00:31
S1
This is Studio one on Vision Australia Radio.
S2
Hello, I'm Matthew. And I'm Sam. And this is Studio One, your weekly look at life from a low vision and blind point of view here on Vision Australia Radio.
S3
On this week's show...
S2
We drop in on Dave Kent, affectionately known in certain circles as Kent the Dog, not just because he's been a guide dog user for the last 44 years. He's been working for Guide Dogs for the Blind in the United Kingdom for the last 30 years.
S3
As we always say at this point, please do get in touch with the show. Whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and your insight may help somebody else who is dealing with something similar.
S2
You can email Studio One at Vision Australia.org, that's Studio one at Vision Australia-dot-org. We also accept complaints and heckling through the medium of Twitter Vision Australia Radio can be found at at VA Radio Network and I can be found at twitter.com slash whinging POM.
S1
This is Studio One on Vision Australia Radio.
S2
Hello there, Sam.
S3
Hello there. I could ask whether what you've been up for two for the last two weeks, but I think that would be another show entirely.
S2
That would be another show entirely. However I can. I'm sitting in a new place. I am sitting in a kitchen in a leafy suburb of London. I got some quite loud and irritating birds behind me, But I have that thing. I think it's a man thing, Sam. I have my kit set up in front of me. You know, all those boxes of wires that Heidi probably hates. They just keep us quiet and make us feel at home. And I've got my blinky lights and I've got my ugly grey boxes of technology. Do you suffer from that as well?
S3
I certainly do. And whenever I moved to a new place and it hasn't been for a while now, but I just don't feel quite like I've arrived until. Yes, everything's been set up properly.
S2
I managed to do it yesterday afternoon and frankly, Sam, I'm beaming. I've got this. It's like, Oh, this is what's been missing for the last month of my life and I'm very ready to go. And it feels like the setups that I've been using for the last three and a half years. So it's like putting on an old pair of slippers.
S3
In other words, after two weeks you've arrived.
S2
Yeah, I think so. Oh, so I was in the garden here last night. There was a Fox cheeky urban fox. So there are loads of things that are different here. Strangely, it's quite a pleasant temperature here today. It's a winter for you, isn't it?
S3
It certainly is. We've got the heater on in and it's pitch black despite the fact that it's a five. Yes. 10 to 5 outs at the moment here. Over here. But yes, that's still a bit it takes me a bit of getting used to having been brought up in a part of the world where the time only varies by an hour.
S2
24 degrees and it was light until about 9:45 last night here. Very pleasant. Right. But we're not here to do this. We're here having landed in London, have been rushing around for a couple of days. I won't who can I speak to? Who will talk to me? And I suddenly remembered that in the dim and distant past, I had met a lovely man by the name of Dave Kent. He's Welsh, Sam. But we won't worry about that, will we?
S3
Definitely not. Definitely not.
S2
We'll we'll help anybody with any disability on this show. So I went down to visit him. Lovely bloke, guide dog user for 44 years, and then for the last 30 of those he's been working for the Good Ship Guide Dogs for the Blind. So he's, he's cut him down in the middle it says Kent the Dog which is a "do you remember that you have the children's program" over the engine.
S3
No. No I don't seem to remember that. We had a lot of other British shows, of course. But no, that one's completely escaped my memory.
S2
That show is how people like me learnt how to how Welsh people refer to each other and that is normally surname direct article profession. So the train driver on either the engine was Jones the steam and as such Dave Kent is known as Kent the dog, and he and I are old mates and we actually have quite a unique claim to fame is that when I was running the old community radio station, this is the back in the days where I go, I'm running a community radio station. I'd like to have a show for blind people. Where can I get a blind person? And I went out and found one rather than actually looking at myself. And we have quite a unique claim to fame is this was quite an interesting prospect to a number of sponsors. So we managed to get a sponsor for a show that never existed. Have a listen to this. Dave Kent.
05:47
S4
London One, Hello Dave. Can't hear from London. Zone one radio show on life in London. From a vision impaired point of view, the London Eye team all used the Olympus DM five. And what makes this such a great piece of kit for us on London Eye is the excellent Voice guidance system recorder preferences.
S5
It's a...
S4
Great piece of kit and we're delighted to have Olympus as sponsors of London Eye.
