Baileys Blindman

I went to fit a roller blind in a village outside Bury St Edmunds. It was a large house with a small lake and outbuildings. The house keeper answered the door and asked whether I knew where to fit the roller blind. I didnt know and neither did she so she showed me into the drawing room to wait while she fetched the owner.

There were several paintings hung around the wood panelled drawing room. I was to find out later that some of them dated back to the eighteenth century and that they were portraits of the owners ancestors. They had escaped to England to escape persecution in France.

The owner soon arrived and took me to the room to fit the roller blind. I told him that I was fascinated by the paintings. He said that when I had finished he would show me the paintings again and explain who was who.

I fitted the roller blind and we went back to the drawing room. The owner spoke about each painting and gave me some background about each individual painting. Then came the most amazing thing. He showed me a photograph of his youngest son and then pointed out one of the paintings which was about one hundred and fifty years old. I was apparently looking at an oil painting and a photograph of the same individual only they had lived one hundred and fifty years apart.

Identical ancestor and descendant twins born in different  generations.

I was sent to fit a venetian blind near Bury St Edmunds. A man who I had not met before answered the door. He came quite close to me and looked at me very closely. I tried to show him the badge on my coat but he still looked at me suspiciously. I found this strange because I would have been expected at this time on this day. It never occurred to me to say I ‘m from Baileys Blinds.

Then at last I said that I had come to fit the blind in bathroom. He said alright and led me into the house and offered to make me a drink while I got on with the job. He brought me a cup of tea a few minutes later and apologised for being hesitant at the front door. He then explained that he had limited vision and  was virtually blind.

I said that this was the first time I had met a blind man on a job and told him that I hadn’t realised that he was blind.He explained that the retinas in his eyes were damaged and he only had peripheral vision left. It allowed him to move around the house normally and made me think that his sight was normal.

I have been called ‘the blindman’ many times so it seemed strange to me to meet a blind man myself. There is more about the blindman on www.baileysblinds.com

This weekend our ‘outlaws’ were invited to attend the fiftieth birthday party of a work colleague. Our neice and nephew (Louise and ‘the boy’ Robert) stayed with us on the Saturday night.
We watched a film with Louise and Robert (Mr Beans holiday, I wanted Gladiator) and gratefully ate the Heroes that they kindly brought with them.
The children had homework to complete over the weekend so we sat at the dinner table on Sunday morning to get the job done. For her science homework Louise had to find out about the spectrum. Naturally the conversation turned to the cult television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
Robert realised that the writers of the story had been very clever. He pointed out that the characters names of course reflected the colours which make up the spectrum. But, he profoundly stated  that the colour black is not part of the spectrum and that by cleverly calling the villain Captain Black the writers had shown that he was not a member of the Spectrum organisation. I had watched Captain Scarlet as a child and this had never occurred to me until Robert opened my eyes.
It shows that it is never to late to learn. We went on to look at www.captainscarlet.com and rediscovered things about the series which were  long forgotten.