by Emma
there, lass.'
With that, he got back into his cab, started up and drove
off. Emma, in turn, was anxious to be going, and as she
trotted placidly along I kept thinking of the bus driver's words.
Yes, I certainly did have a good dog. She had saved my life.
i
EMMA'S OPERATION
CHAPTER TEN
EMMA'S OPERATION
THE BLIND MO]3ILITY Research Centre at Nottingham
University was always coming up with bright new ideas, and
asking local blind people to help test them. One ingenious
piece of work they did was to make a braille map of the new
Victoria shopping centre. This, on the site of the old Victoria
railway station, is an enormous place, two storeys high, with
all the shops under cover, air-conditioned and set out amid
fountains and flower-gardens. It is splendid, but poses problems
for the blind. There are no steps to count, no kerbs, and
nothing by which people without sight can orientate themselves.
So the Mobility Research Centre made a braille map,
and put braille labels and notices round the shopping centre.
The main area has large concrete pillars all the way down the
middle. Numbers in braille were attached to each pillar. By
feeling the number on a pillar and relating it to the equivalent
number on the braille map, it became possible to know
exactly which shops were nearby. The map waK a brilliant
construction-the entire centre on paper as a tactile image:
lines drawn for the outlines of shops, pffiars indicated in large
round raised dots, stairs by little series of lines which gave an
impression of stairs through the fingers.
It was decided to make a film of how the scheme worked,
and I was asked if I would take part with Emma. Ian, the
cameraman, briefed us on exactly what was expected in the
iig
filming, and what they wanted us to do. The idea was to
make it look like a typical shopping day for a blind person,
starting off in the bus station.
Geoffrey, who was directing the film, asked me if I had any
idea how films were made, and I told him I knew about
shooting and cutting in a vague sort of way, because I read
about it. 'Yes,' he said, 'that's it, we do all the shots, and then
edit the film into the sequences we want. There's one thing,
though: we might want a shot from different angles, so you
may be asked to do something twice or three times. I hope
that'll be O.K., but it can get a bit tedious.' I promised I
would try to make as few mistakes as possible.
Emma and I did as we were told for the beginning of this
epic, and the cameras started turning. But we had not gone
more than half a dozen paces when I was suddenly taken by
the arm. 'Hello, I haven't seen you for some time. How's
Emma getting on?' It was one of the bus inspectors who knew
Emma and me. I heard Graham shout 'Cut!' After the
inspector had chatted for a bit (I could not risk telling him
we were making a film otherwise he would probably have
wanted to be in it), we had another go. This time, Emma and
I got as far as the door into the centre. And then I heard
the sound of a great commotion. 'Why don't you look where
you're going?' I heard someone say (and thought they
meant me). Then:'You can see she's blind can't you ?'Ian, the
cameraman, had run in close to get a better shot of me coming
up to the door, and some of the shoppers thought he was
going to collide with me, and took him by the arm. So, another
length of film was ruined, and we had to start again. Emma, I
could tell, was by now becoming rather fed up with doing the
same run, but the take went reasonably well this time. Next
I located the first pillar with the braille number, and stood
reading my map, which was what they wanted to film. Almost
immediately I heard a woman's voice, very close, 'Where
do you want to go, my dear? I'll take you.' It was the kindest
of gestures. But, in the background, I heard yet again 'Cut!'
When she had gone we managed to do this shot properly.
-I,.
i
I20
The next location was more difficult. We had to go down
to the north end of the centre and find a caf6 where we were
going to be filmed having a cup of tea. The trouble was, I
could not find the pillars, and I had no means of asking Emma
to find one for me. In any case, she had spent all her life trying
to avoid such things and obviously was not going to learn a
new trick now. So I had to listen for the pillars, then stop and
feel, with my arm outstretched. It must have looked very
strange. But at last I thought I had found a pillar, and put
my arm out. This pillar, however, did not seem to be made of
concrete. I realized I was grasping a handful of overcoat. The
man concerned in this odd assault apologized to me for some
reason. He must have thought I was mad.
On the next attempt we found the right pillar and had our
cup of tea. The film was finished in the end, and I understand
it turned out very well, with not a hint of the genuine drama
that had gone into its making.
Round about this time, one aspect of life that was beginning
to worry me a little was the fact that the flat had no garden for
Emma to run in. It really came home to me one August day.
