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Registered Charity No.: 1174797

A Quarterly Newsletter VIEWPOINT January 2018

Tel/Ansaphone: 020 8200 5462

Email: barnetbsi@yahoo.co.uk

Website: .uk

Follow BBSI on Facebook: @BarnetBSI

Happy New Year! Hello, and welcome to the January edition of Viewpoint. My name is Susanne Vangnoo, and I am pleased to introduce myself as your new editor. I hope that you will enjoy reading this first newsletter of 2018. And please do get in touch with your suggestions and contributions for future editions. Stay safe and warm this winter.

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Message from BBSI Chair, Sunethra Goonewardene

The Committee and I wish our readers a healthy and happy New Year and all the very best for 2018.

Let me take this opportunity to welcome Susanne Vangnoo as our new editor. I hope that you will send her lots of interesting and exciting new articles in the year ahead.

Also, my sincere and grateful thanks are due to Nigel Vandyk who very kindly took over from Sandra Roeder, our previous editor, and carried on editing Viewpoint since 2015.

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STOP PRESS - BBSI OUTING TO ‘TOP HAT’

The Musical from the Film, featuring classic songs ‘Top Hat’, ‘White Tie & Tails’, ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’

Matinee Performance on Sunday, 14th January

Upstairs at The Gatehouse. Cost: £10.

Contact Nigel or Lis on 020 8349 4705 to book.

We will be going by minibus from St Mary’s Church Hall Forecourt, Hendon Lane, N3 1TR, leaving promptly at 3.15pm and returning at 6pm.

Awards & Awareness Days

Congratulations to Barbara Hogg

Many congratulations to Barbara Hogg, a member of BBSI and a former Vice Chair, on her recent award from The Macular Society for her work in raising awareness of macular disease and providing support to people with macular conditions.

Barbara has been a volunteer speaker for the Macular Society for over 10 years, and was one of the winners of the Award for Excellence, in the category of Chairman’s Award for Volunteering, which she received at the Society’s annual conference in September.

Charles Bonnet Syndrome Awareness Day

16th November 2017 marked the first-ever national Awareness Day for Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS). The event was organised by Esme’s Umbrella, the CBS campaign group set up in 2015 by Judith Potts in memory of her mother Esme who suffered from the condition.

CBS can be a distressing condition, in which some people with sight loss experience hallucinations and, although far from rare, is not always understood or recognised by healthcare professionals, and consequently often misdiagnosed as a mental health issue.

World Braille Day

World Braille Day is celebrated annually on 4th January to commemorate the birth of Louis Braille and to pay tribute to the importance of his work. Blind from early childhood, Louis Braille went on to develop the six-dot code that would allow blind people to read and learn independently.

TIME FOR A SMILE

"Caught a fast bus once – turns out it was a fire engine."

Source: Maltesers UK | World Braille Day braille poster ad from 2017

And here are details of our next meetings

Tuesday January 9th Games & Easy Quiz

We start 2018 with an afternoon of fun and games (with prizes), including the ever popular Domino Bingo, and a light-hearted quiz. Be sure to join us – the more the merrier!

Tuesday February 6th Coping with Sight Loss

Our guest speaker, John Holroyd, will be coming to talk to us about his partial sight loss, how this has affected him, and the aids and adaptations he uses for daily living.

Tuesday March 6th BBSI AGM

This year our guest of honour at the AGM will be The Worshipful the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Brian Salinger.

Our usual ‘Joyful Movement’ exercise class and Mindfulness guided discussion group will take place before the AGM, which starts at 2pm. The mobile unit from Middlesex Association for the Blind (MAB) will also be on display. This has all kinds of products for Visually Impaired people, and Alex and Lisa Roy from MAB will be around to advise and demonstrate.

Tuesday April 3rd Guest Speaker tba

Our meetings take place on the first Tuesday of the month at St Mary’s Church Hall, Hendon Lane, Finchley N3 1TR, from 1.30pm to 3.30pm, and include an audio described ‘Joyful Movement’ exercise class (or for those who prefer not to take part there is a discussion group), delicious refreshments and a raffle.

Note: there is no meeting in August, and in January we meet on the second Tuesday of the month.

To get to our meetings by bus, the best one is the 125 which terminates outside St Mary’s Church, next to our venue at the Church Hall in Hendon Lane. Alternatively, buses 143, 326, 13, and 460 also stop nearby. The closest tube station is Finchley Central.

Please contact our Secretary Lis on 020 8349 4705 for further details of any of our meetings.

General Meetings Report - by Jonathan Cave

September

Dr Ollie Natelson gave us a talk on the history of Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1851 as the second Middlesex County Asylum. Originally the largest and most modern asylum in Europe, at its height it was home to 3,500 mental patients. The facility was famous for its inconvenient long corridors, including one which extended over a third of a mile - the longest in Europe. The hospital was largely self-supporting and had its own farm. It closed in 1993 (when it was called Friern Hospital) as part of the 'Care in the Community' policy.

