"What's that man doing?" seems to me a perfectly reasonable question for a young kiddie to ask when it sees me in the street.

After all, what am I doing? Holding a long, long white metal rod in front of me, waving it from side to side and tapping it on the ground. What must the kiddie think?

So my heart sinks when I heard the child being "shushed". It may be that the adult shusher is trying to spare my feelings by not talking about me in my hearing.

If so, I genuinely thank you for your consideration. But what's the child, who also genuinely really does want to know what I'm doing, going to think or feel? That it has said something wrong? That there may, indeed, be danger at hand? Who knows what such strange behaviour might not mean?

What, for instance, was the child I heard growling "blind man", in a combined tone of aggression and revulsion, thinking or feeling? Or what made another kiddie call out the same words and run indoors, slamming the door behind it?

Of course it is far too simplistic to suggest that how such kiddies' questions are handled will determine how children grow up relating to blind people in general.

Publishing and broadcasting will present them with a whole range of images - from the pitiful to the downright evil, to the super-heroic. And they may even meet a real blind person or two.

That said, however, I know I feel much more comfortable when I hear in answer to such questions that it's because I'm blind. I can't see and I'm using the stick to help me find my way. That's enough and usually all there is time for. So I attempt a smile to show I'm not at all offended and to say, "That's right," to the kiddie. A small, but important public relations job well done. Thank you.

But how does all that waving and tapping help me find my way?

Many adults simply many not know. Or their own growing up may have left them uncomfortable in the presence of blind people.

So let me do my bit here to help in answering the question "What is that man doing?"

There is, actually, method to all that waving - and it takes training! If you watch you'll see (or should) that when my left foot is forward, the stick is over to my right and vice versa. That means the stick should always be one step ahead of me, making contact with kerbs, posts and most (but by no means all) obstacles before I do.

As I've hinted there is a great deal more to it than that, but that's the basis of the technique.

Even though nowadays it's the most commonly taught mobility technique for blind people, it is still just a technique to help. It doesn't find our way for us. That's done by a combination of listening hard to the heard world, waving a stick about (or maybe following a dog) and REMEMBERING.

But explain to a kiddie as clearly and calmly as you might, it's still possible to be totally nonplussed by the response, as I was recently when such an explanation was met with: "Does that mean he's going to kill me?"