‘Oooh! Careful!’ I said as I grabbed the shopping cart.

‘I didn’t see that! It wasn’t there last time.’ Said grandma, with a chuckle.

I smiled and turned back to the T-shirt I was looking at, it was pink and had ‘libre comme l’air’ (‘Free as a bird’ in English) in black letters on the front. I was thinking of buying it for the irony alone. While I was thinking if it was worth the £20, I had let go of the shopping cart, grandma had kept walking with it and bumped into the mannequin next to me. She likes to push the cart and I walk in front of it guiding where we’re going – the cart acts as a walker for grandma and I’m her eyes. Her eyesight has significantly deteriorated over the last 3 years so our little shopping cart routine is a must to ensure M&S’s mannequins and displays remain intact.

Grandma is, for all intent and purposes, as blind as a 98-year-old bat. Macular degeneration has slowly robbed her of her sight and she is understandably finding it tough to come to terms with. I often find her crying in the living room on days she has tired to go through her bank statement on her own. Her magnifying glass and receipts strewn all over the table, her head in her hands. I rush in to cheer her up and help her go through it even if I have a full inbox and I really don’t have time to help her confirm that she did in fact spend £5.50 at the co-op.

We have a semi-regular appointment at the eye clinic to monitor her declining eyesight and very rarely (it has happened twice in 3 years) we see the low vision specialist. I find these appointments particularly heartbreaking as grandma pleads with them for stronger glasses ‘so I can just read’ . The answer is always the same, we’ve done all we can and no pair of glasses will help. This is where my carer instincts kick in and push the specialist with questions on what else we could do. After 40 minutes, we came out with 2 stronger magnifying glasses and some special glasses for TV watching. Grandmas was so delighted, she forgot where she was going and nearly walked into the lift door.

The TV glasses make grandma look like an alien with massive eyes, funny for me and she says she can see what’s happening a little better- a win all round. I also ordered her a large print book from her favourite crime fiction author to see if the new extra strength magnifying glass would work. When the book arrived, grandma’s excitement was palpable. I set her up at the dining room table with a makeshift stand for the book to rest on, shone the special bright light lamp she never uses on the first page and steadied grandma’s hand to hover with the magnifying glass over the title.

‘What can you see?’ I asked, praying she could read the large print.

‘This…is…the… night…they…come…for…you!‘ She read, haltingly.

‘Excellent!‘ I said ‘Right, let’s start the first chapter.’

I turned the page and positioned grandma’s hand over the beginning of the first paragraph. After a few seconds of her eyes adjusting, she very slowly began to read the sentence. I had time to make a cup of coffee listening to her slowly read the words aloud of the first paragraph. Smiling to myself as this was the first time she had read something since 2020. She had to stop after the first page because her eyes hurt, but we both felt it was a success and that the book will last her till Christmas; giving me plenty of time to hunt for another one.