October

The U3A singing group, ‘Joyful Noise’, led by Joyce Piper, sang with great gusto, and spread much joy, as they entertained us with songs from their broad repertoire, including Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen, Skip To My Lou, A Spoonful of Sugar, Feed the Birds, and Blue Moon. And for those of us who knew the choruses it was great fun to join in.

November

Vladim Janata of Vinohrad Wines, a specialist in French wines who buys directly from the growers, talked to us about the wines he had brought along for us to sample - two white wines: a 2016 Chateau La Commanderie de Queyret and a 2015 Domaine Le Verger Chablis, and two red wines: a 2014 Chateau Roquevieille Cotes de Castillon and a 2016 Domaine Des Chanssaud Cote du Rhone. A great tasting experience!

December

The boys and girls from St. Mary’s Church School Choir, together with their teachers, gave us a lovely carol concert with a mix of traditional Christmas carols and songs, including their own version of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. Their enthusiastic and beautiful singing was much appreciated by all, and afterwards we enjoyed chatting to the teachers and children over tea and mince pies.

Additional Outings & Events

Saturday 23rd September – Tour of Colney Hatch Asylum led by Dr Ollie Natelson

Our tour started at New Southgate Railway Station, where the original Colney Hatch station (opened in 1850 on the London to Peterborough line) had been built for the nearby asylum. We then walked over to the grounds of the former hospital, off Friern Barnet Road, to view the facade of the imposing Italianate building it occupied between 1851 and 1993 – subsequently converted into the present day Princess Park Manor apartments. We also saw one of the original water towers in the grounds, and a small burial stone from the old cemetery. In the lobby of what is now a gym (in the old hospital chapel) we were able to look at the plaque commemorating the foundation stone laid by Prince Albert in 1849.

Saturday 11th November – BBSI Annual Quiz Night

Our annual quiz was a sell-out event. 110 participants were kept on their toes by quiz master Tim. Claudette supplied us with a lovely buffet supper halfway through, and Alan Douglas and James Fielding from Finchley Film Makers (FFM) were there to film the event for us. The evening came to a close with a big raffle and some fabulous prizes.

Tuesday 12th December – BBSI Christmas Lunch

15 members and guests enjoyed delicious festive fare, much laughter, and good conversation, at our lunch at The Red Lion in Barnet. We had a lot of fun reading out the silly cracker jokes, and ended with a raffle and some lovely prizes.

Dial A Ride (DAR) is rolling out mobile data terminals (MDTs) to its drivers to allow them to send and receive up to date journey information. If you have a mobile phone you will receive a text message with an estimated time of arrival about 15 minutes beforehand, or otherwise receive a message on your landline. So get ready and let DAR know if your mobile number has changed to ensure they have up to date details for you.

Collections & Donations

Annual Quiz Night

Our quiz night on Saturday 11th November proved to be as popular as ever and raised £1,200. Many thanks to all who participated and to our quiz master, Tim, who volunteered his time. And thank you to everyone who gave prizes for the raffle, and to our many friends and supporters for their generous donations.

Brent Cross Collection

Thanks to the generosity of Brent Cross shoppers we collected an amazing £825 on Saturday 9th December. Thank you to all our collectors - especially to our much adored Beau Belle and Curtis, the guide dogs of Sunethra Goonewardene and Bill Fowler.

Sainsbury’s Finchley Central

As their Local Charity of the Year 2017/18 we will have BBSI till-point collection tins at Sainsbury’s Finchley Central until July. Please support this store and BBSI! Karen Lansdowne and Michael Henriques also hold regular in-store collections for us - if you would like to join them and help out from time to time, please let us know. Recent collections have raised over £200.

Waitrose Community Matters

A big thank you to Rod Gammon and the team at Waitrose Barnet for including BBSI in the Community Matters scheme and for their generous donation of £272 in October, and also to Waitrose customers for supporting us with their green tokens.

TIME FOR A SMILE

I’ve given up social media for the new year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook while applying the same principles. Every day, I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them. And it works. I already have three people following me - two 
police officers and a psychiatrist.

Technology Update

Be My Eyes, the interactive app which connects blind and visually impaired people with sighted volunteers for help via a live video call on their smart phone, is now also available on Android (for Android 4.4 and up).

Seeing AI, the free iPhone app from Microsoft, is now available in the UK. It works by making use of artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise people and objects (including products based on their barcode), as well as text, via a phone’s camera and describes them to the user in real time.

OrCam MyEye 2.0, the latest version of OrCam’s clip-on assistive technology device, comes with enhanced features for facial recognition, colour detection, product identification, and recognises bank notes of different denominations. It can also tell you the time at the turn of a wrist.

iOS 11, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, includes many helpful features, such as automatic call answering, VoiceOver for reading email previews, and you can opt to have the word “deleted” spoken whenever you delete something. VoiceOver can now also describe images to you. Note: iOS 11 is compatible with 64-bit devices only.

