Light Relief

I mentioned before that travelling around on wheels at night (or even in the daylight, which we're getting to be a bit short of now, of course) can be a bit scary when you either have to take to the road or cross one.

Bloody boy racers.

And then, of course, there are the pedestrian lights, which also seem nearly always timed for boy racers. Or fit sprinters, anyway. It can be unnerving even if you're crossing slowly on crutches; some drivers seem to think they're F1 racers, and somehow, if they're not shooting forward the second the lights change they'll miss out on the fizzy stuff.

And I've discovered being in a wheelchair can be worse. I've become used to pedestrians not seeing me in a wheelchair. Especially all those busily chattering on their mobiles, focus fixed somewhere dead ahead at normal chin height. Which means they simply don't seem to be able to see someone sitting down,  even when they're right in front of them. I've become quite adept lately at making crash stops to avoid breaking their ankles with my footrests.

But any other kind of crash I've become nervous about. There's so much in the way of reconstructing pavements going on in London now you simply have to take to the road instead of the pavement often. And if you're invisible to half the pedestrian world when you're in a wheelchair, the same is even more true of motorists.

So, since I'm intending to be out and about at night—I don't see why I should be restricted to daylight just to make myself more visible—I've been adding lights to my wheelchair, so it now looks like a Christmas tree.

Red bicycle rear lights; bright LED bike front lights. The latter a new idea, since I'd become very twitchy about not being seen side-on crossing streets and I thought bicycle reflectors on the wheels might not really be bright enough. I found some that can be seen from the side, as well as the front. Cheap, too; a quid each from Poundland.

And a fancy touch, just for fun. Although I got them because I did want to be visible from the side when crossing roads. A thin red (I wanted orange, but they sent red) optical fibre tube that flashes and I've fixed under the armrests and around the side panels.

Overkill, maybe. A bit flashy even, you might say. But nobody will be able to say they didn't see me coming. Or going.

Next step, of course, should be sponsored neon advertising on the backpack fixed to the back of my seat. Any offers, Heineken?

Transports of Delight . . .Part III

That trip to the Barbican Centre . . .was a bit of a disaster. Again.

We abandoned the Tube after the last attempt, and went for the bus instead. The bus from Paddington towards the Barbican is run, it would appear, by Stagecoach. 'Nuff said. Well, no, I've quite a bit to say about them . . .

As comedy is all about timing, voyaging in a wheelchair is about planning. As comedians can never have enough jokes, if you're taking a trip on public transport, you can never have enough maps.

We thought we'd recognise the nearest stop . . .We didn't. Somehow, we ended up going round in circles. Literally. Around Finsbury Square. Twice. Passers-by were helpful . . .sort of. A young couple, though, suggested heading for Liverpool Street station. Been there, done that. Twice as far away from the Barbican as we thought we were. and no, you can't get a wheelchair on the Tube from Liverpool Street to Barbican Station as they suggested, though admittedly they couldn't really be expected to know that.

Another directed us to Moorgate station; which we found, eventually. But then, confused by roadworks and dug-up pavements, which of course, neither an A-Z nor Google Maps on a smartphone had any knowledge of, took a wrong turning and ended up at Finsbury Square. Again.

Still, we did make it eventually.

But the way back . . .I'm going to abandon the 205 route. The buses are old . . .obviously recycled from somewhere near a scrapheap. My spine felt every damn jolt. And we had to catch two buses; one abandoned its struggle for life somewhere around Baker Street. And the ramp had stopped functioning.

At least the driver was ready to help, and came round to lift the wheelchair off; he was actually ready to lift me off in it as well, but I can at least stand and walk a bit, so I managed to save him from the kind of spinal injury that put me in a wheelchair in the first place . . .

And the second's wheelchair space was obviously an afterthought. I've never seen a bus quite like it: the exit door and ramp were almost next to the front door, and the wheelchair space a metre away from it. Not an easy manoeuvre to get into.  Or out of. People had to get out of their seats and stand so I could get in.

Stagecoach, eh? Wild horses are not going to get me onto one of their damn buses again.

Perchance to Sleep

Ben Mattlin, in the New York Times, on an 'assisted suicide' proposal in Massachusetts:

"I learned how easy it is to be perceived as someone whose quality of life is untenable, even or perhaps especially by doctors. Indeed, I hear it from them all the time — “How have you survived so long? Wow, you must put up with a lot!” — even during routine office visits, when all I’ve asked for is an antibiotic for a sinus infection. Strangers don’t treat me this way, but doctors feel entitled to render judgments and voice their opinions. To them, I suppose, I must represent a failure of their profession, which is shortsighted. I am more than my diagnosis and my prognosis.

"This is but one of many invisible forces of coercion. Others include that certain look of exhaustion in a loved one’s eyes, or the way nurses and friends sigh in your presence while you’re zoned out in a hospital bed. All these can cast a dangerous cloud of depression upon even the most cheery of optimists, a situation clinicians might misread since, to them, it seems perfectly rational.

"And in a sense, it is rational, given the dearth of alternatives. If nobody wants you at the party, why should you stay? Advocates of Death With Dignity laws who say that patients themselves should decide whether to live or die are fantasizing. Who chooses suicide in a vacuum? We are inexorably affected by our immediate environment. The deck is stacked."

. . . .

"To be sure, there are noble intentions behind the “assisted death” proposals, but I can’t help wondering why we’re in such a hurry to ensure the right to die before we’ve done all we can to ensure that those of us with severe, untreatable, life-threatening conditions are given the same open-hearted welcome, the same open-minded respect and the same open-ended opportunities due everyone else."

I'm on record as being generally supportive of one's right to choose when to jump off this mortal coil. Not that I myself am yet in the sort of situation where I might want to take it. But Mattlin puts his finger directly on the reasons for the reservations I have about it too. I would want to choose for my own reasons.

Of course, that's selfish, in a way. But I do not want to find the society around me forcing me into that choice, as, in the UK, government policies increasingly may. To make your own choice as to whether or not you live or die should depend on the society around you—whether it's friends, relatives, or the broader society of local or national government—having done all it can for you.

So that your own decision is one that is in fact entirely your own.

But that is not the way I see things going. Mattlin is absolutely right in wondering why societies often seem to be keener on ridding themselves of 'useless mouths' in as brutal and coercive a fashion as the commanders of besieged towns in the 15th and 16th centuries did, instead of giving them the wherewithal to live.

Paving the Way

A bit further along my street here in London, there is a a paved pedestrian square outside a church. Correction. There was a paved square there until a couple of weeks ago.

Since then it's been a building site. But I'm sure it will be quite an attractive little square again when it's finished.

It's presented a problem, though. Or rather a small, but irritating series of problems. Just after they'd put all the fencing around it, I went off, on the new wheels, to friends' for dinner. Which was when I realised that whoever was thoughtful enough to put up the big notices that said 'Sorry for the Inconvenience' hadn't quite grasped how much more inconvenient they'd made it for people on wheels.

