Thursday, June 17, 2010


I was recently asked to take some photographs at a small dinner meeting on the outskirts of London. The guest speaker who was also being presented with an award was Peter White, who was well known to me for his work as a radio presenter. Peter White has been blind all of his life, but hasn't seemed to let that be a barrier to him very much at all. He was a brilliantly entertaining and thought provoking speaker, at one point making me cry with laughter when he told a story about trying to travel on the London Underground network without a guide dog. Peter has never used a guide dog, and navigates himself around the country, and indeed the world, with a seemingly unshakable faith in his ability to get from A to B without too much trouble. Indeed, just getting to this particular engagement proved to be not without incident when the train didn't stop where expected and Peter had to continue on to the next station, and then catch a train back again. The driver that had been sent to meet him at the station then ignored him as he had been expecting to collect a man with a dog. When working on commercial jobs, I can get very stressed about getting to the right location, and will worry, often with no great reason about parking, getting to the airport, access and any other minor detail I can think of. This overly cautious attitude often means I arrive at locations hours early. It wouldn't do me any harm at all to take a leaf out of Peter's book and relax into things a bit more. Rather than try to anticipate every possible problem in advance, I think I will try to relax a bit and deal with the occasional problem when it arrises. After all, transport shouldn't be that difficult, I have the remarkable advantage of being able to see where I'm going and I should be more appreciative of that gift.

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