S6
The Olympus DM five Crystal Clear Sound Anytime, anywhere.
S2
Certain elements that sound quite familiar, don't they?
S3
Sam Some of it, yes. Just a test.
S2
That was 2014. Oh, still trotting out the same old nonsense now. So Dave is a bit of a punk rocker. He is figuratively, figuratively and literally. He loves a joke. He loves words. He loves his dog. He's he had his dog was called Faldo, who he had that day, rather large golden retriever. But this interview starts in a jovial way. It's very similar to an evening in the pub with me and Dave, but becomes a little emotional later on. And there may be elements of this that some listeners find disturbing.
S1
This is Studio One on Vision Australia Radio.
S2
So on an overcast, muggy London June afternoon, I hopped on a train to the west London suburb where Dave lives, with which some listeners may be familiar.
UU
The next station is Shepherd's Bush. Change here for London Underground Central Line. A Life of Westfield, London. Please keep your luggage with you at all times and report anything.
S7
Suspicious to a member of staff.
S2
After a very pleasant walk, I only nearly got run over by one electric car and got lost. Just twice I arrived at my friend Dave's front door for the first time in six years. He's a man like me, sir. All right. I'll just pick up this broom. Dear boy of the broom. I'm done. No, it's a hug time. Hello, beautiful man. How are you? I'm really well, thank you. Come on. No, thank you, brother. Look, I just got back from. Sorry, I. I meant to get it wrong, too. Did I? Oh, it's nice in here, Dave. Sorry. It's nice in here. I think you've redecorated since I was last here. Oh, it's very nice. Smells new. Yeah. Oh, right. What's worth nicking? Oh, probably not. I'm doing a cup of tea or anything. No, I'm all right. Thank you. Do you want a cup of tea or anything? No. I'm going to roll a smoke and go in the garden. All right, let's go do that thing. So let's have a look into those yard, then. Lou Jardine. Yeah. So come on, start spilling the beans, man.
I've been on a journey, Dave. Yeah, I've been on a journey. So joining us now, gentle listener, a star of YouTube of the airwaves and of the television is a man who is affectionately known in the industry as Kent the Dog. He is also somebody I count as a dear friend. And although I hadn't spoken to him for six years, when I phoned him this morning and said, Dave, I need somebody blind to talk to you sharpish. You very kindly invited me round to your garden. Dave. It's lovely to see you. How are you, dear boy? To see you, my boy.
09:50
S4
Is it six years?
09:51
S2
Yes, six years. That's unbelievable.
S4
Where were you the last time, pub?
S2
It was. It was the pub around the corner, the Andover Arms. You took me out and showed me a good time. Very much. Now, listen, you know, you have what I think is a unique achievement in the world of broadcasting, something you and I achieved together, which is we managed to get a sponsor for a radio programme that we never actually made. You're the only person to have not presented a show that got a sponsor when I was doing the old community radio stuff.
S4
Look, I'm tired. I'm tired of it all Now I'm going to come clean, right? We will make the programme. We will. We will definitely make it and keep the contract.
S2
Okay. All right. Well, the interesting thing is that, of course, what I did was I nicked your idea and went to Australia again. I need your idea. I went to Australia and I got a job doing it. So thank you very much.
S4
To let you know a listener that he arrived in a helicopter in my patio garden.
S2
I'm How are you, Dave? Where are you in life?
S4
I'm doing really well. You know, at six years older and probably six years, you know, as poor but rich in spirit. I work full time for guide dogs.
S2
But you're here in a personal capacity, aren't you? Just in case you say anything wrong.
S4
Absolutely. I'm definitely not corporate today. No. Yeah. Still doing the music, still doing bits and bobs on the old gogglebox and. And just getting on. Getting on. I've got a brand new guide dog one. Well, brand new. He's two years old now. Where does the time go? He's a beautiful golden retriever.
S2
He's licking my shin at the moment.
S4
Right. That'll be £3.80, please. And yeah, we're. We're moving around. We're sliding around the city and beyond getting ready to go abroad. I'm dying for an holiday. Matt, are you?
S2
Yeah. Well, this is the thing that's intrigued me. So I. You have been working from home this afternoon. I have been witness to you taking part in a zoom meeting, and, yeah, obviously your life will have changed quite significantly while I've been away. Yeah.