Instead of zipping along over the nice flat mini-piazza, I had to take to the pavement. That shouldn't normally be a problem, but it has a narrow cycle lane alongside it, and as I got to the far end, bowling along merrily, I suddenly realised that there was a bollard in the middle of it that I hadn't noticed before.

Of course, that's there, I suppose, to deter cyclists from using the pavement as a pedestrian bowling-down alley. But the encroaching metal fence surrounding the new paving work meant it was a bit of a squeeze for a wheelchair. A bit fiddly getting through the space it was. Bit like what those Virgin cable vans have on the side: "back a bit, forward a bit, back a bit", but followed by "damnation, that got my knuckles', which is the bit they don't have advertising video on demand . . .Who ever skinned their knuckles on a remote control, after all?

And then, of course, having had to take the opposite side of the road to the one I usually do, came to a dead stop crossing a road, because there was no dropped kerb to get me up onto the pavement again. As I was contemplating taking to the road and going the long way round, fortunately someone offered to give me a shove up. Success.

With that in mind, I took the long way round on the way back. But this morning, I found that that is now barred to me too. The pavement and part of the street there is closed off, and being dug up, and the workers are, of course, very sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, once again, they've made it a little more than just 'inconvenient', because as I know all too well, if I use the pavement on the opposite side of the street I have to take to the road for about 200 metres, because the dropped kerbs on that side are simply too steep for me to get a wheelchair up them on my own . . .And the road is rough; it takes twice the effort.

Oh, well, never mind. I do have a third alternative route to my friends'. It only makes it three times as far to go. I suppose I should be grateful, really. I've been thinking that I really need to build up my biceps, and since I can't go in for weightlifting or anything like that, a few weeks of wheeling myself round the long way should probably do for me what a daily workout in the gym for a couple of months would do for anybody else.

I do hope the new 'piazza' at least is going to be worth the hassle. I hope it'll be very pretty. I hope it's going to be very smooth, as well. In compensation for the 'inconvenience' I think I deserve at least that.

A Rose by Any Other Name . . .

. . . would still have a nasty smell when it rots.

I'm referring, of course, to the revelation that a paraplegic blogger suffering from cerebral palsy has turned out to be a fake. Not only a fake disabled person, but what appears to be much, much worse, a fake celebrity.

The consequence is that the blog the faker wrote has been deleted. As have his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Not because, one imagines, they were fiction. After all, half the blogs, half the 'life stories' on Blogspot and half the accounts on Facebook are probably pure fiction.

No. They're gone; people cannot now look at them to see for themselves what might give a clue to seeing the difference between a fiction and reality. Gone, deleted, because, it would appear, it might embarrass a lot of media in the US who set him up as a classic 'sentimental celebrity'; and rounded up their pet 'real' celebrities, like Kim Kardashian, to give the thing more 'celebrity authenticity'.

Yes, I'm well aware that's an oxymoron.

And my prime exhibit here, of course, is HuffPo, which I suspect gushed cloyingly over a lot of what one might justifiably suspect are this guy's sentimental platitudes, and has deleted everything and now only retains the report of his exposure.

But the anger is being orchestrated against the faker; not against the people who let themselves be taken in. And it could be, as one commenter has pointed out, mean open season for attacks on those of us who are really disabled, and really write about it. Even if we are not 'celebritised' as this 'David Rose' was, or do not want to be.

In the interests of truth, beauty and so on, and before Google decides to make a habit of closing down pseudonymous disabled people's blogs without notice, I suppose I shall have to declare that I am not actually a disabled squirrel. I am a human being. I am a disabled human being.

But can't you tell that anyway?

An Incidence of the Dog not Barking in the Night Time

Or "The Policeman who Mistook a Cane for a Sword". 

I have just been reading about the blind man tasered by police because they mistook his cane for a Sammurai sword. And I have, of course, been saddened by those who have commented who appear to imagine this could be a natural mistake.

Or that after all, like the 'bad people have wedding parties too' excuse for not quite being sure as to the innocence of people being blown up by a drone missile,  even that, of course, who knows, a blind man with a white cane might have been a criminal who might have been carrying a Samurai sword in his other hand. Or even that the victim may have been dressed to look like someone who might have been wielding a Samurai sword. 

And that it is not a problem of attitude. Or, as one commenter wrote, of someone who saw someone he could bully and thought he'd get away with it.

So I'd like to tell a little story. But it happened in the years 'BT'. (Before Tasers.) Or, perhaps, the ending might have been very different.

Once upon a time (all the right kind of stories begin like this, after all) there was a young man who was lame and walked with a nice walking stick. On the way home from a club, dressed in a posh trench coat because it was raining heavily, he slipped stepping off a kerb and fell flat onto the road.

Just as he was trying to get up (which was proving rather difficult because he couldn't see his stick which he needed as a lever, cf basic Archimedes) a police car turned the corner and the driver got out.

He stood over the young man (whose trench coat, a Burberry, in fact, was now badly stained and marked, along with his Farah trousers) and said: "If you're not away from here in five minutes, when I drive round here again, I'm going to arrest you for being drunk and disorderly." And got into his car and drove round the young man, leaving him on his hands and knees crying with pain.

(This was somewhat surprising to the young man, as only a couple of weeks before, he'd lost his balance the same way in a supermarket and none of the people, including one of the store security men, who came to help him up again, thought of accusing him either of being drunk, or of being disorderly.)

As luck would have it, the young man, finding his stick on the pavement just an arm's reach away, managed to hop to a railing along the pavement, and, even more luckily, given the state his coat and trousers were in, successfully hailed a cab. As the cab drew away from the kerb, it was followed by a police car . . .

All the way home. And stayed with the driver watching from the street corner while the young man, paid the cab driver, limped the couple of metres to his door with his walking stick, and opened it without even fumbling the keys once. 

The young man, of course, was me. And that incident is why, in London, I stopped using a walking stick and began using a crutch if I was going out in the evening, even though, then, it wasn't strictly necessary. In the hope that if that happened again, the fact I was disabled might be just a little more obvious even to the thickest fucking bully of a bloody cop.

And obviously, there is no happy end to this story. Still. After many years.


But these days, I'm as likely to be found wearing jeans, a hoody and trainers as a trench coat  and designer trousers. And as often, for the time being, anyway, in a wheelchair as on my crutches. Can anyone tell me if an aluminium crutch, or an aluminium wheelchair,  is a good conductor of 50,000 Volts to earth?

Not that I'm planning on having a night out in Chorley, but it would be reassuring. 

Transports of Delight (Part II)

. . .In a series, I fear, that looks destined to need the addition "of Many". . .

The trip to the Barbican was a disaster.

