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.
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