Features
Wendy Hill
Ten Years of the Oxford Blind Writers’ Group
I started the Blind Writers’ Group after I met Beryl, an elderly, highly
motivated student at a local authority weekly creative writing evening
class. I’d been running these groups for years, and Beryl impressed me
because she paid a taxi driver to bring her to the class every week, and
she lived in a village eight miles away. Beryl was visually impaired and
she wrote well, and with, love of her life and her garden, and
especially about her love of animals.
Each week she’d be at the classroom on time, sitting neatly with her
writing, waiting to read it aloud to the class, and join in the
stimulating conversation that followed every writer’s contribution. At
that time she could still see well enough to read her work aloud.
I wondered whether a blind writers’ group was possible, now that
computers (this was the 90s) had ‘voices’. I was a volunteer with the
Oxfordshire Association for the Blind, so I advertised in the OAB
newsletter, and three people contacted me: Gerald, Ron and Ellen. I
hired a room in a church hall, and we started weekly meetings, making
tea in the kitchen at half time. Ellen recruited Annette, and the group
was added to by visiting friends who came and went. Ten years on it is
Ron, Ellen, Annette and Gerald, and me, the reader.
Occasionally we had four guide dogs and six students in a small room, so
it was chaotic and fun. At a time when technology was devising helpful
aids for visually impaired people, our group meetings were an
opportunity to swap tips about new ideas and products.
One member, Ron Sears, wrote of his boyhood memories of the 30s and 40s
in a tiny village which was then in Berkshire, now Oxfordshire, and we
have placed his writings about Binfield Heath in the Centre for
Oxfordshire Studies Archive.
Gerald’s writing about helping with the Horse Riding for the Disabled
organisation has appeared in their newsletter. Annette has made us laugh
for ten years with her humorous accounts of the antics of the sighted
view of blindness. Ellen is currently writing her autobiography,
recording her journey from the prejudice and misunderstanding about
blindness in Australia to qualifying as a social worker, climbing the
mainmast of a sailing ship, winning a public speaking competition and of
cycling across Costa Rica.
We have had group outings - to Ron’s village, Beryl’s cottage, Christmas
dinner in restaurants and at home. We went onstage in Chipping Norton
and Oxford for the Oxford Synergy Season, celebrating artists with
disabilities in 2004, demonstrating to a full house of the unaware
absurdities that blind people experience at the hands of the sighted -
and organisations who should know better, like the Eye Hospital.
Gerald Quilty My
Memories Are All in a Song click
Annette Hornsby 'Blue Sky' Thinking for the Sighted click
Ellen Bassani Seeing is Believing click
Ron Sears Security click