Don't put Terry in the corner
'I’m not disconnected - part of me might be - but I’m not'
Picture this: It is a warm morning and I’m at a public park at Mosgiel taking photos of a middle-aged couple very clearly in love. As I snap away she reads some of the graffiti etched into a picnic table, and he erupts in laughter.
I can’t repeat the graffiti, but I can show you the photo.
Terry Bartlett reacts to a particularly bawdy bit of writing on this Mosgiel park bench, which was read to him by his partner Sue Oliver.
Terry Bartlett woke-up early one morning to the sound of a door being smashed, and people screaming.
‘‘Do I react to this, or do I walk away?’’
That dispute in the neighbouring Kāinga Ora flat prompted the 51-year-old to look for new accommodation.
And he has found paradise, in one of the remotest parts of Otago.
Bartlett, who has been blind since birth, now lives in a rented house at Owaka Valley, about 16km from the South Otago township (pop: 300).
‘‘It is beautiful,’’ Bartlett said.
‘‘It is like being in another country, another world.
The smell of fresh grass, the air and the sheep grazing nearby was particularly evocative for Bartlett.
He grew-up on a South Otago farm, but from the age of five was sent to Homai school for the blind in Auckland where he was schooled for the next 10 years.
‘‘It is like returning to somewhere you never wanted to leave in the first place, but you knew you had to,’’ Bartlett said of his return to South Otago.
‘‘I don’t want people to think that I’m blind so I have to sit in the corner . . . I don’t want that.’’
Terry Bartlett and Sue Oliver.
Bartlett first met Sue Oliver, 59 about five years ago and ‘‘we just kind of gelled’’.
‘‘It kind of spiralled from there,’’ she said
She recalled him asking her to be his ‘pilot’ or sight guide, at a Toastmasters’ event, and being shocked when he touched her arm, after losing her husband Les months before.
‘‘It went from total panic to quite comfortable,’’ Oliver said of the pair, who will celebrate five years together in November.
The pair had been living in Bartlett’s Kāinga Ora flat in Mosgiel, but the incident next door resulted in them stepping away from public housing.
Their basic expenses were met via his supportive living payment, but as they were outside the Government housing agency it also meant Oliver could work and ‘‘we are not penalised’’.
The couple said moving to the Owaka Valley meant they also had a much larger house, which also came with land, including a productive vege garden.
‘‘Who is paying seven bucks for a cauliflower? ‘Not I,’ said the wolf,’’ Bartlett said.
‘‘In my young chauvinistic days I always thought I needed someone to drive, cook and read for me . . . I can do all the rest.’’
Terry Bartlett and Sue Oliver pictured this week in Mosgiel
He noted there were people in the farming community who had people with disabilities in their families, but treated them like people.
‘‘That is how I grew-up, I wasn’t put in a corner.’’
‘‘I’ve been blind all my life . . . people think disabled means disconnected, I’m not disconnected - part of me might be - but I’m not.’’
The only downside of living in a rural environment was that people were reluctant to lend him a chainsaw for chopping branches.
“I really want one.’’
And moving to Owaka Valley had been anything but isolating for Bartlett, who enjoyed amateur radio, and playing the drums.
‘‘But most importantly I’ve got Sue.’’
Thanks for sharing.
Last week I wrote a story about the death of an honesty box, particularly the theft of dairy products from Holy Cow dairy farm in Port Chalmers.
That led to a trio of thieves to contact the owner, and each write a letter of apology.
“If they goof up in the future, and I have lots of eyes and ears in the community ... we’ll find out,’’ owner Merrall MacNeille said.
Result!
It is not solving world peace (I’m looking at you Russia), but it feels like order to a small corner of the world has been restored.
My Dunedin Tweet of the Week is from Dr Stephen Clarke who produced this gem:
I’ve never read ‘Funky’ and ‘Dunedin’ in the same sentence. Incredible.
Here is a video worth checking out. I’d move here.
Loving this new track.
And remember if you have something you want checked out, please email me at hamish.mcneilly@stuff.co.nz.
Until next week, you stay safe out there.