Having been a bit puzzled as to why the TfL website told me I could get a lift at Paddington to the Tube platforms and then to 'accessible" Liverpool Street, not recalling where there was a lift, and the map showing an entrance to Paddington some distance from where I thought it was, I decided to phone TfL.

About ten minutes in, it suddenly became clear that the woman on the other end was simply looking at exactly the same 'Step Free Access' tube map I had on my screen; and had used the same TfL Journey Planner I had, and was becoming just as confused as I was.

It wasn't I thought, terribly helpful either, that though I'd prefaced my request by saying I needed to know because I would be using a wheelchair, that she offered me an alternative with an escalator.

I've never tried to get a wheelchair up or down any escalator. (At least not with me in it.) They are not really designed for it. We are not talking Mini Coopers bouncing up and down flights of stone steps in Italy here. Though I admit it could be potentially quite exciting for the other travellers to watch.

Eventually, she said she would phone the station supervisor. She relayed what he told her to me; that was that yes, there was a lift from the 'Suburban Entrance' (though neither I nor she, who should really have asked) was terribly clear as to which one that was. But to platforms that meant I would have to change at Edgware Road, which usually means climbing flights of stairs between platforms. Mini-Cooper in Italy time again.

By this time I was beginning to think it would be a lot easier and quicker to plan a bank robbery, the get-away route and nick half-a-dozen Mini-Coopers into the bargain.

Time getting on, and getting far too short now to risk the bus, I and my helper decided to risk the quickest way we knew and the hell with it, confident, we thought, that at least once we got to "accessible" Liverpool Street it would at least be plain wheeling from there on.

Wrong again. We started with a bus to Queensway. Well, that's not quite right. Since it appeared that the bus that would get us closest to Queensway was running, not every five minutes or so but more like every fifty, we got one that meant a longer trek to it. That, by the way, convinced me of my urgent need for either one of those huge rubber horns you see on vintage cars, or, as a friend suggested over the weekend, one of those battery-operated foghorns they make for yachtsmen. But that's another story.

Queensway, we recalled, had a lift. What neither of us recalled was if there were steps, or how many, there might be to the platform after it. Of course, there were two steps up from the pavement to get to booking hall. "Why no ramp?" asked my pusher. Why indeed? Converting two shallow steps (which meant I had to get out of my wheelchair and lever myself up them with my crutches and a nice polished brass handrail, is hardly a major engineering or architectural feat.

However, as I approached, the guy at the wide ticket barrier did warn me there were "a few steps" down to the platform. Here, of course, we hit the problem of defining a "disabled quantity" as opposed to a "non-disabled quantity". To me, as I and my helper faced them, it was not "a few", but "a lot'; in fact, very close to "too many".

Well, I managed to crawl my way down them, while a helpful passenger aided my companion to lug the wheelchair down them. The same when the train arrived, when we realised to our dismay that the height of the train above the platform meant we would have to do the same. Score three now for helpful fellow travellers. One of whom helped me while another helped get the wheels on board.

Of course, this was now getting perilously close to the beginning of rush hour. So we will pass over those people who glowered a bit as they hit their ankles against the footrests of my wheelchair, parked at the end of the carriage as out of their way as I could manage. It is always a mystery to me, how so many people so consistently manage not to see not just the person in it, but the wheelchair itself as well. It doesn't seem to happen to small children and buggies. Or even travelling cats in cat baskets. As the crowds increased, I folded the footrests in and bore with fortitude all the people who trod on my feet instead. Fortunately, I don't feel a lot in my feet, so that's not really a problem in a way.

Well, it has been today, as I discover they are both rather swollen and one is bruised. . .Quite apart from what it did to my nicely polished shoes.

I spent most of the journey watching each platform with increasing dismay, as I mentally measured the height and realised it was not possible to get a wheelchair off the train without a ramp at any of them. "But," I reassured myself, "Liverpool Street must be different, it's accessible." It wasn't. Score five, now, for helpful passengers.

And score another (in its way) for a helpful Tube employee on the platform, who told us the only way to get to a lift from there was up an escalator. Repeat performance of earlier. At least the platform supervisor did give us directions to the lift that would take us up to the main station and street level. Or, stuck in a corner, behind a staircase, and small, we'd never have found it.

And so to the bus that would, finally, get us within some sort of striking distance of the Barbican that wouldn't sprain my wrists getting to it. The easy bit, we thought, at last.

There was a fifteen minute wait for the bus. A friendly woman (plus one) said, though, that we were only 'ten minutes' ' walk away. Glancing at the wheelchair, but still talking to my helper (so that evens out the score, minus one for that) she amended that to 'fifteen minutes'. "Ah," my aide and I thought simultaneously, "We're in amongst the quantum theories of 'disabled v. non-disabled mathematics' again. Could be twenty or thirty."

So we decided to wait for the bus. Just as well, because we soon found out there were roadworks all along the route, pavements narrowed and crowded, and crossings blocked with barriers, probably ramps on and off them inaccessible meaning detours everywhere. "Probably a good thirty minutes of infuriating hassle at least," was what the looks we gave each other said.

But, no, getting the bus still wasn't the 'easy bit'. The bus we wanted draws up alongside a narrow pavement. Which is low, too. The bus ramp failed to hit the curb three times before the driver cottoned on to the fact the bus was too far away, and I couldn't get a wheelchair off the kerb and onto the ramp. When she did, it was, since the kerb was very low, almost too steep for my 'pusher' and utterly impossible if I'd been on my own. Score, now, seven for helpful passengers.

We'll add plus two for the Barbican front-of-house boys who looked after my wheelchair for the concert and brought it right up to the door for me afterwards. And another for the one who told me how to lock the (splendid!) electric sliding door of the disabled people's loo.

We got two buses back (after we'd discovered that apparently the bus that took us from Liverpool Street to the Barbican takes a different route back) seeing, by luck, one passing  that went to Paddington, albeit it looked as though it was heading in the wrong direction. And another bus home from Paddington station.

Oh, yes. Score one for the helpful passenger who shifted a shopping trolley so I could get my wheelchair against the backrest for the journey. Minus one for the one who owned it and then came to complain to my helper (not me, so minus one more!) that we'd moved it. Though if I'd been in a bad temper instead of taking all this stoically, she could easily have made that a minus twelve for the night.

It doesn't take much. Just one can ruin your day. I haven't really included the first bus driver, you may have noticed; I suddenly got superstitious abut where that would take the count.

Next time, it's the bus. And thank goodness that the 'Paralympics Effect' is still working. No-one who helped had to be asked; everyone offered before there was even time to think of asking; and everyone who did smiled and waved away our thanks. Which goes a very long way as to explaining why the final 'score' of the night wasn't a minus. Even using 'disabled quantum maths' calculations.

How Long, O Lord, How Long?

I wrote, a while back, to respond to someone who commented that he couldn't see why disabled people often talked about the way we are restricted when he (someone who was non-disabled) thought we had as much 'freedom' and 'choice' as anyone else.

