None So Blind ...

 by Ronnie Bray

Some years ago, I taught an early morning religion class in the Seminary programme of the church I attend. The class was held in a town about ten miles from my home, which meant an early start each weekday to get there in time for the 6 am start.

One morning in November, I set off on my 49 cc-engined Puch moped. It was a cold, frosty morning, and my trusty steed needed a little coaxing before ripping into life. I wrapped myself up against the cold, wearing a thick waterproof jacket, leather gauntlets, safety helmet, and a woollen muffler wound tightly around my neck. Movement was difficult, but it helped prevent the biting cold from gnawing at my still-sleepy bones during the journey of around forty minutes at a top speed of twenty-five miles an hour, if I caught a tail wind.

This morning, there was no wind; just a light frosty mist that made the landscape white and ghostly. As I headed away from home, the haze gradually deepened. Undeterred, I pressed on, trying hard not to wake up altogether.

The intensifying fog made houses along my route appear and disappear as if moved by some ghostly hand. One moment they were invisible, the next they presented full-blown for a fraction of a second before silently withdrawing into the wintry hinterland of secret things.

There was little traffic, which made my journey easier in increasingly forbidding conditions. As I chugged over the top of Daisy Hill, my mount, straining and complaining at the steep incline, threw out vast clouds of acrid blue smoke, from which my risible speed made it difficult to escape until I topped the hill and sped down the other side

The short side of Daisy Hill ended abruptly at Duckworth Lane. I peered both ways before across the junction to the precipitous descent of Crow Nest Lane, thinking that the sudden incline of the lane would lead me into the clearness of lower ground. I was wrong.

The mist in the lane was denser than that it had been at the top of Daisy Hill. Before I had driven yards from the junction, I came to a sudden halt. I could see nothing. The dim yellow glow of the headlight lit up no more than a few pale inches of the profound, impenetrable gloom that was now all around me. I was fog-bound!

My brave little mount, usually temperamental in damp weather, chugged noisily away as I considered my options. I was less than a mile from home and could not foresee what conditions I might meet on the road ahead, although it was hard to imagine anything worse than total blackness that had reduced me to impotent motionless.

I had brought the bright yellow Puch moped when I lived at Heckmondwike, to ride to my early morning Seminary class, because it was an arduous climb of almost a mile up Halifax Road from my home. When I was appointed to teach the class, rather than walk so hard, so far, so early, I bought a second-hand pedal cycle. However, on my trial run I ran out of steam before getting halfway up. That taught me an important lesson: my cycling days were over! I bought a newspaper, scanned the classifieds, made a telephone call, took a trip, and bought my first - and last! - moped.

Besides transporting me and a mountain of teaching materials, the moped made a notable contribution to class discipline. Students who applied themselves to their work, were rewarded by driving it around the car park, while waiting for their rides home.

Now, its tiny engine rumbled cantankerously as it stood becalmed in an ancient lane on a frosty Yorkshire morning, whilst I searched for a solution to my predicament.

I could dismount, I surmised, and walk beside the machine, feeling for the kerbside with my feet, and hope that I eventually came out of fog. On the other hand, I could turn right around and go home. It was about nine miles forward and much less back. Home, associated with warmth, comfort, and safety, beckoned me with crushing logic.

My mind fleetingly turned to fishermen who trawl Arctic waters in winter's treacherous conditions. A sudden reincarnation of Walter Mitty rose inside me as I imagined myself as lost and isolated in an iced up vessel, stranded in the dreadful darkness of an Arctic night. I came to my senses with a long sigh of surrender.

As I sighed, I noticed that the breath of the complaint curiously warmed my nose, trapped between my fog-damp damp muffler and the visor of the helmet. I ungloved a hand and pressed my forefinger inside the visor to clear any condensation that might be there. It was a trivial gesture made to delay a difficult decision.

As I slid my finger across the inside of the visor the world stood before me, uncommonly visible and in astonishing detail as my finger swept aside the fog. The fog was of my own making, and was confined to the few square inches of the inside of my visor! I laughed aloud at my absurdity.

A simple adjustment of my scarf prevented further self-deception, and I completed my journey in good time.

Although I felt stupid, I was not embarrassed by the event, because it taught me a valuable lesson about life: we can be blinded by our own thought and actions and the worst blindness within ourselves that prevents us from seeing what is before our eyes.

As my old granny used to say,

"None so blind as those who will not see."

Or, as another ancient wrote,

"Woe unto the blind that will not see."

As I press on through the journey of life, I remember when I was blind, helpless, and bewildered, endeavouring always to avoid blindness and prejudice of my own making.

Copyright 2000 Ronnie Bray