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.
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