I said that he clearly didn't understand how difficult actually achieving the same 'freedom' and the same 'choices' was. It's something I (having been non-disabled) have had to come to terms with, and it's a radical difference.

As you know, I'm going to a concert at the Barbican on Wednesday. I've spent the last few days in preparation. I've been doing as little physically as I can get away with. I can't afford to stress my spine so that I will be either in too much pain to enjoy it, or to sit in my wheelchair to get to it. I ran out of sugar last night; and though there is a corner shop next door, I'm doing without. Why?

It's not that I have a sudden urge to lose weight. Rather the opposite, in fact, my GP has told me I have to gain some. It's because I dare not take the risk of losing my balance and falling down the steps to the front door, or tripping over the step into the shop. If I were to do either, then the probability is that I'll be bedridden until days after the concert.

Now, you (assuming you are non-disabled) have several choices. You may choose to the shop to buy more sugar; you may choose not to be bothered and do without sugar in your tea until tomorrow. I don't, if I want to be sure of getting to my concert on Wednesday, have any choice at all.

Now, a friend was going to see Timon of Athens tonight. She asked me this afternoon, if I'd like to go on the probability of there still being some tickets available. But I spent most of the last night in pain, and most of it and this morning napping rather than sleeping. I'm not walking very well, either. And it was some hours since I'd taken any morphia, so I was in pain again. Neither inclined me to want to have a shower, wash my hair, get properly dressed, get in my wheelchair and struggle on and off the bus with it. I was also a bit concerned, not having been from home to the NT in a wheelchair before, about how tricky it might be getting there. And, of course, I've been looking forward to the Barbican concert for months, and I don't want to jeopardise it.

She went to the NT early, intending to look around and get something to eat. An hour or so later, she phoned, said there were tickets, and she'd found a relatively easy route for the wheelchair that wouldn't be as tough going as I'd feared. And I was feeling a bit perkier since the morphia had kicked in.

So I had a 'choice' of whether to go or not. Except I didn't, really. It takes me longer to do things like bathe, shave, wash my hair and dress than it does non-disabled people. Say an hour at least. The bus that'll get me most easily and nearest (though I would still have to cross the Thames) can take an hour because of the diversions while they're building Crossrail. Getting ready takes us into the rush hour. So I have to allow for the first bus that comes along, and quite likely the second, not having room for me. Add another 30 minutes. Add the hassle of getting through more rush-hour crowds in Charing Cross station, which I would have to wheel through.

Result? It suddenly becomes very questionable as to whether I could get there, and up to the theatre, before the play started. So the 'choice' is decided for me. I don't have one. I can't go.

"Ah, but" . . .that confident non-disabled person might say: "You could choose to speed things up and get a black cab." Well, I could . . .But like most disabled people I don't have much money, and since I wouldn't have time to eat, twenty quid on a cab as well would mean I'd sit through the play and home again starving. Quite apart from the fact that the cab fare would buy me half my food for a week. The 'choice' may be there, but it's illusory. A choice you haven't the freedom to make is neither choice nor freedom.

So, back to the bath and washing my hair. By deciding not to go to the theatre (which was actually rather upsetting, because I suddenly realised I would have liked it) I can at least choose not to have a bath or wash my hair today. You, you non-disabled person, you, might say "Well, so what? That's a choice anybody can make."

But it isn't, in fact. I have to be sure I've taken enough painkillers in advance, or be relaxed enough, to be reasonably sure that before I do, I am not going to find myself unable to get in or especially, out; and reasonably certain I'm going to be steady enough doing either, or drying myself or my hair, not to fall. I knocked myself out and sprained my wrist very badly a couple of years ago as my legs gave way and I went crashing into the wash basin. I've fallen a few times since, but I've managed to grab something so there hasn't since (so far ) been quite the same catastrophe.

On balance, I decided not to risk it. Tomorrow, or Wednesday, I may feel safer.

Choices? Freedom? Really?

Unlike you (you non-disabled person, you) I don't even sometimes have the choice of what I would like to eat. I may not be able to stand (or sit) to prepare and cook a meal I would like. I may have to 'choose' something because it needs little preparation or is quick. Or I may have to take whatever is in the freezer that can go in the microwave for five minutes whether it's really something I want  to eat or not. I cannot 'choose' to have a beer, or a glass of wine, just because I feel like it. I may have only half a glass of wine, or only water, with friends over dinner, when the week before I shared a bottle of wine and had a large whisky beforehand.

That depends on the amount of medication I've taken that day, and when I took it. If I don't make that calculation (and it's something that's now instinctive, something I do almost automatically) I could end up in a coma. If I was particularly careless and got it very badly wrong, I could die. I nearly did two years ago, when I was taking a slow-release drug I hadn't before, and I got the time when I thought it would have had its maximum cumulative effect completely wrong.

This advance planning, the preparation most disabled people have to go through to do some of the simplest things non-disabled people take for granted, not daily, but even hourly, is something which the vast majority of non-disabled people never see. If you see me in the supermarket, or the theatre or concert hall, or an art exhibition or even a nightclub, that, for me, was never a spur-of-the-moment choice or a happy-go-lucky chance. I may look as though it was; but my smile of pleasure is only there because (at least up till then) the planning and forethought, the 'risk assessment', too, if you like, has all worked out.

Transports of Delight

Potentially one of what, I suspect, may be a very long series . . .

Off to the Barbican for a concert on Wednesday. The way things are at the moment, I'm not walking well at all, and the prospect of the long trek, let alone the number of steps I'd have to climb on the way,  from Barbican station is not a happy one.

So, unless things improve in the next two days, which looks pretty unlikely, it's Squirrel-on-wheels time.

The Transport for London journey planner tells me I have two options. One is to get two buses, one from near home to Aldwych, and another from Aldwych to the Barbican.

But . . .I know all too well that partly due to the disruption and deviations the building work for Crossrail involves, the 23 bus to Aldwych can take forever. And, around the time I'd want to be at Aldwych, it's going to be the rush hour, and the chances of finding space for my wheelchair on the first (or maybe the second and third) are probably limited.

The second is to get a bus to Paddington, and the tube from Paddington to Faringdon. Both, apparently have lifts to and from street level. That's interesting, because for the life of me, I simply cannot recall where the lift from the street to the Circle Line at Paddington might be. Unless it's the thing I've always casually assumed is some sort of goods lift to the main-line station?

So far, so good, for the theory. Now, in most circumstances, I would have to try to research the height of the trains from the platform and the gaps between them, at both stations, to be sure I'd be able to get on and off without having to hope some helpful stranger might give me a hand.

This time, though, I'm going with a friend, so all I have to do is remember to get to the Barbican a good forty minutes before the concert starts, since the lifts there confuse me even when I'm on my feet and I really do not want to spend 20 minutes fruitlessly crossing the underground road back and forth to the underground car park only to find me and my wheels going up and down like a jack-in-the-box always ending on any floor but the one I want . . .