S4
It's. Well, I've been working for guide dogs now for 13 years, although I've been a guide dog handler for 45 years. And it's just being a party to change within an organisation and within life itself. I think really, you know, you get older, you slow down a bit, you absorb things in a different way and I think you kind of filter your blind experiences.
S2
But you used to, you used to go into the office. Dave Yeah, I still do. Do you?
S4
Oh yes. A big part of my that's a big part of my work in life. I love to go in and just cause havoc.
S2
Yeah, they don't like, well, you know...
S4
They're brilliant and they bear me really well, but they're very kind and loving towards me. And. And of course, you know, I love them. It's, you know, I've got some fun. Plastic work colleagues, and they get my sense of humor in some kind of perverse way. But yeah, going into the office, it's extremely important being a part of the daily commute. Yeah. And his experiences as a massive part of my of my being awake and being out and about. So, but yeah, I mean, there's nothing like working from home as of course.
S2
Well, a major. So my experience in Adelaide was, was totally different to yours. So essentially because it's like an island during Covid, they shut down even the interstate borders and we could move around town pretty much as freely as we liked. But I couldn't come home or I could have come back to the UK, but I wouldn't have been able to go back and be with the kids. So that changed. But mates in London are going well. The net result of it is I can't believe that I was prepared to stand on a tube train in somebody's armpit at 8:30 every morning for the next 25 years of my career. You know, people have my age. And has that improved quality of life for you and for those around you?
S4
Well, I'm very fortunate in that I'm never stuck in somebody's armpit.
S2
You get to see you used to.
S4
I always get to see, you know, I've got my poking stick. I call it my poking stick, which as well as my guide dog. I carry a little kind of cane about. What's that about?
S2
It's about two foot long. I think probably about two foot. Two foot.
S4
And it's collapsible. And you get in a tube and you fiddle around, you know, poking somebody saying, Is this seat available, please? And if it's not, then it soon becomes available. So, no, I mean, so that part of the...
S2
Nothing wrong with your legs, Dave.
S4
No, that's true.
S2
You're basically you're egging that one really well. No, no, no. You're milking it, Dave.
15:17
S4
I'll tell you why. Why? Because my father was a pretty long retriever, as you kind of have to admit. Yes. So, you know, standing in the doorway, I'm no use to man or beast because I'm in everybody's way. Yeah. So by sitting down, I kind of smooth the commute you're making.
S2
You're sitting down, making everybody else's life better.
S4
Being socially responsible. And I stick my noise, cancelling headphones on and I'm away with, you know, I'm away with my audiobooks. But I mean, having said all that, I mean, to be a part of that commuting experience, to be able to go to work in the office and or to, you know, where I might have an engagement, you know, and that could be anything from a city corporate law firm, you know, to a to a broadcast studio, to a university, to a business of some kind. You know, it's wide and varied. And to be able to achieve that and get home at the end of the day and have another kind of life, you know, which I've carried on. As I was saying to you earlier on, you know, the music is still important. You know, done some good stuff and, you know, still writing stuff. And I'm a voracious reader as well.
S2
You're a man.
S4
Of my reading.
S2
You're a man of letters, man of learning. Well, how many days are you going in? So they say, because I just I don't know how you do it. I would find that exhausting. I've I'm enjoying the freedom that being in London has given me in the last two weeks since I've been back, because the public transport just means that, funnily enough. I was in Kent yesterday and now I know Kent was lovely, actually. Right? I thought.
S4
He was going to say it was.
S2
Was. I'm not really a country person. No. There is an amusing picture of me in the middle of a field waving my mobile phone around trying to attract the bulls again.
S4
Is that what you say? So you still have to that. Listen, he's only just come out of one of Wandsworth Prison after the last stretch.
S2
Your Honour. Your Honour. Your Honour. But yeah, I just. I admire how you do it. Do you find it? You say that and you're a paragon of positivity. But doesn't it tire?
S4
You know, Not really. What really tires me is. Is the whole world. Yes, but the, you know, the occasional dead that you're going to encounter because they're out there and they live amongst us. And most of the time people are absolutely fantastic and people get it. And, you know, and you get on and you and you live your best life. But when you get somebody and I don't think this matters whether you're blind or whether you're your sight and or what, but you get somebody that is deliberately obstructive.