I was sitting in the flat, knowing that outside it was glorious
and sunny, and thought languidly how marvellous it would be
to have a garden. There were parks not far away where I
took Emma for her free run. But this was not the same as
being able to open the door at any time and let her out. Nor
was it the same as Emma having her own patch of lawn and
her own boundaries. Sitting thinking about it, I had an idea.
It was two months to Emma's birthday, I6 October, and a
garden would be the best present I could give her. I went to
the phone and rang the local housing department. The idea
was to exchange my flat for a house.
They were not very helpful. The upshot of their response
was that it was very unlikely that anyone would want to
exchange a council house for the kind of flat we were in, but
I was welcome to try and arrange it for myself, if I could. I
tried, and had no success. Then I remembered that Emma
had a friend on the council. She was a very kind woman
EMMA AND I
EMMA'S OPERATION
I
I
I2I
called Brenda Borritt, who used to see us in the park quite
often and took an interest in Emma. So the next time we met
in the park I told her about the problem, and she said she
would see what could be done. A week or two went by, and I
was beginning to think that nothing would come of the idea,
when there was a telephone call. Mrs Borritt had found someone
who wanted to move out of their council bungalow into a
flat. It was, she said, only a small bungalow, prefabricated
and getting on in years-but it had a garden!
So Emma got h
er present: but only just in time. We moved
house on the very day. Emma took to the house at once, and
even more, to the garden. It was not very big. But there was
enough space for her to go out whenever she wanted, with
grass, and flower beds and rose-trees.
It took the upheaval of moving house to bring home to me
again that I could not see. This may sound odd. But having
Emma I never had the feeling when I went out that I was
blind. Through Emma I could see: not in a visual sense,
obviously, but I knew what was going on around me as she
reacted to her surroundings. All her feelings and moods
transmitted themselves through the harness. I could always
tell if there was an obstacle ahead because of the way she
slowed up and hesitated ever so slightly. I knew when we were
passing another dog, because I could feel her looking, and her
tail wagging.
But around the house it was different. Moving in a room, or
from one room to another, a blind person is always mentally
planning. And moving to a new house, you have to start all
over again.
Don helped me move in, and we had a hectic time: he put up
curtain rails and changed electric plugs, while I carried on
the endless business of unpacking. Emma and I collapsed into
bed at about two in the morning. In next to no time, it seemed,
I heard someone knocking outside (it was, in fact, Don) and
I quickly got out of bed. Then I realized I could not remember
exactly where the door was. I felt along one wall, and then
another, and opened a door. I was in a fitted wardrobe. After
I22 EMMA AND I
trying another wall, and coming back again to the fitted
wardrobe I finally found the right door. Pausing only to
collide with the settee that I had forgotten had been put in
the middle of the living room, I got to the front door. There
was no one there. Then I remembered there was a back door as
well, where Don was patiently waiting. It took me a long time
to become accustomed to all the different doors, after being
so used to my flat with its one entrance and fewer rooms.
That was not all. I remember going to the loo one day, and
finding it was not there. I was in the wrong room, as I discovered
after five minutes searching and feeling round for
porcelain and a plastic scat. I even got lost in the garden,
small as it was. I had left Emma in the kitchen and shut the
back door as I went to hang out some washing. Then I lost
my sense of direction completely, and could not remember
where the back door was. I felt all round the hedges, and over
the front gate, and back to the house before finally finding it.
I wondered afterwards if Emma had been staring reproachfully
at me through the window.
Emma, however, very soon got used to her garden. She
could not wait to be let out, and used to gallop all over,
snorting at the hedge bottoms on the trail of long-vanished
cats.
Of course, not only the house, but the new area presented
its problems. We had moved to the Beechdale district, and
there were a lot of new routes to be learnt, including a new
one to work. Not long after we had moved into the new house,
I had to go to Boots the Chernists to fetch a prescription.
Emma knew Boots very well: it was in the main street of
Nottingham, Parliament Street, on the left-hand side, and
she took me there straight away after we had got off the bus.