I'm actually an "Access Member" (which is what they call us disabled folks) at the Barbican; and it's only now occurred to me I've never seen a Barbican route map for finding one's way about in that Minotaurean labyrinth. Must remember to take a big ball of string.

Oh, and enough money for a black cab just in case of getting stuck somewhere en route.

Tell you how it went (or didn't!) after Wednesday . . .

Be Vigilant!

There are fake disabled people out there, that may choke your babies, give off poisonous fumes when on fire, and get in your way because you're a fat lazy bastard who can't be bothered to walk more than ten metres from my disabled parking space . . .

I was annoyed (as always) by yet another of those "I've nothing against disabled people as long as they're genuinely disabled" comments in the Guardian. As though we have to prove to your average Joe what is humiliating enough to have to prove not just to the ATOS Gestapo but even a Social Services physiotherapist.

So, I made a cynical joke of it. One day, I will learn that my jokes aren't funny; they have a nast habit of turning out not to be jokes at all.

Do I have to wear my disability registration number on my back when I go out in public? In a tasteful orange triangle perhaps? 

I wrote in response.

Another reader replied:

If some people had their way you would.


In one post I read on the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago it was proposed that all vehicles supplied by the Motability scheme should be marked up as such so they were clearly identifiable and so "concerned citizens" could understand who was getting "handouts" from the state and that "fair minded citizens" could, by enquiring, check for themselves that the occupant was genuinely "deserving".
So, vigilante-ism now comes to disability assessment.

Well, luckily there's a tattoo parlour not that far from my flat. I must get my disability registration number tastefully inked in somewhere. Along with the phone number for Social Services so 'fair-minded citizens' can check whether I'm really 'genuine'.

The question is, where? One number on each buttock, perhaps?

A Long Way to Go (Again)

In the Guardian today (Link).

Comment here later; it's going to be a long one; and it'll be later 'cos Squirrel is having a 'pain-and heavy painkiller-day' and the Squirrel brain is a bit too dulled to unleash the requisite fury on some of the comments there . . .

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . . .

. . . who's the ugliest of them all?

Just seen on eBay:

"SELF-REPELLING WHEELCHAIR"

Flash Squirrel

Since disability issues were becoming a bit of an obsession on my other blog I thought I'd start this one.

It seems to be infectious; best friend, who a couple of weeks ago was acting as my 'pusher', because I had a wheelchair I couldn't manipulate onto buses on my own, has been interrupting her usual walks around London eyeing cracked sunken pavements, ramps or dropped kerbs that are too steep, and all sorts of general awkwardnesses and annoying interruptions to free wheeling.

A post or two ago, I was joking about 'Q-ifying' my new wheelchair. Now, it's long been the case that when Squirrel here makes a joke, events rapidly supersede and the joke becomes true and not much to joke about at all.

I picked up my new wheelchair on Thursday, and brought it home by train and tube. Fortunately, although I was a bit uncertain whether I'd be able to right up until the night before, I could push the thing around on on my own hind paws. Though I had intended to actually use it on the way back.

It was just as well. I'd carefully planned the route via what were labelled as 'wheelchair accessible' stations. Well . . .it turned out that there's 'accessible' and 'accessible'. The interchange between tube and train was supposed to be wheelchair accessible. It was.

If you either had a helper, or had just been competing at the Paralympics. Yes, each platform was linked by a ramp to the others. But it was very close to the maximum 'safe' slope for a wheelchair. Which would have been OK, except for the fact they were long. And there were no information signs anywhere near them to tell you what train was leaving which platform. They were all far away at the other end.

I got it wrong three times because I was given the wrong information. I missed one train simply because the person who told me where it was leaving from had no idea that it would take me about twice as long as them to get there. Even pushing the bloody thing (which is an ultra-lightweight one) I got pretty weary. It had lifts, they said, on the web. It had one lift. From Platform 1 (I arrived on Platform 4 and had to leave from Platform 8) to and from the booking hall. Which I didn't need to go to and wasn't much of an attraction anyway.

And the train? Well, it was c2c (National Express) and lovely. New, shiny, fast, one carriage with two good spacious wheelchair spaces and a huge wheelchair accessible toilet. Lovely. Those are the trains

I shall look for in future. But . . .I arrived at the station, and had I wanted to get on, or off, in a wheelchair I couldn't have. Despite the promise that I could arrange it. Unless another passenger had helped. The station was unmanned: the booking office closed "because of safety issues".

Ironic, eh? If I hadn't been able to walk a bit, if I had been entirely reliant on the wheels, what about my safety?

Now, as to squirrel jokes having a nasty habit of turning out to be true. That thing of mine about doing up my new wheelchair with flashing coloured wheels . . .Not such a joke after all. I got the wheels on a bus for the last stretch home, and decided (being pretty tired by then, and the hind paws being weak) to wheel myself to the flat. All went reasonably well, though next time, I'll remember to use my own borough's side of the street instead of the neighbouring one's. On one side it's relatively smooth going; on the other for about two hundred metres, the pavement's sunk so badly it was a roller-coaster ride.

But why the need for natty flashing lights? Ah. The original reason (apart from the fun, and giving people something to grin at) was I have been, and often will be, wheeling myself home from friends' at night. (Not to mention coming home after going out clubbing every now and then. I don't see why I should give that up.) But . . .in daylight?

It simply hadn't occurred to me. But I had to get across a road junction just a few metres from my flat. All four streets were lined with parked cars. So, with great caution, I poked the nose into the road , , , only to have to wheel myself back in a hell of a hurry. Five drivers simply didn't see me. The two SUV's and the van were the worst. The drivers staring ahead well above my head . . .

It was a bit like a dinghy being cut up by a supertanker.

So. Flashing lights. I've ordered some flashing orange-yellow fibre optic cable to wrap around the spokes on the wheels. Should be, as the pound coins used to say "decor et tutamen".  I'd really like something like those LED flashing 'gangsta' hub caps—you know, the sort that spin round the opposite way to the wheels? But that'd be really, really expensive. . .

And I've already fitted cheap flashing red bike rear lights to the back. Just, well, I want something more . . . flash . . . why should wheelchairs be boring? Why shouldn't you pimp your ride? Next, a leopardskin seat. And a holster for the Uzi.  Fridge for the booze underneath . . .Secret compartment for the coke stash. . .And . . .no, no, this is London.

Rocket Squirrel

I get my 'new' (well, second-hand, actually) ultra-lightweight wheelchair this week. It's not quite the end to the Paralympics I wanted. I wasn't really expecting to be faced with the prospect of having to use one so much more often this year, let alone probably permanently later, Not until the Prof of neurosurgery had a word with me just a few weeks ago. Between you and me and the gatepost, I've cried a bit over it this last month.

