It was extremely pleasurable for me last Friday to coffee with a man as blind as I.
This has never happened before.
I have made it a practice to lunch and coffee only with well-sighted humans, people who steer me through such social occasions with a guiding hand, sympathetic placement of spillable items on the table, and of course excellent peripheral vision should a concrete block suddenly hurtle from the ceiling and flatten me to a crisp.
Readers might be well interested which Dunedin cafes have a tendency to drop concrete blocks on their patrons, but I don't think anything would be gained by identifying these life-threatening hellholes.
Besides, I have signed legal documents which make such revelations imprisonable.
There is a third category of friend beyond the sighted and the sightless, the ones with excellent sight who just abandon you completely halfway through the job.
On Thursday last week I was driven to the new Cancer Society charity store by the North Ground, former home to everything from an art-house cinema to the New Edinburgh Folk Club.
Now it's an op shop, packed with the kind of good stuff only op shops can muster.
Such as the flash little electronic gadget thing I found on a shelf, quite like an eftpos machine.
The grandchildren will love playing with this, I thought to myself, turning it over and over to discover the price.
No price.
Many op shop items have no price.
''How much is this, kindly woman?'' I inquired of a lady who was holding herself as if she was in charge.
''It is not for sale,'' she replied.
''It is our eftpos machine.''
A true sighted friend would have pulled me away from the counter before I laid my fat fingers on this thing and made a profound prat of myself.
I call this half-help.
Those out there keen to assist the virtually blind but not actually see the job through should read these preceding sentences very carefully, for they are only half-people; they are nothing more than an impediment in this heartless world we live in.
They need to take a long hard look at themselves forthwith.
So, last Friday I had a meeting at Nova with someone I had met briefly twice in the Southern Sinfonia rehearsal room.
We had agreed to debrief. I arrived monstrously early so I could hopefully spot him when he entered.
I doubted if I would recognise him, but sitting directly in front of the descending stairs, I was quite sure he would recognise me.
I quite often arrive up to an hour early, not only to facilitate sight, but in case they are Early People, and some people ARE that early, though some can be even longer late.
(Sorry, Elsa, I didn't mean to expose you publicly.)
Eventually, he arrived.
Yes, I recognised him.
I waved.
I waved again.
I was just about to jump up on the table and do a weather dance learned when teaching students in New Guinea about the Dunedin Sound in the smallest university I had ever seen, - I learned later it was a shoe store (these people will lie their bottoms off to attract academics) - when he wandered off in the opposite direction and sat down at a table so distant it was almost in the next building.
I resolved to walk over - a dangerous move; more than once I have climbed into the wrong car believing the people inside were my friends.
It is amazing how long a conversation can go before both parties realise they don't know each other.
I proffered my hand and he yelped apologetic recognition.
''Wasn't sure if it was you, I am nearly blind,'' I said.
''So am I!'' he cried.
What a brilliant chat we had. He asked me if I had registered with the Blind Foundation. No, I said, I went out there but couldn't read the small print on the form they gave me. Nearly-blind people make better jokes than most highly-paid comedians.
Us nearly-blind humans nearly see and understand so much. There should be a mandatory 30 of us in every parliament.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