And unfortunately, you know, there are numerous ways in which, you know, a blind person can fall foul of these kind of people because often these people are procedural lists and they by the book people and unfortunately, a lot of a lot of vision impairment kind of brokerage, is it not, you know, to to ease your passage through you know what somebody aiding you through your dark and pilgrimage and will kind of, you know, be quite inventive and creative about doing it. But when you meet a proceduralist, who does it by the book and then it throws into stark reality just how screwed you really are as a blind person and at the mercy of people like that on the occasions that you you bump into them. Does that make sense?
S2
It does. And I don't know. There's a thing about you, Dave. You're a bit more punk rock than I am. There's a little bit more. I think we all have a certain amount of anger, don't we? I think...
S4
You don't think I'm angry, do you?
S2
I don't know. Are you. Are you?
S4
I'm intolerant of estates. I'm intolerant of people who deliberately are just being just unhelpful. Unhelpful because they're certainly not reflective of of my interaction with people because I love meeting people. And as a blind person, one of the gifts of being vision impaired, I think, and one of the gifts of being in my case, completely non-perceptive of light or dark is that you meet an amazing range of of humanity as a blind person. You know, you meet so many different people in your day, however temporary that might be might be just somebody for 20s giving you and across the road it might be somebody sitting opposite you in a train, you know, for an hour and a half chatting away with you. It might be somebody just giving you run from the station to somewhere where you've got to be and you don't know what it is. And somebody said, somebody has said to you, you know, do you need an unmet? And I'll go. Invariably, I'll go, Thank you very much. I'll be really, really good. And I got to go. Yeah. Do you know where that is? And I don't know if we will find out. And so you get chatting with them. Yeah. And you learn things. I think you as a blind person, you're a super absorbent sponge to sponge up information and experience.
21:19
S2
Well, you see, I'm not quite blind enough. That's my thing. I mean, when you and I worked together, I thought, let's get a blind person in. And I think I've been on a kind of a... spiritual journey. Dave, Over the last three and a half years working for Vision Australia Radio, where I mean, I'm stubborn and I haven't listened. And if you remember our lovely mutual friend Paula, I just show with her a couple of weeks ago. Oh yeah. And it was called the Opposite of Jesus, because what Jesus did was he took blind people and miraculously gave them their sight again. What Paula did to me was interrupt my life and persuade me that I'm fucking blind to the extent that actually now I've moved back to London. I was as I interviewed her, she said, We see this house here, what I'm sitting in. I said, Yes. She said, Well, this is affordable because it's owned and run by a blindness charity and there's a vacant flat over the road. And I, of course, went, I don't qualify for that, do I? And she went, yes, you do. You. And you know, Paula, so eloquent.
S4
And that's what I love about her. Yeah.
S2
So I paperwork's not signed yet, but I might be moving in to become Paula's neighbour because I've managed to accept the fact that perhaps I need a little bit of help, which I don't think I did in the days that you and I knew each other. I think she would say I was in denial.
S4
Do you think you were?
S2
Just getting on with it? So you're her her experience and mine were totally different.
S4
Remind me of your eye condition.
S2
So I was born with congenital cataracts in 1974.
S4
Oh, I was born with congenital cataracts in 1959. Well, there you go. Yeah.
S2
And what they did that probably at the time with you as well, was they just... well, no, they didn't spot me. So when my girls were born with congenital cataracts in 2011, they were spotted within 28 hours apart the standard routine. But I missed a key stage of development. And then they hacked out my lenses. So I'm the only person, you know, who sees the world the right way up, I think.
S4
Do you have any extra issues? Secondary, glaucoma?
S2
No, I don't know. I, I have nystagmus.
S4
Me too. And that goes with the territory of congenital cats.
S2
I'm not. I'm not special, then.
S4
No, no.
S2
Sorry, mate. But again, you again, you're almost saying you didn't know that about me. It's really weird. So I don't know if we ever spoke about vision impaired my vision impairment.
S4
I think we might have been, like, 3 or 4 pints up at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because many things are discussed. Well, there you go. Wow.
S2
Yeah. Blind people can do anything they want, including be drunkards like us drunkards and philanderer.
S4
That's what's so bloody normal about it all.
S9
Yeah.
