Category: London

During my first few years in London I joined a few social groups – mainly those for people with visual impairment like the London Vision communities, as well as the non-disabled group Thinking Bob. And they all helped me to settle in, make friends, try new experiences and build my confidence.

However, I got rather pulled away from that kind of thing as I formed my own social circle, had a relationship and dealt with the impacts of lockdown, as well as having to focus more on changes to my career and home life over recent years. So I haven’t been an active member of a social group for quite a while, and those I mentioned above have long since closed.

I’ve continued meeting up with my friends of course, which is always wonderful, so I still have good social interaction. And I’m also happy going out and about by myself sometimes. But there are certain things I can’t or wouldn’t do on my own, plus I want to have more variety and meet new people.

So I’ve been looking to get into more social activities again. And while there are still one or two friendly groups out there for people with sight loss, there aren’t as many as there used to be, and their understandably limited range of activities don’t really grab me a lot of the time to be honest. On top of that, I really want to meet more non-disabled people anyway, as my sight is still good enough that I can do activities with them, even if I need to ask for a little bit of help now and again.

There was one particular group I had in mind in that regard – Spice Social – who I’ve been aware of for quite a while, so recently I decided to give them a try, now that I’m in the age range they market themselves to. It’s still early days of course, and things could easily change as time goes on for all sorts of reasons, but it’s going really well so far.

For clarity, this post isn’t an advert for them, as they haven’t asked me to do it and haven’t even been aware that I’m writing it. I just wanted to fill you in on what I’ve been doing lately, as I’ve attended several events with this group over the past couple of months that I’ve enjoyed, and I have more booked in the near future. So it made sense to dedicate a post to them, and then I’ll probably talk about any future events in my monthly Favourites posts as usual.