Blind

Another Video Nation entry and the associated letter he sent to the BBC. The content could be thought of as dark, but the insight into my dad is illuminating. As he mentions in his letter, his friends (and family) didn't see this side of him too often.

---

31 July 2000

Video Nation
Community & Disability Programmes
British Broadcasting Corporation
Room G509
White City
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS

Dear Chris & The Gang

re- BBC Online Proposals

Hope I find you all fit & fine and wonderful & well, and positively bursting out all over with all the joys of summer.  I am actually flying out to Corfu today, so I shall be returning in a fortnight pronouncing over and over in a bewildered daze ‘COR-bloody-FU’!*!  Yes.  Despite having been born on the island, I just can’t stand the heat!  Ouch.

Thanks for your recent letter regarding the resurrection of some of your shorts.  I’ll need bloody resurrecting when in my shorts in Cor-Phew, I can tell you!  Fine.  No objections to being screened.  Only trouble is, the one you mention, ‘Blind’, runs for well over 3 minutes, I think.

I haven’t seen the Online clip you mention, but no doubt one of my offspring will call it up for me.  I do have access to the internet at work, but usually PC screen readers clash with other sounds on the sound card.  I’ll try to get in when I get back.

If you want some accompanying text to my clip, here goes:


All people are made up of many components, just like a car.  Disability is only one small part in an immense and complex whole that goes into making up a person and his personality.

This clip shows a little part of me during a sleepless night when all the rest of creation seemed to be in their beds and I had the world to myself.  People that know me would not recognise me in this introspective mood.  They know me as jolly and affable.  Indeed, one of my closest friends, Eric, said ‘I could have watched a half hour programme because the short film revealed something about you that I was not aware of.  I would have loved to have heard you in that mood for longer’.

Blindness is a hindrance, yes.  But blindness is only one small part of me, the rest of me is entire and bursting at the seams.

Love
Spiro

I hope something of this nature will suffice.  Edit it as you wish by all means.

In a previous letter from your offices, you said that you would make arrangements to collect your camera.  However, the camera is still in my possession.  I find myself a bit of a celebrity with a reputation as a steeplejack since your several showings of my Greenhouse short.  Ha.

All the best of best wishes.  Hear from you soon.

God bless

Spiro Sueref