Funny how you think you're sort of prepared, then the implications really hit home when suddenly the shades of grey start turning into plain black and white.

Still, I'm actually quite looking forward to it. Bit like being a kid getting a new bike, really. I'm getting one that doesn't look all that 'wheelchairish' and I had thoughts of jazzing it up a bit. With things like these:

(Especially as there's a ramp near home some bastard insists on blocking with their car at night, and I've had to take to the road for a hundred metres this last week or two.)

But after that closing ceremony, and all those amazing steam-punk vehicles, I reckon that's maybe a bit tame. I'm getting ideas . . .

Like maybe combined with this, so I can really snarl back at people who sneer at cripples like me or who charge ahead of me into the bus or the lift. Or park their flash four-wheel drive Audis and Mercs on corners so I can't use the dropped kerbs so I can't get onto the pavement: 

And then, there's my band of course . . .

Yay! Watch out! Rocket Squirrel is coming!

The Long John Silver Sound

I've also just got my new crutches. I already have three. But this is not extravagance, or the early stages of some weird collection fetish.

One I like, aesthetically: it's black, grey aluminium and blue. But it doesn't have a hinged elbow cuff, so  if I want to, say, grab a pint with my right arm, it falls to the floor. And I can't use it to lean on. So, though I like it because it doesn't look so 'medical' (they sell a lot of these colourful ones to skiers who've broken their legs in France, so they don't clash with their Raybans or look out of place with the Nike trainers on the other foot on the way home) I've had to give up on it.

The other two? Well, one is quite old and looks very medical. But it has the more comfortable hand grip. It's getting worn out now; the holes into which the pins fit for adjusting the length are now worn oval, so it clanks as I walk along. It sometimes makes people look up in surprise, subconsciously expecting to see a pirate with an eyepatch and a parrot on his shoulder approaching.

So it has to go.

The other one has developed much the same problem; and, though aesthetically it's a better design,  I've never liked the hand grip anyway. It doesn't seem to fit my hand very well, and my palm gets sore after a while.

So, goodbye.

The other reason for replacing them is that more often, now, I need two even in the flat. And I really came to dislike being out during the last few weeks with a pair that look different and don't match. It's like wearing different shoes on each foot. I was going to say different socks on each foot, but wearing odd socks  can be a kind of specially ironic disabled fashion statement. There was a really neat picture of a Paralympian wheelchair racer's feet taken during the games—one foot clad in pink, the other in yellow. . .

[Photo courtesy of PA and the Guardian; sorry, can't find the name of the photographer for the moment.]

And just look at those wheels! Wow! Oh, sorry 'bout that. Where was I?

Now I have a new pair. Made by the same company in the Midlands as the one with the grip I don't like, but they've improved that since, and it's much more comfortable. But they squeak.

So now, as I approach, I see people look round with a slightly mystified expression as their subconscious tells them to be prepared to be assaulted by a pirate with a mouse on his shoulder . . .

Who said being crippled was easy? You non-disabled folk really don't know the half of it.

What (Some) People Think

On one of my trawls through the US media (all of which, apart from CNN International appears to have been entirely ignoring them) I came across these comments to an article wondering why they were being ignored:

Bless their hearts, but there's something about watching people with stumps competing in "athletic" events that is simply not aesthetically appealing...

my family could not get over feeling a little ridiculous watching women compete in a sport like weightlifting but there was no softball.

The paralympics is about some of the world's most disabled and disfigured people doing things almost all of us, the spectators, can do better. And we just don't care about that.. . .most disabled and disfigured people are rather unsightly, and we don't want to look at them.

many people want to see what the human body is capable of, at its fittest.

And this from a Brit, alas:

i spend everyday in hospitals and when i come home i dont want to watch disabled people

(I hope that bugger doesn't work at the hospital I attend every few months. Or . . .Rocket Squirrel will be in with the the flamethrower and set fire to his bloody Daily Mail..)

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .

Wheelie, Binned . . .

I had to hire a wheelchair about ten days ago. Locally, there's a 'community transport' service not far from my flat, which I knew hire out mobility scooters.

Now, much as I like buzzing about in one, though I've only done it a couple of times, once at a National Trust place and once in a big French supermarket, I can't have one at home. Nowhere to park it. And somehow, if it was left outside on the pavement, since I live near a slightly dodgy nightclub, I doubt if it'd last.

So I rang them and asked if they had a wheelchair. They said yes, so I went off with a friend to collect it.

It got christened 'The Tank' and I grew to loathe it. For one thing, it was steel, so getting it over the front step into the hallway of my block was a pain, to say the least. For another, as I started to wonder why I seemed to be putting a hell of a lot more effort into it than I'm used to, it had 22in wheels. The usual is 24: the smaller the wheels, obviously, it's basic physics, for every push with your hands, you don't get as far.

Then, I found I couldn't get up some of the dropped kerbs around here, because it wasn't equipped with 'anti-tippers'. Those are extended bars with castors that fit at the back and do just what you'd think: they stop the chair tipping over backwards on a slope.

It's a very scary thing, when you're trying to get up a slope and you know if it tips backwards it's going to be "Hi, skull, meet pavement - Hi pavement, meet skull'. For the same reason, I couldn't get to a bus on my own at some bus stops: sometimes, the ramp's a bit too steep if the kerb's low.

So I had to do what I'd not wanted at all: which was to get a friend to help me.  And then, having got on a bus for the first time, got it set back against the backrest, brakes on . . .bus started, wheelchair shoots forward and nearly takes a passenger's feet off at the ankles. Helper and I spent the bus journey hanging on to chair and grab rails like grim death.

Now I used to rebuild my own racing bikes, so fixing things like wheelchair brakes wasn't a problem. But what was, was, I'd asked, a bit jokily, if it'd been 'MOT'd'' and they said it had been serviced. Clearly the service hadn't been up to much, because apart from the brakes, the tyres were unevenly worn, and it kept wandering off to the side . . .

Well, fortunately, I got back to being able to manage with crutches again, so we took it back. I thought I'd be helpful, so (After I'd asked if any of the people there, all non-disabled, I noticed, had actually tried to use it) I told them what was wrong.

The response: "Oh, we're sorry, we'll take it out of service." But that's the only one they've got to lend! (They have others, but it appears the minibus drivers keep those.) Not wanting that at all, I said I knew the manufacturers, and I'd even checked you could get anti-tippers for about £16 and new tyres for a bit more (there's even a bike shop close by that'd fit them!).

"Oh, we can't do that, we haven't the budget," they said. "The wheelchairs and scooters are all donated. We'll take it out of service."

That's not what I wanted at all.

They run something like 20 minibuses. (Most of which I seem to see parked by the office most of the day. And few of which I ever seem to see around carrying more than one or two people anyway.) And they can't find fifty quid in the petty cash?

