every now and then for fun: when I'm walking along a quiet and relatively safe path, I would look ahead to the next obstacle, estimate
its distance from me in terms of number of steps, then close my eyes and walk for slightly less than those number of steps."

He goes into it in a bit more detail then observes:

"Walking with the same stride after step 15 with your eyes closed brings about a different sensation - you don’t know if your direction is slightly off,
you don’t know if you might walk off the pavement, you don’t know if you might step into the drain, you don’t know if you might kiss the tree ..."

Monkey would like to add: You don't know if there's any dog poo on the pavement in front of you. You don't know if there is any street furniture that might further disable you. You don't know that people are staring at your every move and nudging their mates as you walk. And you don't know that HMV has a half price sale this week god damn it ... nor (sob) that you'll ever get a job ... or a partner ... or get taken seriously ... EVER. I hate this world and everyone in it!!

Um, we loved Tinker Tailor's deep thoughts on this. Send us any blog entries you've enjoyed and we, the Ouch team, will laugh privately at them and/or post them for everyone to see. God we love you guys.