My Space? Or Your Space?

When I first saw the new 'advice' for buggy-pushers a few months ago, I thought it was rather nice us wheelchair users were being looked after. I was a bit ambivalent as to whether it was really necessary, though.

Yes, I've been stuck at bus stops having to watch two or three buses leave without me, either because there are already one or more buggies in the wheelchair space I need.  Frustrating for me; for a lot of non-disabled people, something, I guess, that would lead quickly to an outbreak of 'bus rage'.  But it's something we have to take phlegmatically. No bus-driver is going to chuck a mother with a baby in a buggy off a bus to let me and my wheelchair on.

I've shared my wheelchair space with them. Once I'm in and safely parked, that's OK by me. Just as long as they're willing to move out of it so I can maneouvre my wheelchair out and off the bus.

That, by the way, like getting into it, is a little trickier than people might think. If most drivers had to do that sort of to-ing and fro-ing into a parking space, while constantly risking running over four or five people's feet, they'd soon start complaining. You wheel yourself in forwards, you see; but you then have to turn and back into the space so your wheelchair back rests against that vertical backrest they put there that people lean against so they can have comfortable long conversations on their mobiles.

It is really annoying when you have to explain to people like that who won't move, that the bus driver can refuse to start until I'm safely stowed against it and got my brakes on. And it's no good looking at me resentfully for needing their cosy standing place; they'd be (and a few times this last few months have been) a damn sight more resentful if I delayed their bus journey any longer than I already have while they wait for the ramp to come down and retract again.

But they are, mostly, open to persuasion, and I tend to put down their sometimes initial obstructionism simply to not understanding that my wheelchair can't bend round corners. Even so, I've skinned my knuckles on the grab rails a couple of times when people won't even shift their legs and feet, let alone actually stand up for a minute to make it easier to get in.

But it's the buggy owners that really have become a nuisance. And it's sometimes not even buggy owners with babies in the things, only shopping. (And sometimes, it's real shopping trolleys in the way.) To have to ask. let alone occasionally actually beg) someone to move either of those out of the way when there's completely empty luggage space up front, is immensely irritating.  It even gets to look like and sound like a confrontation, sometimes. Why, I don't know. It ought to be simply a matter of common sense.

There was an example yesterday. But I'd better explain quickly why it happened to someone else in a wheelchair, and not me in mine. I had one of my regular epidural injections into my spine just over a week ago, so, for a few weeks, until it starts wearing off, if I only have to walk short distances between buses, I can use crutches.

That trip started well. The bus was full (except, of course, for the woman who was sitting in one of the 'priority seats' at the front with her shopping in the other staring blankly and deliberately ahead refusing to acknowledge that anyone else might need to be as comfy as her shopping). But, as I settled myself against the wheelchair backrest and got a good hold of the grab rail, another offered me her seat. So thus it was I was sitting in one of the seats facing the wheelchair space, as three other people crowded into it.

At which point, the driver let the wheelchair ramp down, to let in a young woman in her wheelchair along with her young daughter. Only, of course, for her to come to a halt with people crowded around her so she couldn't get in. I asked people to move; I explained  that a wheelchair had to go against the backrest. The three there did move, eventually; but they simply moved into the aisle and wouldn't budge enough so the wheelchair could turn round.

And then . . .a woman raced her buggy up the ramp and pushed it right up to the wheelchair, driving it over my feet and knocking my crutch awry as she went. The bus driver told her there wasn't room, wheelchairs had priority, and she'd have to take her buggy off. She shouted at him and glowered at both the young woman in the wheelchair and me. We were lucky, in a way, because the driver  had obviously had enough, had realised he had some damn stupid (or damn stubborn) passengers, and set off even though that wheelchair wasn't 'docked' properly.

Even with the brakes on and properly placed, if a bus stops suddenly you can still almost take someone's feet off at the ankles: it's happened to me and the only thing that stopped my chair breaking both a passenger's ankles was me being able to grab the rails with both hands and hold on hard as my chair slid towards them.

Which the young woman I'm writing about would not have been able to do. It turned out, as we got talking, she suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis, and wouldn't have the kind of grip or strength in her arms I can employ. She was actually relieved; she told me that she's actually been told to get off a bus by the driver more than once in the same situation. There's something pretty wrong there, isn't there? To be blamed for the intransigence of other people because you are disabled.

I thought, once, we weren't going to see that kind of thing, that kind of implicit blame game—"Your problem being a cripple, sod all to do with me, why should I give a fuck?"—any more. But now qfter the last year or so since I had to start using a wheelchair much more often, that looks like just another illusion to be dispelled.

She had a motorised chair, she said, because, apart from her condition not allowing her to wheel herself about any more—and you wouldn't believe how much strength that needs, unless you remember those Paralympics wheelchair racers' arm muscles—she wanted to be independent and not have to rely in her husband to do the pushing all the time. "Except," she said, "when things like this happen, it turns out I can't be as independent as I thought."

I recognised the disappointment in her voice. I've motorised mine, very unofficially, really in the hope I can get further on my own than I would be able to just using muscle power. I got (like her) a bit fed up with having to arrange little trips in advance with a friend; and what do you do if you want to go somewhere on some day, and she doesn't?  We share, fortunately, a lot of interests; but some we don't. And she has to work when I don't want to have to stay at home, or don't want to do something or go somewhere else, just because it's closer to home or easier.

You see, I hope, what I'm getting at? OK, wheeling a small child around in a buggy might be a bit  restrictive for you. But in proportion, nowhere near as it is every day, every hour, for us. Is it really that much to ask someone with a buggy to put their child on a seat or on their lap and fold it up to give me my space? Or wait just for the next bus, when I might have to wait for the third or fourth?

After all, in proportion to the number of people with buggies you see travelling on buses, how many wheelchair users do you see needing 'their' space? We are, I've noticed, beginning to use buses more, but how many buses do you see with a wheelchair user in them? One in fifty? One in a hundred? We are not asking you to cause yourselves much inconvenience, are we? Or that often?

And we—even those who can stand or walk a little—would find it far, far harder to fold a wheelchair up and haul it up onto the luggage rack than someone would a buggy. If anyone wants to take me up on that on a bus and try it, good luck to them.