Bruce Summers
My father-in-law, Eric Leary, was totally blind from the age of eight. During an impromptu children’s game of cricket on waste ground, somewhere in the East End of London, he was struck in the eye by a potato. This was in the 1920s: the bat was a plank of wood, the stumps a cardboard box, and the pitch just the distance from ‘ball’ to ‘bat’. The ball, of course, was the potato that changed his life forever. He was treated at Moorfields Eye Hospital but developed ‘complementary’ blindness in the other eye a few days later and subsequently had both eyes enucleated. Eric’s reaction to total blindness, as a child, was simple acceptance but later, as an adolescent and adult, he came to consider his accident as good fortune and an asset.
It was 1941, and I was five years old and living in Manchester when I contracted 
When I first met my husband he mentioned that he was brought up in a terrorist house. That simple statement spiked my interest and I decided this was a guy I’d like to get to know. I was brought up in New Zealand South Island manses, absolutely tame compared to his London childhood I thought. By the time I figured out that he’d said terraced house I was in love with him which just proves that a hearing loss needn’t be construed as a negative disability!
