When Tom Skelton was losing his sight, someone actually told him he might find it easier to get to sleep at night. Things doctors say, eh?!
‘2020 Visions (What If I Hadn’t Gone Blind?)’ is an utterly endearing performance by a man inviting us into his vulnerability. It is a delight to behold.
In between heckling himself, (how very Aussie for a British ex-pat) Tom shares with us his worries and joys: the iCloud, the month he had between his diagnosis and having to tell his parents who gave him the genes that incurred it, and learning how to be independent one cup of coffee at a time.
Tom tells candidly how blindness is often compared with stupidity or clumsiness, but it’s actually about capable strategies.
“I am involved in this conspiracy too,” he says. “I want to be ‘a normal’.”
We giggle with him but the heart strings are really being pulled here, and our own inadequacies challenged.
Consider what happens when someone doesn’t ‘look’ like a blind person, "without the usual accoutrements of a dog, cane or a piano" (Tom's words), and they have to announce it – or decide whether to.
Would we give any people concessions of gentleness if they didn’t disclose?
“Sometimes it feels safer with my eyes closed.”
This Luddite-at-heart (he only got a smart phone last year) jests at the inadequacy of Tinder, and how amusing it would be for everybody if the app had audio descriptions. Imagine those photos explained out loud!
It’s delightful to join with Tom in the joy of discovering a merger of Irish and Italian flavours that is his beautiful girlfriend (and sound tech!) Ellie, who made the move with him to Australia from the UK.
Tom concedes that what he’s actually got now, in 2020, he probably wouldn’t swap for the vision he had ten years ago.
★★★★☆ 1/2.
