Money – Diary of a Disabled Person.

Competition Time!

As promised, at the end of my second series of short stories, the illustrations are now being rewarded to the first six people to donate £10 or more to Diary of a Disabled Person! The price covers the cost of materials and international postage, as well as the small cut PayPal take with every transaction, leaving me with a modest profit to re-invest in the blog.

Simply select the Donate tab in the top right-hand corner (or on the drop-down menu on smartphones), and choose your payment method. I will receive a notification with your email address, and will be in touch to obtain your address.

In compliance with GDPR (yes, I really have to do this), once I have posted the illustration to you, I will delete both your email and postal address from my records, and you will receive no further contact from me unless you specifically express your desire to stay in contact.

Mission Impossible: Go Shopping.

What might seem to be simple everyday tasks for the majority of the population can become Herculean feats with a malfunctioning body, and one of these things is to go shopping.

Most modern supermarkets have excellent accessibility around the store; if not you could hardly be expected to use a trolley. For one thing, they often provided lower tills so that a wheelchair user doesn’t need a periscope to arrange their shopping on the conveyor belt or successfully pay for their selected items. However, there still remain a few issues for wheelchair users in particular, mainly to do with height. The items on the highest shelves are usually completely unreachable, although I have learned that if I sit staring longingly at an item on the top shelf, someone will come and reach it down for me. The prices displayed below each product are not visible to me on the top shelf, so on the odd occasion I may get a nasty surprise when trying to predict how much something will cost me.

Unfortunately items on the lowest shelves are also difficult to reach as the sides of the wheelchair restrict how far I can bend over to retrieve and item, and if I try to face the shelf, my feet and legs get in the way. It’s usually a little more difficult to convey that I might need some help because no one can see my facial expression, although I don’t usually have to wait too long before someone comes to my rescue.

The freezers are perhaps the worst offenders in a supermarket; the glass makes it easy to see each tantalising product, but trying to reach over the lip of the freezer to grab hold of the desired product is almost impossible, and my hands grow cold after mere seconds in the sub-zero temperatures. The freezers higher than this present the same issues as the high shelves elsewhere in the supermarket. I could, of course, ask someone for help, but I’m English; making any face-to-face contact with total strangers is awkward and uncomfortable.

None of these things are the fault of the supermarket, and there would be little they could do to improve accessibility without massively reducing the availability of products due to the limited shelf space reachable from a wheelchair. However, I can only wish that other shops would follow suit. There are so many shops out there with even just a small step in the door that means I cannot enter, and pubs are often the worst offenders. Admittedly since many disabled people take some form of medication, all of which state not to drink alcohol whilst taking those tablets, you could say they were actually being responsible by being inaccessible. Unfortunately I’m not sure that they’ve ever given the issue so much thought. In many cases only a small and relatively cheap ramp would be needed to resolve the issue, and they would be able to make more money simply by allowing more people into the store.

Unfortunately even when shops do have accessible facilities, they may choose to misuse them. I have lost count of the shops I have entered that use the disabled changing room as a store cupboard, and have had to navigate the wheelchair around large boxes and racks of new clothing. I also know a shop in a mall, where accessibility is supposedly prioritised, which has a small platform lift next to the three steps up into the main body of the shop. The lift is entirely blocked off by clothing rails and mannequins, and I can therefore not purchase anything, despite having bought lovely clothes from other branches of the same brand in the past. When asked, staff tend to shrug their shoulders nonchalantly, stating that it “wasn’t their decision”, and that “I’d just have to go elsewhere”. This is naturally frustrating and also a bit demeaning, although it has probably saved me a lot of money.

The shop owners that do make their facilities accessible not just to wheelchair users, but to all those with any kind of disability or other issue that might hinder their ability to go shopping, will make more money than those without access. Effectually this is a classic case of “voting with your feet” (choosing to go elsewhere if the shop in question isn’t good enough), although this statement is perhaps not the best thing to declare in front of a group of disabled people…

Disabled Benefits That Aren’t Money.

Despite all the hassle that comes with using a wheelchair there are a few small perks in the midst of my hectic life. Most of these are small and perhaps insignificant, but they are still positive things that wouldn’t happen if I didn’t use a wheelchair. Since I am often subject to other’s pity, it seems reasonable that I should introduce some of these concepts to the glorious source of useless information and time-wasting that is the internet.

I have discussed how I am regularly treated as if I were stupid and am spoken to in patronising and condescending tones. While this is endlessly annoying, it does have the silver lining supposedly displayed by all clouds outside of Yorkshire; I am able to get away with what is deemed by others to be immature or childish behaviour. I can openly laugh at toilet humour in public, chase pigeons along the muddy pavements, do doughnuts in my wheelchair in the park, and best of all, I can go and see children’s movies at the cinema without judgement. The best examples of this were going to see “Minions” and “The Secret Life of Pets” at 19 and 20 years old respectively, and despite my age none of the cinema staff so much as batted an eye lid. My dad, who was at least as excited as I was if not more so, was presumed to be a poor carer subjected to such childish amusements simply to please me, so also evaded judgement.

Other benefits arise from the physicality of using a wheelchair; shoes are never worn out by treading the unforgiving streets of Leeds and Bradford, and since mine now last me for many years, I no longer feel guilty if perhaps those shoes come with a larger price tag.

Similarly, one embarrassing situation that plagues my able-bodied counterparts derives from gravity, and that is my inability to trip over. Spider-man will never be able to impress me by catching me and my lunch at the same time, so he’ll just have to use webbing to spell out anti-ableism messages along the bridges crossing the ring road. According to rom-com legend I’d never have met the perfect man either. However, besides these trivial matters the inability to fall is highly useful, and never more so than when leaving Wetherspoon’s on a Saturday night.

Another useful perk is the ability to skip my place in a queue and get away with it without making anyone angry, which is of considerable surprise to anyone living in the UK. I am usually taken to the front of queues for the use of disabled facilities such as toilets or changing rooms, and shops such as Primark allow disabled people to pay first at an adapted till only opened when disabled people are paying. During Fresher’s Week, when I went to collect my student card and related paperwork, I was allowed to skip a queue that contained hundreds of frustrated freshers. It is rare that anyone gives me the burning side-eye, tut, and miniscule shake of the head reserved especially for queue-jumpers in England. In all fairness, the queue-jumping rule is usually based on the fact that some disabled people may need rapid access to a bathroom due to their condition, or that their immunity could be impaired and so sitting in the midst of a crowd presents a true danger. However, for the rest of us, it’s nothing short of amusing to be able to get away with something reserved for the closest circle of hell according to most Brits.

As someone who uses a wheelchair but can also stand up, I have particular fun in shops. The looks of horror, dis-belief, and bewilderment I receive as I leap out of my wheelchair and yell “It’s a miracle!” at the top of my voice never fails to amuse me, although perhaps this prank is a little cruel.

It is not necessary to look upon anyone with a disability with sympathy, and empathy or compassion are far more welcome. Our lives are different to the able-bodied, but that does not make us inhuman or superhuman, especially as being able-bodied doesn’t eliminate you from experiencing the ups and downs of day-to-day life. The ups and downs do differ between the two groups, but the pattern remains the same; life and all it’s glorious drama does not discriminate.