Blind bland?

In another place I read an article about visually impaired (i.e. blind) people, which elicited the following request:

'People who struggle to see are not "VI people" or visually impaired people - they are people who have a visual impairment. Society has a hideous tendancy [sic] to see the impairment and not the person. Their impairment is but one part of them - only one.'

This is unnecessary pedantry. People from Scotland are usually described as Scots or Scottish people - there's no need for the extra words, which don't change the meaning.

A third party has defended the original writer as 'conscientious, caring' etc - which I didn't, and wouldn't, dispute, and which I suggest misses the point. There is no benefit in trying to hide someone's status (as blind or visually impaired) with clumsy extra words... even if worshipping at the busy altar of political correctness.

Deep-fried in print

This month's Wanderlust magazine includes, in its Serendipities feature, my short article on deep-fried Mars bars in Inverbeg. This happened on our way back from Tobermory, on the island of Mull. Mmm, I can taste those Mars bars right now...

Alderney ahoy

This week's adventure was a trip to Alderney, one of the lesser-known Channel Islands.

My only companion was Bungo - recently acquired from Wimbledon Common. Like Great Uncle Bulgaria on the recent journey to the eponymous country, Bungo got out and about a bit and seemed to enjoy the experience (pictured).

Among other things I learned how to get two window seats on the same flight; what happens halfway through film screenings in the Arts Centre in St Anne, the capital; and what is and isn't an Alderney cow.

On a more serious note, it was sobering to learn about the evacuation of the island in 1940 and its subsequent occupation for five years by the Germans. Some traces remain of the fortifications which the occupiers built - an ironic postscript to the forts which Britain built a century before, against possible invasion by the French. There is little or nothing to see of the three forced labour camps and the SS concentration camp which the Germans used until 1945. Even now, the memory is a raw wound for islanders.