Now before you all flip to hotmail to compose messages informing me that I must lead a really sad life and so on, let me elaborate. Being fond of the occasional cigarette or breath of fresh air I can often be found standing outside my office. When I say "can often be found" what I actually mean is that I am found, on a regular basis, by men and women of all ages, and questioned at length about the dog, how difficult it must be travelling in such a complicated place as London… You all know the sort of stuff I mean. Many of my assailants seem to feel that it is incumbent upon them to guess what my job could possibly be in such an intellectual firm as ours.

Many of these guesses are pretty mundane, for instance "do you answer the telephones?" But some are so bizarre that it often takes my breath away. To take an example I have been asked whether I work in the post room. Now I don't know about you, but it seems to me more likely that a blind person would be chief executive of the firm than someone who sorts through and delivers letters for a living.

My favourite was one particular gentleman who assumed that I did not work here at all but worked in some institution somewhere else. I don't know whether it occurred to him that I must be a raving lunatic to leave my own office, wander the streets for a while until I randomly decided to park myself outside a completely obscure office building just to have a smoke. Perhaps he just assumed that raving lunacy goes with the territory.

Now today's man did none of these things. He did not ask about the dog (he did actually go on to mention him after about ten minutes conversation but he was already my friend for life by then). He did not assume that I was some sort of buffoon. Most of all, he approached me and we conversed like one normal human being to another.

I have many friends with whom I have perfectly normal conversations and I do meet many people, in specific situations, who do not treat me like an idiot. But generally the random people who you meet in the street approach you in such a way that when someone actually acts normally with you, you find yourself surprised and speechless.

So, to all you normal people out there, if you see a blind person in the street then treat him/her like an idiot! They'll be much more comfortable with the situation.

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