Does blindness mean darkness?

Although I chose the name "A shot in the dark" for my blog and FaceBook page relating to my shooting, you may be surprised to learn that being blind is not the same as seeing darkness. In this post I will give you my personal experience, however remember that it may be different for others. Also remember not all who are vision impaired are totally blind, some may have some sight and for these the amount of sight and how it affects them may differ from person to person.

So a little history about me. I have always had sight problems since birth. At first I could see a little bit, enough to see colours, basic outlines and with the help of very strong magnifiers I could even read some print. However my eye condition meant that my sight would gradually deteriorate over time, eventually ending with no sight.

One of the problems with gradual loss of sight is that the brain can be very good at filling in what it expects. This can make it very difficult to actually know how much you can see as you go about day-to-day tasks. It is not until you notice that you are missing things or when you get your sight tested before you realise that your sight has got worse. As an example this time last year I could just perceive light with my right eye but now I have no sight at all. I could not say exactly when within that year I lost the light perception, around April I started to notice I was making mistakes about whether a light was on in the room and at my sight classification in Croatia I had confirmation from someone else that there was no longer light perception. Even though I know I have no light perception, my brain still fills in seeing the light come on when I press a light switch in my house.

As well as creating sensible images to fill in for a lack of sight, the brain can come up with some really strange images as well. I have heard someone say that flying chickens is a fairly common image to get, although it really can be anything you could possibly imagine. This seeing things which are not there is known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Some can find this quite disturbing particularly if they do not know what is going on and why they are seeing these images. Fortunately I had a doctor explain this to me around the time I first encountered it and so knowing nothing is wrong I have just learned to live with it going on.

The brain can keep doing this for years after sight is entirely lost. I lost all sight in my left eye back in 2006 and I am still seeing a glowing colourful pattern in my left eye today in 2019. I do not think my left eye has seen dark in all the years since I lost the sight in that eye. So may be "A shot in the dark" is not an accurate description for me, however I found the title too tempting when I found ashotinthedark.online available as both a web address and a FaceBook page.

Making travel plans for the World Championships

Now the World Cup is over and I have achieved my qualifying scores for the World Championships in both standing and prone, it is time to start making arrangements for going to Australia for the World Championships. I previously wrote about booking flights for a shooting competition. Up to now I have only ever flown within Europe and on direct flights. Normally in Europe laws are sufficiently similar and the freedoms of movement within the Eu means it is not a problem to take the air rifle.

Yesterday I was getting the flights booked for flying to Australia and there were a few more things to consider compared to normal. I will need to apply to get a permit for the rifle in Australia, but I also need to consider the requirements in countries I transit through. The flights which at first looked like the best were via Hong Kong. However as I looked into the requirements for the rifle, this was looking not as good as I would have to apply to the Hong Kong police for a permit even though I would only be in transit at Hong Kong airport.

With so many possible options on routes via different transit countries, I decided the best thing to do would be to get a travel agent to assist me with checking what the airline and airport requirements would be for the various routes. This may not be the cheapest option, but I think it is well worth it if you don't want to have to spend the time yourself checking every airline and every route yourself. In the end we selected a direct flight, where the plane only lands in Singapore to refuel, this seems to be the simplest on the paperwork.

With the flights now booked, it is time to get that paperwork done for the Australian gun permit. Whilst this admin stuff is not very interesting in itself, it though does make it all seem more real that I am actually going to the World Championships. I am starting to get excited about going.

A refreshing break before the World Cup

Last week I took a break from my shooting, instead going yacht sailing for a week in the Solent. This was part of the south coast blind sailing week. There were 22 Yachts and just over 50 VI participants. This year I was sailing with the same skipper as last year as well as his wife, but the other crew members I had not sailed with before.

After joining the boat in Lymington, the first place to visit was Bembridge. For those who do not know the area, it is only possible to sail into Bembridge close to high tide. At low tide there is very little water and you would be surprised you could ever get a yacht in there.

Requiring sufficient water to get out of Bembridge, it meant a 5:00am start, may be not quite the relaxing time I had intended. However being a morning person as well as it giving us time for a good long sail, we headed off round the south of the island and past the needles.

The next few days were spent sailing around, finding quiet spots to stop for lunch. One such place, which possibly is my favourite in the area is on the Beaulieu River.