S2
But I. Yeah, so I've learned a lot about myself. I've learnt a lot about vision impairment. Again, I made 170 episodes of this show and I'm still going. I'm not really that blunt. I'm not blind enough. You know, I have to do, do I qualify kind of thing and then I'm blind.
S4
Is blind.
25:12
S2
Exactly how much can you see? Day You see. But it's a question we're all used to being asked. Look, 5 or 6 pints in rather than four pints in.
S10
Yeah.
S2
I'm pleased. If you don't want to talk about this, then don't. But. But you told me how your eyesight deteriorated quite dramatically. Are you comfortable talking about that, or would you rather keep an eye? Yeah.
S4
I wasn't the... suffice it to say, I wasn't the kindest person to myself at that point of my life. That's that's kind of it there. I think it could have, you know, but out of that hell. And it was because there were lots of things going on. Struggling for an identity was one thing because growing up in in while I was taken away from home for 18 months and growing up in a in a blind school, in a well, in a blind nursery, first of all and then and then in a blind institution which I describe as a Dickensian hellhole, where the emphasis was certainly not on education, it was on punishment and just authoritarianism in the most grotesque way. And the sins and the iniquities that were visited upon kids who for no other fault, were born with a significant vision impairment and had to be taken away from home to be educated, because that was that was the way it was in those days. There wasn't any integration. There wasn't any like kids go into ordinary schools and having supported learning and supported education with qualified teachers, a vision impaired, it was totally different.
And what grew out of that was a deep rooted psychosis. Because of that, just the shit that I was subjected to. And when you can't express that shit in a more constructive way, you become a bit more like destructive in your life. And that was certainly my experience. There was just the usual things that any rebellious young person would would want to do in many situations. I wanted to be normal. I always wanted to be normal. I knew that I was different from a young age and I just wanted to be with my friends at home because I used to go home for the weekend and holidays and I would be treated as normal and that's what I wanted to be.
S2
And be pushed over and tripped up like all the other kids were.
S4
And, well, you know, just just absolutely normal growing up in a in a in an environment that wasn't puffed up because I knew even in those days isn't even as a child that, hey, this is wrong, this is really wrong, but there's nothing I can do about it. I was prisoner. I was a prisoner of this institution. And what grew with me was this was this like psychosis. And I went through 11.5 years of psychotherapy to to make sense of the world that I was ill prepared for because of the poor start that I had in this blind school.
And you know what's really interesting, Matt, is talking to talking to contemporaries of mine who we meet up every year and we go we go to the reunion. I couldn't give a toss whether I go to the place where we went to school or not. It could be in I could be anywhere. You know, it doesn't have to be in the in the place where we went to school. But I go to see them and we meet up and we talk about these things. We talk about our history. And it's almost like because it was so fucked up and unreal, you know, all these years later, you've got to pinch yourself to say that happened, didn't it? And so it's a confirmation of the fact that, yeah, these things did happen.
29:58
S2
You're about to embark on a similar thing to what I'm doing and doing a podcast based around vision impairment. And one of the things that that I asked very early on and I'm learning to ask the question a little better, is if you are vision impaired, are you more likely to be a bit bonkers? Does does and I'm gradually get around to does living with a vision impairment lend...
S4
Itself to psychiatry?
S2
Yeah.
S4
Other parallel services.
S2
Well, I've got, you know what you said 11.5 years of psychotherapy. I've got 13 years behind me, but I only started in my 30s. But it catches up with you at some point, doesn't it? And it can. I mean, I think I was pedalling really hard and I ran out of steam and crashed into the wall. And by the very nature of, for example, I think about you getting around. I am by nature cautious and you must be more cautious than I am. And there's a fine line between caution and anxiety. I find, you know what?
S4
This is so kind of pertinent that you're talking about this because. Hers. I don't know if I mentioned earlier on, I'd bang on about it. And I say the same things over and over again. Some of the things like, you know, I've been a guide dog handler for 45 years and and three weeks ago I had my first bump with a twat who didn't stop on a zebra crossing. So I'm three quarters of the way across the zebra crossing. There's two lanes of traffic going one way, two lanes of traffic going the other way. And this is right outside our office in the centre of London. Yeah. So traffic in the UK is, is right to left. Is it the same?
S2
Same in Australia. Same in Australia. Yeah. Right. Because we used to own it.
S11
Yes. On road.