Amazon Echo, the voice-activated smart speaker device that is screen-free and permanently on via your Wi-Fi network, uses speech recognition to respond to a question or command preceded by “Alexa”, as in 'Alexa, what is the time?' or 'Alexa, wake me up at 7am.' To set up the 6ʺ tall cylindrical-shaped device in your home you’ll need to download the Alexa app to your phone or tablet. There is also the smaller Echo Dot.

Bumblebee: Anyone eligible for British Wireless for the Blind can access Bumblebee, which offers a variety of radio stations, podcasts, talking newspapers and magazines, and much more. Bumblebee is an app and you’ll need an internet connection to download content onto the companion tablet (supplied by BWBF), but once saved the files can be accessed anywhere.

Contact info@.uk or call 01622 754 757 for more info.

What is Mindfulness? - by Lisa Greenspan of Lapis

At the monthly BBSI meetings I hold a talking group where anyone who would like to can join in and speak about what's going on for them. I also start with a short mindfulness exercise to help us relax and be fully present to ourselves and one another.

Mindfulness is a word that has been translated from Eastern languages and adopted in the West to mean paying Attention, in a certain way, and experiencing what is in your Awareness without judgement. To illustrate, if I have a sore shoulder today, I can notice this sensation, and notice my own thoughts and feelings about the bodily sensations. The usual thoughts I may have are: 'I should not feel this pain, it's not fair' or 'it's going to mean I can't do yoga this weekend, rats, I'll never improve.' I feel bad about myself and self-blaming and negative about the future.

Now, what if I knew some way to allow those thoughts and feelings to dissipate and float, acknowledging they are there without having to allow them to take over? This is what Mindfulness involves - practising an array of methods to train ourselves to periodically check in on our thoughts, feelings and sensations with an attitude that allows us to open our minds to other ways of reacting. Then we can act in our life, not merely reacting to our feelings and thoughts - but take a pause.

The phrase ‘Mind the Gap' is a good way to remind ourselves that we have the ability to pause - that all of our feeling states are transient and often we can choose our own reactions to events. Noticing when we feel good, and that most of the time things are fine, is part of our experience also.

TIME FOR A SMILE

Client: Please remove the unnecessary circle at the end of the sentence.

Designer: You mean … the full stop?

Client: I don’t care what you designers call it; it is unsightly. Delete it.

Melvyn Rees talks to Susanne Vangnoo about his two- week escorted tour of Delhi & Rajasthan in November.

Starting with sightseeing in Delhi, there was a stop-off at the Gandhi Smriti museum - the former Birla Bhavan where Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life - and an unforgettable rickshaw drive in Chandni Chowk market in Old Delhi.

Melvyn: It was marvellous to see the wonderful colours and the textiles in the shops, and the brightness of the jewellery as well. Driving through by rickshaw was both a marvellous and a terrifying experience. When you’re in a rickshaw there’s nothing to hold you in!

Susanne: Where else did you go?

Melvyn: We then went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal at dawn. It really is as beautiful as people say. When the smog cleared, the light there was really wonderful. They’re actually very worried about smog in India at the moment. It’s particularly a winter problem. We also spent time in the small town of Nimaj, where we had lunch at the Palace, and in Udaipur - which is beautiful – we sailed across Lake Pichola to ‘wedding island’ where Octopussy was filmed in the 1980s. It’s also where I bought my Indian cowboy hat! Our last day was spent in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, where we enjoyed a traditional Gujarati meal served on plates made of seven leaves sewn together.

Susanne: And your lasting impressions?

Melvyn: One is the colours. Not only is the soil brown but the building stones and sandstone are brown. There aren’t many plants in parts of Rajasthan. It’s not quite desert, but on its way to being desert, so plants grow only where they irrigate. The only thing that wasn’t brown were the bright colours people like to wear there – gold, yellows, lime greens, and bright blues. They were really beautiful.

TIME FOR A SMILE

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.

A Request from Ollie Natelson

“I am trying to compile a series of jokes about Visual Impairment. There are jokes covering all sorts of ailments - why not sight loss? So please send me your jokes and I will acknowledge them.

• Already I have five VIP jokes.

• Some are one-liners as told by blokes.

• For others that include a short story - I've one or two

• Some are events that really are true

• I could do with some jokes about food

• And one or two that are a bit rude.

• So if you have a tale that is funny or jolly

• Please write it down and hand it to Ollie.

• You can phone me up – I don't live out in the styx

• My number is 8 361 2496

• Send me anonymously or from Dick Harry or Tom

• My email address is ollie.natelson@”

BBSI 2018 SUMMER OUTING – SUGGESTIONS WELCOME

Last summer BBSI members enjoyed a day out at the seaside in Margate. We’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for this year. Please contact Lis or let a member of the committee know.

The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of BBSI.

Articles and information for inclusion in the next edition should be submitted to the editor not later than: 14th March 2018.

Editor: Susanne Vangnoo - susanne.vangnoo@

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