Under ten euros, and I got my mornings back

Stargardt took my central vision between twenty-two and twenty-five. I still see the edges of the world, just not the middle of it, which is a difficult thing to explain to strangers. Running went first. I had run cross country at school, and afterwards I walked, on three routes I knew by heart, counting lamp posts.

My friend Ruth offered to guide me. We tried holding hands, which lasts about a kilometre before both palms are wet and you are gripping instead of running. Then we tried a rolled up sock between us, which is exactly as stupid as it sounds and came apart on a downhill.

The tether is a loop of soft webbing, about fifty centimetres, and you each hold an end. There is nothing else to it. What it does is turn two people into one moving thing. Every correction arrives through the loop before either of us has to speak. Ruth lifts her hand a few centimetres and I know a kerb is coming. I feel her stride shorten before she has time to say the word.

We go out three mornings a week along the Aire, and we did the Leeds ten kilometre in April in fifty-eight minutes, which I am still smug about. It goes in the wash with the rest of the kit, which in July matters more than you would think.

The one thing I would say to anybody buying one: get two. Ruth left ours in her boot before a race last month and we had to borrow one off a club we had never met. They were very kind about it. I would rather not do that again.