On the way home, my friend asked what a basic new wheelchair would cost, and I said, well, you can get one for £80 that would do. (And a very good one for the same or even less on eBay if you can collect it—and they've got minibuses and drivers that could, not like me.) She said she was thinking of giving them one. I said no. Why? Because I'm unhappily certain one of the minibus drivers would grab it.  That's where the manager said the other wheelchairs they had had gone. And people who really needed to borrow a decent one in a hurry or for an emergency wold only get another worn-out tank none of them wanted anymore.

No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished. I feel guilty now, because I've accidentally deprived my area of the only damn wheelchair that was quick and cheap to hire. But then, it wasn't safe. Not if you wanted to be independent, which, after all, is the whole point. And I've used wheelchairs off and on for the last five years, and I worked a lot with people who used them all the time further back than that. But I've never before been lumbered with anything quite that bad. I joked one afternoon as I rested my aching shoulders and sore hands that if I entered The Tank for the Paralympics 20m downhill wheelchair race, I'd still come in last. Even if the others were coming the other way uphill.

Some kids playing hockey on skates had yelled 'Don't forget to brake!' as I wheeled furiously past them by the Albert Hall. Fat chance. They hadn't realised I was wheeling myself down a slope as it was just so as not to come to a grinding halt. . .I've wheeled myself up the entire length of the ramp in the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern a few times before now. (It's brilliant coming down, though I admit I got a bit carried away once and burnt my hands slowing down so I didn't decimate a bunch of Japanese tourists at the bottom. If it hadn't been for a bunch of very amused black boys helping to stop it, I'd have lost the skin off my palms altogether. Quite apart from doing serious damage to the tourists. They wanted me to show them how to do wheelies, but one of the security guys had woken up and was looking our way, so I said better not. I wear gloves now . . .) No way I'd have made it in The Tank, though.

I've never actually had one of my own permanently. Superstition, really. I've always felt if I did, I'd end up needing it more. And I was rather hoping, even after a bit of bad news from the Prof of Neurosurgery last month, I might not need one that much for maybe another year or so. But that's it. I've chosen one I can (just about) afford and can handle on my own.

But I'm still a bit shocked at the people at that centre just not getting it. I hope I never have to use any of their other services.  I can't help thinking I'd be treated like a dumb parcel. When I was explaining what they could do to get the wheelchair up and running properly, the Manager turned up — and in that classic "Does he take sugar" way I really thought we'd long seen the back of, asked my non-disabled friend to tell him what was wrong . . .

I really do wonder if all the work I put in on disability access and awareness for social workers years ago was worth it. And if (in London; in the year of the fucking Paralympics no less!) maybe I ought to start all over again where I live now.

I think I might get one of these, too, to stick on the back for clubbing:

(Except . . .might be counter-productive. I've noticed girls tend to talk to me more when I'm on wheels, and maybe that's because they think I'm sort of asexual in consequence. Never have worked out how to  casually hint I'm not . . .)

Postscript: One does find not terribly helpful people in surprising places. One of the wheelchairs I've been looking at I wanted to find out more about. So I phoned a dealer and asked about an extra I'd need to fit or have fitted. The first response was "Phone the manufacturers, they're on the Web." I said  the manufacturer's site was trade only, I couldn't find a contact number for the public, and it led to them for enquiries anyway. Very grudgingly, she said she'd find out. Eventually, the answer was "No, that part isn't available." As so often, when you're treated off-handedly, I'm not at all sure whether that's the truth or whether I was just being got rid of.

Sales(wo)men are much the same anywhere, aren't they? But somehow, when you're asking about something like a wheelchair, you expect rather more consideration than if you're buying a pair of socks and you only want to know if they come in pink. As it happens, I know there is another model from the same manufacturer that does have the part I need already fitted. But she couldn't even be bothered to mention it. It costs so much more I can't really afford it, though. But she didn't know that.

The consequence is obvious. I'm going to go for a similar alternative from a Dutch manufacturer, which actually costs a bit less, but who responded to an emailed question I had about it the same day, and sent the brochure and manual, which I'd already downloaded from their website, and I'm not going to go to those distributors for anything.

I can imagine having a chair, by this UK company, from their main distributors—though the probability is it's actually made in China, of course and just assembled here— that cost several hundred quid, maybe well over a grand, needing to have a part replaced or serviced, and getting the same sort of brush-off. These things aren't like bikes or a car you can do without for a week or two and hop on a bus instead. For many people, anything breaks on a wheelchair, it's like a non-disabled person breaking both legs. It's a prison sentence. And if you're single like me, solitary confinement as well.

I get stuck some days; and though I have my laptop, books and hi-fi close to the bed—the telly died and I haven't got around to replacing it—I get pretty sick of seeing nothing else much than my bedroom for days on end. I think over the last ten years or so, I've probably done more 'time' than a lot of criminals.

(Ahem. Contributions to the Crippled Squirrel Fund for That Super Carbon-Fibre Boy Racer Wheelchair further down the page gratefully received. I only need another two and a half grand or so . . .)

Indifferently Abled . . .

As some readers will know, Squirrel here is  (as a couple of disabled contributors to the Guardian's CiF would insist on perpetuating) a 'Crip'. Or as I thought most of us had finally got people around to, 'disabled'. A 'person with a disability'. Or, if you really want to be prissy about it 'differently abled'.

I tend to stick with the first;  always found the second clumsy, and as for the third,  apart from not being able to walk without mechanical aids, natural deterioration of brain cells due to ageing, and the effects of some hefty doses of painkillers some days,  on the whole I reckon I'm as 'similarly abled' as I was before I wasn't, if you see what I mean.

Now, there are two reasons why I'm in a bad mood after this Bank Holiday. One is a piece by a disabled comedienne, who makes some sort of living out of telling jokes about cripples. In The Guardian, she wrote about how it would be OK to laugh at the Paralympics . . .OK, maybe; it's just that I don't remember anybody cracking jokes about the other Olympics.

What I hated about it was that, for the sake of giving her comedy circuit career a boost, she's busily undoing about thirty years of bloody hard work getting 'normal' people not to notice there's anything particularly different about me ('disabled') and you (i.e. me, before I got to be disabled.) I've spent years doing my damnedest not to look any different physically out in the street. And I'm happiest if I'm clubbing if someone tries to drag me onto the dance floor and hasn't noticed I'm using a crutch.

As an aside, before I was crippled I was actually a pretty good dancer, and I reckon on my good days, I could dance a lot better with my crutch than most. I can jiggle up and down on the spot with it just the same as they do.

However, that's not quite the point. I tracked down an interview in which she rather gave the game away.

Doing disability events can be the worst because unless everyone is on your wavelength, you alienate your own people. You can use the word 'crip' and have people going 'I'm sorry you can't use that', whereas a non-disabled audience hears it, they trust you and think its ok." [My Italics]

Quite. That's the problem. You can just imagine the reaction if it was some other kind of minority involved, couldn't you?

