DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY IT'S SUNGLASSES

A rather irritating thing occurred to me a few weeks ago – initially I let it go, but then almost exactly the same thing happened again this morning. It has really got up my nose which means I should probably write it all down, take it to the window and chuck it out with the rest of the mental garbage I insist on drowning myself with.

So, here goes.......

First, a snippet of background: My back and leg problems have left me in a bit of a state. I try not to use my walking stick – I have a hate/hate relationship with the blessed thing - it's a symbol of everything that is wrong with me and I stubbornly refuse to lie down and give in (at least to the outside world).  I live in a rural area (8 miles to the nearest shop) so I rely on the car.  I have also shoved my pride up my backside and accepted a blue mobility badge, which entitles me to park nearer to places and has admittedly been a great help.

When I received the badge, one of the first things my parents said to me was “well, you'll have to limp more than you do when you get out of the car; otherwise people will think you are cheating”. I was horrified at this suggestion. I have nothing to hide, I didn't blag my way to easy parking - I cannot walk 60/70m without resting and my application was fully supported by my GP, hospital consultant and physio, but it just shows the suspicious society we have sadly become. Now the general consensus is that everyone else is working the system and no-one (especially the law-abiding tax-payer) likes to think they are being short-changed by what they see as the privileges of others – the 'big society' sure is a leaky bucket.

Still, the brush sweeps wide and paints a lovely shade of stereotype. Although a number of people will fit the bill, we now seem to have a media situation where anyone on benefits is probably a 'cheat'; all single-mothers are pony-tailed, teenage miscreants wearing large gold hooped earrings (widows are also single-mothers, but let's not worry about that, it doesn't fit the argument). Oh, and don't forget those pesky teenagers who are all trouble-making hoodies; or how you can only be considered disabled if you are in a wheelchair; not to mention all mental health patients will most certainly push innocent strangers under trains at some point; or all Londoners are either the Notting Hill set or cheeky chappy cockney wide-boys etc., etc.,........I could go on.

But hold on a minute, I've been a few of these. I was born in the East End, and although I am generally cheerful, I don't spend my waking hours walking around with my thumbs in my braces, saying “gawd blimey guv, strike a light, those apple & pears have knackered me out today”. I've been a single-mother (sans ponytail/ earrings); I am now unable to work and have been on benefits in the past (which is not a lot of money for quite a lot of humiliation in the assessment tests). I have suffered mental health problems through depression – but I have never felt the urge to hurt anybody - and now I suppose I'm considered disabled, but I am resisting the wheelchair with all my might.  

However, as it turned out, it would seem that my parents were right...

Which (finally) brings me to my:

'bug up the nose episode of the week.....'

I had parked in a disabled bay outside the supermarket; it was busy and quite a few of the other disabled bays had cars with people sitting in them, presumably while their other half did the shopping, which you are not supposed to do, but is actually quite common practice. Anyway, as I was getting my bag out, an old boy, who was a complete stranger to me, came marching over and demanded to know the 'nature of my disability'. I was so shocked, I told him to mind his own business – whereupon he gave out a diatribe about how his wife was in a wheelchair, implying that she needed the space more than me. Perhaps she did, and I would have been happy to have moved on, if her other half hadn't gone into the “attack mode” straight away. It may have been wrong, but he was told in no uncertain circumstances where to go and I limped off into the supermarket with steam coming out of my ears.

It happened again today, when another old chap accused me of not being disabled – purely on the grounds of what I look like.   He also got a flea in his ear, because I would like to ask: what the hell is a disabled person supposed to look like? And why should they have to look like it? I have spent most of my adult life working in the Artificial Limb Centre in Roehampton, where the doctors and prosthetists work extremely hard to help patients function and appear aesthetically as near normal as possible. Most of the time you couldn't even tell if someone was wearing an artificial limb or not and surely that's the way it should be. 

 The sad thing is that this guy was convinced he was in the right and once he realised I was entitled to park in the spot, he accused me of not displaying the badge properly (it was clearly on show on the dashboard, he just hadn't bothered to look).  He made all of his assumptions and accusations completely without grounds and then refused to take responsibility for them.  The whole episode was unpleasant, upsetting and unnecessary and in the end he marched off without so much of an apology, kiss your ass or anything.  He had no understanding that people who have needs (whether physically or mentally) come in all different guises and need help for all different reasons - some of which will not be immediately visible.  Books and covers come to mind.

I know I am extremely vain and I go out of my way not to look my age or display what is wrong with me.  In fact, I have actually heard someone say:”well, she doesn't look very disabled,” and this observation was made when I have been sitting inside the car.  Well, thanks very much, but I don't want to wear a t-shirt that shouts:

'I AM DISABLED' 

if it's all the same - not because I'm ashamed, but because as far as I'm concerned, that is certainly not what defines me as a human being.