S2
I'd better edit that bit out. I actually walked here today. I was on one of the quiet back streets in your beautiful neighbourhood, walking under a train tunnel and there was an electric car behind me, you know, And I actually somebody very kindly said, There's a car behind you. And obviously I couldn't hear it. Those things are deadly. The Prius is my mortal enemy.
S4
Well, yeah. I mean, you know, they've joined the ranks of cyclists now as being the silent menace, in my opinion. Anyway, I was going to cross this crossing...
S2
Yeah. Sorry. I'm...
S4
Yeah, this is quite a traumatic tale. Oh, sorry. No, that's all right. Never let it happen again. So traffic on my right, we call it in guide dog parlance, near traffic. It's the traffic that's nearest to you. Yeah. So there's two lanes of near traffic crossed successfully. Got the first line of traffic furthest away from you nearest to the dog. And it was a truck that had stopped. So I had to cross the last lane to get to the up kerb. It was at that point I stepped out and my my support worker, my beautiful access and support worker who is I call her the brains behind my organisation and allows me to do my job in the way that I, you know, I'm able to do it. She screamed, You know, I'm fucking out, you know? And then the next thing Faldo was out in front of me, suddenly was pushed around to the front of me. And then this boom on my leg and my hip, this, you know, piece of work I'd run into me just because she thought it was her divine right that she didn't need to stop at the cross. And even though every other vehicle on that busy roadway had stopped, Now, needless to say, she shit herself. As did I. Yeah.
S2
Little brown trouser moment there.
S4
You know, I'm there and I'm shaking. I'm, you know, I'm furious. And she's shaking. Pick up the wheel as if to go sling this bloody bike, you know, as far away from me as I can. Anyway, it was a drama. And I mean, it's for the first time in 45 years that happened as it dented my confidence to get around. I'm not going to bullshit you and say it hasn't, because in some ways it has. I've always been a by-the-book man with working my dogs and by living by that code I've never come a cropper with the dog. And I've always enjoyed fantastic relationships with my dogs as individuals. And each one of them has brought to the table a particular talent that synthesised with me and allowed me to move around in a fluid way. So crossing roads, all of that kind of shit in a busy city like London was never a never unless, you know, pavement walking is is okay. But as soon as I have to cross a busy road, I'm like, I'm so much more cautious in the way that not that I was being blasé before I wasn't. But this has made me kind of hyper, hyper cautious.
So I think does I think your point was it's it's tiring to move around. You know, you get tired and you ask me earlier on, do I get tired with with with the commute and with moving around and I kind of batted her off and said no. But I think in certain ways, because you're totally blind moving around the capital, it's I mean, there are 13 million people living within a 35 mile radius of London. So to to kind of have to exist in that human. Kind of soup in a way, and swim around in it and get from, you know, one lump to another. It demands a level of concentration that I don't think fully sighted people would fully kind of I don't think they would be unsympathetic. But I don't. Unless you've actually lived it, you know, having to navigate your brain. You know, I suppose the average person's brain is working at about three gigahertz on a commute hours after work at ten gigahertz. The interesting thing, though, because of the level of concentration needed.
36:55
S2
Absolutely agree. But again, here I am, stuck between two stools, as it were. But there's a thing where you should have picked up after that.
S4
Sorry, mate. Yeah. No, people should.
S2
Have people. You can't see that people are walking at you.
S11
You know, it's probably no bad thing.
S2
It's an in-built level of aggression. I'm blind. Yeah. No, you have to have it. As somebody who's halfway between the two. I have to have my shields up and I have to get my London legs on. And I funnily enough, I left a house in Adelaide the other day and I'd forgotten my headphones and I went, You know what? It doesn't matter. I'm going to listen to music on the speaker on my phone because I'm not going to meet anybody in the next 20 minutes. As I walk a mile from one place to the other in a suburb. And whereas, here I went into a branch of a famous sandwich shop in London, and there were more people in that shop than had walked down my street in the whole previous week in in Australia. It is a different environment here, isn't it?
S4
It definitely is. And with that comes the requisite kind of issues that a big city is going to throw up, you know, apart from the kind of the human geography. You have to you have to negotiate, navigate. There's all there's all the kind of the infrastructural shit as well. And like streets and how sometimes navigable streets are for whatever reason, you know, and if that might be parked cars.
