What going blind taught me about humanity

Twenty-one years ago, when I was a young Labour MP, I wrote a piece in these pages about going blind. I described a rare degenerative eye condition called choroideremia, which shrinks and darkens one’s vision until eventually there’s nothing left. I started to see less in my late teens; by the time I wrote the piece in 2002 I was 33 and perhaps half-blind, but could still manage to do most things pretty well. 

The daily differences were such, though, that people could tell there was something not quite right. I would do things – such as failing to see, and therefore to shake, an outstretched hand – which just seemed odd. I worried that my bumping into and tripping over things all the time would make people think I was drunk. As I quite often was drunk in those days, I really didn’t want people thinking I was when I wasn’t.

Instead, I wanted people to know that I couldn’t see properly, but I didn’t want to have hundreds of awkward conversations about it.