Wolfram Thome & blindnessWolfram was born in the Black Forest region of Germany, in a tiny village called Ringsheim. As a small child he thinks that he was able to see more clearly than later became the case. He once said to me, "I can remember seeing the hens on the other side of my grandfather's yard, and aeroplane trails in the sky, things I cannot see now." It was when he was eight years old and went to School that it was discovered he was blind.
At that point he was sent to Blind School. When I |
met him, no one knew he was blind. He had enough residual sight to get about, and had learned to copy the way sighted persons behave. He had a very matter of fact attitude to his disability - School of Hard Knocks. He once said to a person recently blind - "Get out there, hold your head up and walk! If you hit something, you'll bounce. This was his philosophy. If he could have seen, God knows what he might have done! We used to joke that he had been Hitler in his previous life, so had been blinded in this to hold him in check! In these clips he talks about what it means to be blind and how it affected him.
|
"What I can see - or run into"
"My first alcohol"
"Why I left Germany"
"Riding a bike"
"Our relationship"
"We don't argue"
"A Question of Underpants"
"Anything you can do"
|