So, I shall still continue to have Pink blaring out of the car stereo when I pull up into a disabled parking bay and I shall refuse to dress my age; I shall keep wearing the eye-liner and Jackie O sunglasses and my only concession to the Daily Mail/Express disabled stereotype are my flat shoes and my stick (which I plan to cover in shiny diamante stickers). As I refuse to conform, I expect I shall be having a few more “discussions” like the one I had today with certain members of the Big Society, which seem to be mostly old boys in Waitrose car-parks. 

I hear so much hullabaloo about equal rights for the disabled and yet, when you try to remain equal, you are immediately labelled (yet again) with blagging the system. The bottom line is you can't have it both ways.

End of rant.....

A TALE OF TWO CHILDREN

I suppose my 9 year old daughter leads a privileged life.  At the moment we are in a position where we are able to send her to Drama School and pay for piano lessons.  She is in the Cathedral Junior Girls choir, has a garden of about half an acre to play in and can spend the afternoon sitting in a tree in the paddock, just reading a book.

Some people may think that my daughter and I live in a rarefied air - but I know and appreciate how lucky I am, because life hasn't always been that way.

Not a million years ago I was working full-time in a stressful job while struggling as a single parent of two daughters.  I had nothing but toast for my tea so that the girls could eat properly and I could keep the roof over our heads.  I have lived at both ends of the spectrum and, to be perfectly honest, I know which bit I prefer.

Which brings me to something that happened earlier today.

This morning I had just been in the coffee shop with my daughter.  She had been drinking a babychino whilst reading Harry Potter. All very civilised.  As we came out we heard a woman raising her voice and cussing quite loudly (which is unusual in Bury St Edmunds - because even the wearing of a loud jumper in the town square can lead to letters being written to the Bury Free Press).  Anyway, this very large, angry woman was shabbily dressed, wearing a dirty pair of leopard-print slippers and wedged into an ill-fitting NHS wheelchair that had obviously seen better days.   And in-between the puffs of her cigarette, the loud diatribe went something like this:

"Get a f*ckin' move on.  We're 45 minutes late.  You keep f*ckin' messing about - what's the matter with you?  It's me that's gonna get a gobfull when we turn up late, not you.  F*ckin' move Stephanie!"

Poor Stephanie was trying to push this haridan on wheels up an incline in town.  It was very hard work; her head was down and her arms were held out straight as she tried to manoeuvre the unwieldy machine.  The temperature today was in the 80s, the invalid was heavy (and I'm being polite here) and wasn't helping at all.  In fact, she was leaning back in the chair, smoking a roll-up whilst laying the law down.  On top of all this, there were 2 Argos catalogues hanging from the handles (and they're not light).  Poor old hapless Stephanie indeed.

The thing was.......Poor Stephanie was also only about 11 or 12 years old - roughly 2 or 3 years older than my daughter.

The child didn't answer back.  She just kept her head down and went right on pushing.

The striking difference between the lives of Stephanie and my daughter made me so angry that I was near to tears.  Stephanie was obviously the carer for her mum and the whipping boy for all her ills.  I could not believe that Stephanie could be the cause of her mother's disability.....but she was certainly paying for it.

And in this so-called Big Society, no-one helped.....including me.  My instinct was to give the mother a piece of my mind, sling her fags in the bin and park her at the bottom of a big hill while I took Stephanie for a babychino and 2 chapters of the 'Deathly Hallows'.  I wanted to get whoever had supplied that totally unsuitable wheelchair to sort the mother out with a self-propelling chair with the right sized wheels.  The NHS has no excuse when it comes to providing someone with the proper wheelchair (especially if that person cannot afford to buy one specifically suitable to their needs).  I used to work in the Artificial Limb Fitting Centre in Roehampton and I get very antsy about stupid, basic wheelchairs - they're not for long-term use - but I see (mainly) old people being pushed around in them all the time.  I wanted to push the chair up the incline myself - just to help the child out - and this from a woman who cannot pick up a 2L bottle of milk.  So what did I do?

Yup, you guessed it, I did nothing.

No, not exactly nothing... I got angry that Stephanie's life could be like that in this day and age - her childhood was fast disappearing down the throat of her mother - and anyone who has read this blog will know I tend to get on my soapbox about the rights of children.  I got angry that the problem of child carers is not one that gets raised very often  by the media.  The BBC says that there maybe 4 times more young carers in the UK than the 175,000 officially recognised and many live without the proper support from Social Services/Agencies*.  I can (and do) give money to Children in Need and sit in front of my tv watching Pudsey and the gang plead for their cause.  I can tut and shake my head, but the pictures on the tv screen are sanitised, the glass of the telly protects me from any awkwardness I feel at the plight of those children.  When you come face to face with it in real life, it's a different matter.

Now, I don't know Stephanie or her background and the situation may not have actually been as bad as it looked.  I may have been influenced by the disdainful lack of respect the mother showed her child - the effing and jeffing, the cigarette smoking and the apparent total selfishness.  But then I don't know the mother's background either.  I only know that I didn't feel able to confront them or "interfere" and it doesn't sit right with me.

I got angry that every child deserves a childhood and I stood by and did nothing.

 Big Society my arse.

*source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11757907