Month: November 2017

My First Visit To Lush

A topic I’ve never touched on before in this blog is beauty and fashion. Lots of other bloggers do it, and very well too, but it’s been very much absent from this blog. So this post marks another step into unchartered territory for me – a Lush haul, from their huge store in Oxford Street.

Going into a Lush store last weekend was a completely new experience for me, and I came out with quite a lot. So I thought I’d share the details of my visit in this post, and how I was introduced to Lush, along with a video showing the products I bought in detail. So I hope you enjoy.

Please note that I am not affiliated with or sponsored by Lush, and I have not been asked to do this by anybody connected with the company. All products were purchased with my own money, and all opinions expressed are my own.

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The Liebster Award 2

Last year I was nominated for the Liebster Award, which was very surprising and flattering considering I was a relatively new blogger at the time. It’s a fun way of showing your fellow blogging friends that you appreciate and enjoy their work, by giving them valuable exposure and promotion. If you’re nominated, you can answer the questions set for you, and then nominate some other bloggers, asking them some questions of your own.

And this year I’ve been nominated for the second time, with huge thanks to Holly at Life Of A Blind Girl! Holly recently graduated from university, which is fantastic, so congratulations! I remember how wonderful that feeling is, seems a long time now since my own graduation. Anyway, Holly writes lots of wonderful posts about her experiences being visually impaired, as well as advocating and educating around sight loss and disability, and posting about other things she enjoys too. So do go and check her out, there’s a lot of great stuff to read there.

I’ve been meaning to write my response post for a while, and I’m sorry it’s taken so long. But here are my answers to Holly’s questions. Hope you enjoy. Thanks again Holly! 🙂

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Q&A – My Aniridia & Nystagmus

A few of my recent posts about my visual impairment have become very popular, which has been wonderful of course. In large part this is because the RNIB have very kindly shared them, which has enabled them to reach a huge audience.

The posts in question are Room 101 – My Visually Impaired Frustrations (which is also on the RNIB Connect website in edited form), my How I See video (which has had an overwhelming response on their Facebook page) and my Nystagmus Tag (which has had quite a few shares since RNIB’s retweet. Thank you to everyone who has liked, shared and commented on all of that, it’s very much appreciated.

As a result of those posts, various people have got in touch with questions relating to my conditions. I’ve answered them all either privately or in the comments area they were posted in. But I thought I’d summarise the questions and my responses here as well, in case others find it useful.

Thank you to Sam, Charlotte and Nadine for the questions in this post, I’m happy to help as best I can. And if any of you reading this want to ask me anything about my visual impairment, or anything else for that matter, then feel free to comment here or on my Twitter or Facebook feeds. I’m happy to do more Q&A posts like this if people wish.

So here are the questions and answers. I hope you find it interesting and useful. I’ve also made a video of my responses as well.

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Travelling Around London

In my previous post I wrote about how I plan unfamiliar journeys to make it easier for me – using apps like Citymapper and Google Maps to plan routes, and Street View to virtually walk the routes them. So now I want to take about my actual experience of travelling around in London.

I know that some people find it much harder to travel around London due to more severe visual impairments, other mobility issues, anxiety and confidence issues, and so on. And that’s all perfectly understandable. So this won’t be reflective of everyone’s experiences. It’s just my own account of how I’ve personally settled into it and how I got about things. Your experiences may differ significantly depending on your situation.

It’s also worth noting Transport For London’s Accessibility page as well, as that has lots of info on it that people might find useful if they’re travelling in the city.

So with that out of the way, let’s get on to how I find travelling around London. I’ve also made a video to go with both this and my previous post, so you might like to watch that as well.

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Planning My Journeys In London

I’ve been posting a lot about what I’ve been doing in London, but I haven’t talked much about how I actually get around such a big city. I did discuss it in a post I did last year when I visited London with a friend, and briefly when I visited Sight Village in 2016, before I actually lived here. But now I’ve been a resident here for a while, and as new followers have asked about it recently, now’s a good opportunity to revisit the topic in more detail. So I’m going to split this over a couple of posts, starting with how I plan my journeys before I actually do them. Then in my next post I’ll talk about what it’s like travelling around.

I’ve also made a video to go with these posts, which you may like to check out as well.

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Christmas Advert Reviews 2017

 

No sooner have the fireworks stopped than the Christmas promotions begin in earnest. Christmas lights switch-on ceremonies have been taking place this week, while all the shops are bringing out their big Christmas displays. And for me, this will be the first time I’ve been in London for the build-up to Christmas – as opposed to being here just for Christmas itself when I visited with the family as a child.

So this year I’ll have the chance to look around the city’s festive offerings properly, and I’m looking forward to that. Walking down places like Oxford Street to look at the shop windows and the Christmas lights will be wonderful in itself, as well as other places around the city if I get a chance. If anybody wants to recommend a particular part of London for me to check out the Christmassy delights, I’d love to hear about it.

Anyway, to help get us in the mood, we’re now being bombarded by all the Christmas adverts, with companies vying for our attention on the TV and, more predominantly these days, online. They all come out at the same time, and they always cause much debate, dividing people as to whether they’re any good or not.

So, to do something a bit different for this blog, I thought I’d give my personal thoughts on the ads I’ve looked at, 15 in all, before ranking them at the end. Everyone’s views on these are unique, of course, I’m not expecting you to agree with me. And as I’m not a young child or a parent, I’m not the target audience for some of them. But that doesn’t matter. Ultimately, if you like adverts that I don’t, or vice-versa, that’s absolutely fine. I just wanted to give my own reactions to them.

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Fireworks & Frankenstein, Sight Village & Socialising

Time for another little update on what I’ve been doing recently, as I was pretty busy at the beginning of this week, watching a fireworks display, attending another theatre show, going to a disability exhibition, and meeting other people with aniridia.

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Treats, Terror, Tea & Theatre

Time for another catch-up on what I’ve been doing lately, and with this past week including Halloween, it was only fitting that I did a couple more things to celebrate the occasion, following on from the Ghost Bus Tour I did the previous week. But I’ve also been to a couple of other things too that aren’t related to it. All in all, I’ve been entertained at a museum, the cinema and the theatre, and tried another dining experience that’s new to me. So I’ve had a nice bit of variety, and I hope you enjoy reading about it.

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Nystagmus Tag

Today, November 1st 2017, is Nystagmus Awareness Day (aka Wobbly Wednesday), set up by the Nystagmus Network here in the UK. Nystagmus is a condition where the eyes shake and move involuntarily all the time, which makes it harder to focus and concentrate on things. It can come as part of the package with other eye conditions or on its own, and it has different levels of severity in different people. So it’s a very varied condition. For a detailed explanation of how it affects me personally, check out my Living With Nystagmus post and video.

To mark the day, I’ve been tagged to answer some questions on nystagmus by Youtuber Jessica King (Jessylrk) – thank you Jessica! And if you have nystagmus too, then I tag you to do this as well. So here are my answers to the questions, and I hope you find them interesting. You can also watch a video of my responses as well.

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