An amazing post from Phil - one of our sponsors

If you want to know what Christmas is all about, this is it.

Purely from a selfish point of view, in being terrified of going blind or deaf, or, god forbid, both, I started supporting the RNIB, the BDA and Sense. But through my involvement with these, I got to hear about one particular guy who was spending most of his spare time with helping people who are both deaf and blind. Can you even begin to understand what that's like? To be both deaf AND blind. I can't. :(

I decided to start helping by sending him money whenever I could to help him in his work. Some months later, the situation arose where it was possible to meet this great man and his lovely wife, and see some of the work that they were doing.

I was completely blown away. You wouldn't think that a deafblind person could have any sort of life. But they can. IF they are given the right help. Which is where JJ and Claire come in.

In this video, we have bought an Action Man (the rare black one!) for Jimmy who is deafblind and has been since an early age. He used to have this particular toy but hasn't seen or smelt it (this is what deafblind people do) in over 30 years.

Extreme Clowning (the name of JJ's association) got special permission from a certain Christmas Panto earlier this month, to go backstage and meet the REAL Santa Claus, elves, fairies, and orchestrate a situation where Santa gave Jimmy the one present that he wanted more than anything else in the world. And by that, please understand that a lot of deafblind people have been so sheltered from the world that they are basically still children at heart. JJ told me that Jimmy didn't even know until recently that Elvis Presley had died!!! :(

Anyway, enough talking from me, here is the video. It's 14 minutes long but if you can't stand that long the real good stuff is between 4 and 10 minutes. Hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did being part of it. :)

If you agree with me that these people are doing fantastic work in helping deafblind people, please LIKE their Extreme Clowning Facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/ExtremeClowning?fref=ts

Thanks :)