Friday, 6 February 2015

A sight for sore eyes, pensions and reading



6 February

For some time now my eyes have been causing me some worry. They were extremely blood shot and then late last year I noticed the pigment in my pupils was being a light greyish shade. Last night I needed a wee and as I washed my hands after, I looked in the mirror and was surprised to see that my eyes were not as blood shot as they used to be. Not only that, the loss of pigment seems to have reduced too. Of course I’m not complaining about it at all. I’m just pleased to see a positive change.

There are lot of moans about the level of the retirement pension these days. This morning I had two letters from DWP about my pension credit and my normal pension. I wish I could understand it properly at times you know. I’m not going to mention total amounts other than to say that we are on a much lower rate than the current benefit maximum, but we can live very comfortably on what we get right now. However, if we had to pay rent and council tax out of it, it would an entirely different story. Our rent and council tax would leave us with around £40 for the week. As it is though, if others are on the same or similar amount to us, then I don’t understand why they can’t live on it.  

One of the Facebook groups I follow is called Reading Addicts, and it’s a pretty good read on its own. Every so often they ask questions like, ‘What book would give a non-reading to try to spark their own reading addiction?’ Top of the list was the Parry Hotter series of course. I can understand that really; they are fairly easy reads, even the later ones. But some followers put Lord of the Rings on top. Oh dear … Two nights ago I started reading The Twin Towers  and I’m finding it as hard going as the first one, Fellowship of the Ring. I read all of 25 pages in two hours last before I settled. I would normally manage that one hour. So why is it so hard I wonder?

Dyslexia may be behind a lot of it. For some people the size of the font could be a problem. Other have problems with the type of font. The colour of the font and the colour of the page causes problems too. Perhaps it is dyslexia that so many people don’t read in the first place. I attended a dyslexia awareness day in the OU regional centre at Harbourne, Birmingham one day, and a very interesting day it was too. It has been calculated that up to 20% of the UK population are dyslexic, a figure that goes up to 80% for the prison population. There doesn’t seem to be a problem as to male or females who have the disorder either.

The thing is though, no matter what book you might give someone to try to encourage them, the chances are that it won’t work for dyslexics with a book straight of the shelves. After a number of tests I found that a pair of reading specs with a mid-yellow tint helped me to read a lot better. Sadly I couldn’t afford to go back on a regular basis to that option for new specs when I needed them. I later found out that when I printed something for proof reading, a chocolate brown size 12 font of cream paper was better for me than plain black on white. Do you see what I mean?

And now to find a photo … 

A fire hydrant in Mallorca, see, I'll shoot anything.

Today’s funny is a short one, a bumper sticker …
 
I SOUPORT PUBLIK EDEKASION.

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