As the week came to an end I had the chance to go on the Wetwheels power boat. I had not done this before and so was quite keen to do it. However I seemed to be at the back of the queue and so I had some time to relax on the yacht at anchor in Osborne bay. The wait was well worth it. The Wetwheels power boat has twin Sazuki 325 HP engines and is capable of going at 40 knots. This is probably the fastest I have ever been on water and then also to have the chance to steer the power boat as well. After that the last day of sailing on the yacht felt very pedestrian, although I think there is much more to feel on a boat under sail.

This brings me to the end of the sailing week and today I was back at the shooting doing some training in preparation for going to Croatia next week. May be the week break from shooting and doing something else has helped as I achieved a personal best league competition score. Its all looking good for the World Cup.

Would I take full sight if offered it?

Today a non-shooting post, rather a post about vision impairment. The question of whether if I were offered full sight, would I take it?

This question comes up for me from time to time. The question is a theoretical question in my case as at the moment there is nothing out there which could actually do this. However it is still an interesting question.

Many think the answer would be obviously a yes. There are times when life can be difficult as a vision impaired person, when being able to see would make the task so much simpler. So why when I think about the question do I feel it is not that simple and possibly my answer would be no.

I have always had a vision impairment since birth. This means that the lack of sight feels like it is part of who I am and it has probably has made me who I am today. This probably is explained a bit through some examples of what I mean.

1. As you may know I work as a software developer. My real interest in software was triggered back when I was studying physics at university and was having trouble getting mathematical documents in a format I could read. The software out there at the time was simply not good enough and so I started to write some software for my own use. As I felt the benefit of the software I was writing, it made me realise what a difference software could make. If it had not been for this experience, would I feel so strongly about wanting to write software and that software should be accessible to all? Possibly not and my life may have taken a different direction.
2. Likewise my vision impairment possibly has lead me to shooting. I got into shooting when I was at school, it was a school for the blind and they had a shooting club actually at the school. I decided to try shooting to see what it was like and ever since then I have been hooked. Also as you may know, vision impaired shooting is not yet a paralympic sport, although there has been attempts to develop it to that point for many years. So when the IBSA shooting chairman asked for help back in 2011, I stepped forward wanting to help develop the sport I enjoy so much. If I were not vision impaired would I have even tried shooting and would I have got involved in the sport development and governance?

The other thing is that having a vision impairment is normal for me as that is how my life has always been, full sight would be totally new and strange at first. That raises questions of how I would feel about it, would it change how I view things and may others change how they feel about me? Also would I be able to cope with it and learn to use it, or would it just overload me with an excess of confusing information? It is not really possible to answer these, but I cannot believe that at least some of this may happen.

Finally I am fairly comfortable with who I am, life is quite good, a job I want to do, a sport I enjoy, etc. Yes there are things which may be difficult, but with the right tools and help these normally can be overcome. Remember with my shooting I can hit a spot 0.5mm in diameter at 10 meters distance, so surely there must be solutions for the more every day things. I do get mixed feelings about research for cures, I don't want to be cured of who I am, I just want help to be able to live my life.

I must point out this is my views. Other people with a different life experience, in particular those who have had full sight and lost it, may feel quite differently.

Life when not shooting

Being a vision impaired shooter does not mean you always pick up a rifle every day. For the last two days my rifle has stayed in its case. However this does not mean I am not doing things which contribute to my shooting.

I thought in this post I could give you a bit of an idea what I do when not actually shooting.

Probably most of my time actually is taken up by work. I work full time as a software developer. Normally this has very little overlap with my shooting, other than I do need to earn an income as there is currently no support for VI shooters in the UK. I have dabbled in mixing my skills as a software developer with my shooting by creating some apps to help me. The only shooting app I have published is VI shoot which allows you to configure your VIASS from an Android device.

My fitness regime is another significant part of my life. Some people think of shooting as a very static sport with very little movement, however you need a good level of fitness and muscle control to actually do it well. Normally I will be on my rowing machine for half an hour every day, core strength is very important for shooting. Tomorrow morning I will be going to do some yoga, again works on the core strength but also it should help my balance. I hope to get some pictures and/or video of me doing yoga for you to see.

Unfortunately being an international sports person does come with some administration from time to time. Over the last couple of days I have been getting together my forms for registering as a World Shooting ParaSport athlete as well as my medical diagnosis form for sight classification. This year probably will have more than usual administration as VI shooting has been adopted by World Shooting ParaSport and there is a new sight classification system as well. It does feel a bit of a nuisance but I guess its required and hopefully in future years there will be much less to do.

This is just some of what I do when not shooting. I will do posts like this from time to time to give you an idea of other things I do when not actually shooting.