She took me up the steps to the door, and I put my hand out,
but the door would not open. It was very odd, because Boots
was normally open day and night. 'Are you sure,' I asked
Emma, 'you've got the right place?' We came back down the
steps, and, as I was turning o ,er in my mind why they could
possibly be closed, she took me along the pavement. I felt
EMMA3S OPERATION
I23
Emma turn to a crossing. When the traffic stopped we went
over, and she todk me up to a shop. I thought: well, at least
I can ask in here. But when we got inside I heard a farriiliar
voice. It was a Boots assistant, saying, 'Hello, Emma'. Then
she said, 'I saw you across the road, and I wasjust coming over
to fetch you. We've closed down over there. Then I saw Emma
bringing you across, so I didn't bother. She certainly had a
good look at the notice across the way saying we've closed!'
At the nearby Post Office, the woman soon got to know us,
and became very fond of Emma. We used to go a lot, because
I had my talking-books to post. Talking-books are large
cassettes that will not fit an ordinary tape-recorder. They are
played on a special machine. The service is a boon for the
blind, and is run from Bolton, in Lancashire. The cassettes
cover all kinds of books from classical works to light fiction,
recorded by first-class readers, often from the BBC. The
talking-book library sends out its catalogue, available in
ordinary print or braille, for a subscription Of œ3 a year, and
about thirty books at a time can be chosen. These are then
sent, two or three together, and this ensures that when a used
cassette is sent back, there is another to listen to while the next
batch is on its way. In this way I have 'read' widely from
jane Austen to james Bond.
There is one advantage in assimilating books in this way:
I used to switch my book on, and carry on feeding Emma,
washing over the kitchen floor, and doing the ironing, and
by the time I had finished I would be three chapters of the
book further on.
The Post Office-another good service they perform for the
blind-deals with the talking-book traffic free of charge. The
cassettes arrive in plastic cases, with a perspex square in the
front. The address is on a card behind the perspex, and all
that has to be done to return the cassette is to turn the card
over and replace it. The library centre's address is on this
reverse side.
People sometimes used to ask me how I knew if Eliima was
i
I24
EMMA AND I
not well. Obviously I could not see whether she had a dry
nose, had lost condition in her coat, or was lacking her normal
bounce. But I did not need to see her. People did not
appreciate the extraordinary bond between us. I could tell
as soon as we got up in the morning, and she had her first
vigorous shake, how she was, and even what kind of a mood
she was in. She might be a little less enthusiastic than usual
about going out to work, and, of course, even if I could not
see her nose, I could always feel if it was warm. She might
ask to go out into the garden more than usual. I could
certainly tell if she was off colour.
In addition, because she was a guide-dog (there is a little
disc round her neck saying: 'I am a guide-dog') she had a
check-up every six months at the vet's. This is free of charge
to the guide-dog owner, and is a good plan for anticipating
any trouble before it becomes serious. There was
only one
snag about this bi-annual ritual as far as Emma was concerned:
she was not at all keen on the idea.
I had to be slightly devious for her own good. When preparing
for a visit to the vet's I would never say anything to her,
because Emma knew the street the surgery was in as a familiar
route. Her pace always slackened on the approach to the vet's
door, until she was hardly putting one paw in front of the
other. Then, when she realized we were not actually making a
visit, she would switch into top gear, and we would zoom
past as if very late for an urgent appointment.
When the visit was a genuine one I am afraid I used to have
to wait until poor Emma hadjust about come to a stop by the
steps leading to the door, go up them, feel for the doorbell,
hold on, and use gentle force to get her over the mat.
She loathed it. But there came the day, in between the sixmonthly
check-ups, when I first felt a small lump under her
chest. I kept a check on it, and it seemed to be growing,
so I decided I would have to take her to the vet's. After we
got over the inevitable dramatic performance on the doorstep,
and the normal yelps and barks from other dogs as we
waited. we found Mr Davidson on duty: a very kind man, a
EMMA'S OPERATION
I25
great lover of Labradors, and fond of Emma in particular.
He examined the lump and told me it had best be removed
to be on the safe side. This meant I had to arrange to take
Emma in early the following morning. Normally dogs that
are operated on are left all day, but in our case I did not want
this to happen. We agreed that if I could get a car to bring
me to the surgery, she need stay only a couple of hours: I
simply did not want her to be there long without me.
Of course I was terrified that the lump might be malignant.
I told the girls at work, and they were immediately worried
and sympathetic. They all agreed that once I had taken
Emma in to the surgery, I ought to be picked up by a firm's
car and taken home after the operation, and have the rest
of the week off to look after her. It did not work out quite
like that, but it was a kind thought.