S2
On blooming scooters.
S4
Pavement, then scooters just a menace. They're just a menace to everybody, but they're an extra menace to us, of course. And and I'll throw electric bikes in there because that's the bloody thing that hit me.
S11
It was an electric one.
S4
Yeah. So police matter now, by the way, just to give it its ending. And I hope she learns. I hope she learns a lesson from it.
S2
But how are your injuries to you? Oh.
S4
Well, Faldo was like...
S11
What?
S4
You know, he's he's absolutely fantastic. Me? I came off more scarred than Faldo. I was. Yeah. And, you know, my reticence to cross roads in the way that I used to.
S2
Physical wounds heal, Dave.
S4
They do. But psychological stuff kind of sticks around. And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't it be a part of my mind? I think it's it happened when when something like that happens after that amount of time, I suppose it must be a little bit of what they call PTSD. You know, maybe there's some little fragments of that sloshing round. I still get out and I'll make it my damn business to cross busy roads. But I've got my little cane, my poking stick, which is like pointed out and down, you know, bit like.
S2
So you've got something two feet in front of you.
S4
Absolutely. So I stick it out like I hold it down in front of me. So my arm is kind of extended out with the cane pointing down to the ground, you know, because if I pointed it outwards, somebody I could in nucleate some poor.
40:12
S11
Yeah.
S2
You'd get sued. That would be a police matter.
S4
Yeah. You know there'd be an eye on the end of my cane, literally.
S4
So no, I hold it down as an extra safety aid, and that gives me a bit more confidence to, you know, to to to get out. But people, you know, people are fantastic. One of the things I've learnt about being blind and I said earlier on about the people you meet in, you know, in either a short or extended period of time, you know, you do meet some cracking people, you really do and you learn things because I think that being blind lends you a certain boldness as well, because people certainly ain't, you know, backward in coming forward to ask you things like sound mate. Yeah. Lovely dog. Yeah. Yeah. How long have you been like that then, you know, so. Right. Well, you know, it's fair game. You know, all is fair in love and war. Yeah. So I think you become, really, people-wise when you're totally blind, it's almost like it's a bit of a gift, really, and that you can sense people, you can sense people, psychology. You can just sense them through their timbre, their vocal timbre, through how they offer you their assistant. So they, you know, how they grab hold of your arm or, you know, whatever, how fast they walk, how slow and what kind of information are they delivering to you, what they say into you? How were they say in it?
So you become a real kind of understanding of people. I think the kind of therapy probably helped there, but maturing into blindness as I have, I think that, you know, as a fellow therapy in that it's it's cumulative and that, you know, when even if you quit psychotherapy, it never leaves you. And it's like a rolling stone and it gathers moss, you know, and like a snowball. And so I think it lends itself to some kind of, I would like to think, emotional intelligence in the most positive sense.
So I have a very optimistic view on life. I've got I've got a really I got a really positive outlook on it. Yeah, I get sad sometimes like anybody does. But, you know, I think that just being out and about and having a sense of humor and being able to impart that onto, you know, into places that you go. But as I said, you know, not suffering, not suffering fools, because I don't do that. And why should I? Why should anybody.
S2
Dave, you're an absolute legend. I can't thank you enough for doing this for us today and for being so frank and generous.
S4
You're very welcome. And it's good to see you again. And now you're going to take me for a pint.
S2
We'll go. We'll go for a pint.
S12
Fantastic.
UU
Cheers, mate. Cheers, Dave.
43:19
S2
Right. That's your lot for this week. Thank you to Dave Kent for being so generous with his time and with his thoughts. And of course, thank you to you for listening. Next week, David Hume. Sam, Who's David Hume? What's that all about?
S3
David lost his sight shortly afterwards. Born. That has not really stopped him from all around remarkable life. This includes a long career in marketing and competing twice at the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
S2
Between now and then, please do get in touch with the show, whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and your insight may help somebody else who is dealing with something similar.
S3
You can email Studio one at Vision Australia. Org, That's Studio one at Vision Australia.
S2
Org and you can find us on Twitter. The radio station can be found at at VA Radio Network and I can be found at twitter.com slash whingeing POM.
44:15
S1
Vision Australia Radio gratefully acknowledges the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation for Studio One.
