Tracks of My Life with Mark Upton

Tracks of My Life is a show on RNIB Connect Radio presented and produced by Toby Davey where he invites a guest to take us on a journey through their life, sharing the tracks that mark important moments which bring back memories to them.

Their chosen tracks of their life might include the first track they can remember hearing, the first track they bought, a number of tracks that mark moments in their life and the final track, a track that they would like to pass on which might give people hope for the future.

In this trimmed down podcast version of Tracks of My Life Toby is joined by Mark Upton the first blind Chief Executive of OxEyes, the local sight loss charity supporting blind and partially sighted people in Oxfordshire.

We will start Mark’s Tracks of My Life journey at the age of 14 with a rock album that featured many great guitar solos which could be described as the best air guitar album in the world and one that kick started his love of rock and heavy music. This album also started his discovery of, as he says, real music for him too with a certain Queen track that was featured famously in that classic 80s film Wayne's World.

We then move to GCSE exam time for Mark and school days that were perhaps not the best for him with a track that takes him back to those spring days when he knew school was almost over and that sense of freedom which was just a couple of months away. Although with maybe a bit of an unknown future ahead for Mark.

Then to college for Mark which he says were his lost years in a way doing a practical course in wood work that probably was not the best choice thinking about a future career but a choice that his parents fully supported him in. Although Mark had a small group of good friends at college, in some ways he felt that he did not really fit in. College was very different to school and there was again that sense of freedom during this time marked by another heavy rock track from an album that Mark used to listen to and get lost in on the train journey in and out to college.

We then come to a change in Mark’s musical tastes which was influenced by one of his house mates when he was living in Chichester working in retail for a short period of time before starting on his career in the sight loss sector. One day by chance Mark came across a job at 4Sight (formally West Sussex Association for the Blind) when browsing the internet and joined 4Sight as an Assistant Out Reach Worker. A job that Mark says he could be good at, he could enjoy and one where he felt he was able to give something back to other visually impaired people and an amazing start to his career in the sight loss sector.

Before we come to Mark’s final track, we have one for his wife Erika who he met through a dating site when he moved to Oxford to join OxEyes and a track for their son who arrived in to the world in the autumn of 2020 from one of Mark's favourite films, 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' which mark used to sing to him when he was in the womb and as a baby too.

You can catch the hour-long version of Tracks of My Life with Toby’s guest’s music tracks in full by tuning in to RNIB Connect Radio every Tuesday at 7pm, repeated on Thursday at 1pm and Sunday at 8pm.


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