Like a black comedian saying "Hey, OK, look I'm a nigger I can tell racist nigger jokes just like you white honkies. And because I'm black, a white racist audience hears it, they trust you and think it's OK."

Sure. 

I'm feeling touchy about this, because it was Carnival where I live in London, and I got stuck at home. Went out on Sunday, but the crowd was so thick, I abandoned trying to get near the parade, and had to go home. That was after some bloke, using his weight and elbows to push through, knocked me over. (Or rather to a friend's home a km away or so, 'cos the crowds were even thicker towards home. One Carnival, it took me an hour of pushing and shoving (and being pushed and shoved) just to make the last 200m to my front door . . .

Now that, in turn, knocked my spine out of kilter. (Anything like that, and the pressure on my spinal cord means I lose the use of one leg completely.)  Had to send a friend across to my flat to collect a second crutch, but she reported that the crowds were still pretty sizeable, and the streets near home ankle-deep in plastic glasses, bottles, paper plates and the rest of the usual Carnival rubbish. It would have made getting home bloody risky on a pair of crutches, and I didn't really want to stay at hers until the street cleaners got my street clean around 1 am. 

As luck would have it, she found a rickshaw, and I went home in that. And I'm glad I didn't try a wheelchair; if a young strong bloke got one of those stuck through crap under the wheels, no way would I have got a wheelchair through. And if some of the crowd were too pissed to get out of the way of one of those, I'd have had a right job getting through them with a wheelchair.

Anyway, back to why I doubt if being disabled yourself makes it right to crack jokes about it. My problem is that it legitimates it; just as this comedienne herself said it can. It would have been, presumably, OK if, like me, she had to go down the steps from her friend's house on Sunday night on her bum with a load of Carnival goers gathering round to have a good laugh. Fortunately, none did, I'm happy to report.

But, just in case, I've thought up a good joke to relax the crowd and put them in the right kind of mood if they do next time. Next Gay Pride would b a good venue:

 "Hey, any poofterss and shirtlifters out there? Don't ask to come over for sex at my place tonight, my bum's sore enough as it is now."

I'm sure it'll really wow the crowd.

And so . . Squirrel missed the second day of Carnival. Stuck lying down in the kitchen  (where the noise from the nearby soundstages was a bit less ear-damaging.) hoping that the pressure on my spinal cord would ease. Had to miss a lunchtime Prom concert too, since without using a wheelchair I couldn't have managed the trek to the bus-sop outside the Carnival area. And if I had used one, I wouldn't have been able to get home until getting on for midnight. 

Which leads me to the second part of the rant. Disability benefits and services are under attack here by the current government, and the 'they're all welfare scroungers' crowd are creeping out of the woodwork as you'd expect.  Going on about 'freedom' and 'choice', usually. Which of course, means them 'choosing' not to contribute in any way to others less 'worthy' than themselves, and not caring much about how their 'freedoms' are a lot easier for them than others.

I've taken someone to task for that elsewhere. But this weekend, I didn't feel as if I had much in the way of freedom to do what really wanted; and the only 'choice' I had, in the end, was to stay at home.

And now,  since I'm not sure I'll be able to walk well enough to get the bus to the concert tonight, and I really don't want to have to pay for a taxi both ways,  I have to phone the Albert Hall to ask if I can come in a wheelchair, and if they'll let me leave it somewhere I don't have to stagger too far to my seat, 'cos I didn't book a wheelchair space.

Be a really good laugh for everybody if I have to crawl on my hands and knees to my seat tonight, won't it?

Ah, yes, the choices and the freedoms. Just had to phone the concert venue tonight to ask if they'd look after my wheelchair tonight if I have to use it. And I've also remembered that the nearest Pelican crossing has steps down to it. Damn. There could be one very exasperated Squirrel chasing backwards and forwards along the pavement hunting down the nearest bloody ramp tonight. Not to mention the lights change so fast I'll likely be close to the Paralympics 50m record for scooting across the road before they change and the boy racers fire up their bloody engines.  

Public Paralympics and Private Desire

Bloody hell, we put on a bloody good show to open the Paralympics, and the rest of the world . . . couldn't be bothered to turn up.

Shit. There was the biggest, brashest, shiniest, showiest and totally unashamed and utterly positive celebration of how to be proud of being a cripple, and not only that, but 60,000 people showing their support and respect, in a way that hopefully will last in the way people look at people with disabilities in Britain for decades, and. . .

For the rest of the world, it might as well never have happened.

I'm not going to let the euphoria wear off, but honestly, the rest of you should feels thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.

I'm quite optimistic that the London Paralympics and all the publicity it's got here have already changed the way people think and behave.

I happen to have to use wheels for the moment, and I noticed yesterday— I had to go on the road occasionally, because the silly prats who stacked the Carnival crowd barriers had gone and blocked several of the dropped kerbs with them, so I couldn't get onto the pavement—even car drivers stopped to wave me across and smiled.

Blimey. That's a change and a half. Quite apart from people yesterday offering to help without once looking as though it was some kind of favour instead of, well, just an ordinary normal sort of thing to do.

And after that show (people hanging 50m up on wires in wheelchairs over the arena? A guy without legs shooting down a zip wire from as high as the top of the Eiffel Tower of the Statue of Liberty with the torch? A guy with no legs and a deformed spine performing a ballet?) I've got a feeling people might be even more respectful . . .Pity a lot of the rest of the world didn't (or won't) see that.

Whatever I hope it's done for the way people look at and treat people with disabilities in normal life, I know one thing: for the first time since I became a cripple myself nearly a decade ago, I feel proud to be one.

Not that I've ever felt ashamed of it,  but feeling proud is different.  People, I hope, are going to see me after today and think "My god, he can probably do some of those things I saw on Wednesday night; and I never thought."* So it's a shame disabled people elsewhere might not get the same out of it.

*Especially, maybe, the older bloke who came up to me in my wheelchair at the bus-stop on Tuesday night and said he hoped I'd enjoyed the concert.  It did strike me as a bit odd that being on wheels meant I might not enjoy an opera as much as anyone else . . .Still, it was kindly meant, and obviously his way of being a part of this new 'respek for cripples' I think's happening.

Better than Eggwina Currie tweeting that Even in wheelchairs Italians looked gorgeous. Being half-Italian as well as using a wheelchair, I take massive exception to that. I look just as gorgeous out of one or in one, I'll have you know. Especially wearing my new designer shades. It's the bloody wheelchair that spoils the effect. Since I can't afford the really super flashy 'boy raver' carbon fibre designer one I lust after.

Now with one of those, 'gorgeous' wouldn't be enough of a word for it . . . As good a babe magnet as a Lamborghini, I reckon. And cubic metre for cubic metre, about as bloody expensive, alas.