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 . . .)
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