Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Now that I will be spend­ing this year’s New Year period with fam­ily and their off­spring, K and I decided to be brave and ven­ture to the nearest Indus­trial Estate, vis­it­ing the local branch of Toys R Us to buy some board games (there was a “3 for 2 Spe­cial” on Parker and MB Games), dur­ing the week lead­ing to Christ­mas. Big mistake.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t come down in the last shower, I knew it was going to be ugly. I knew that common-sense, com­mon cour­tesy and the social laws regard­ing being an all-round decent, grown up human being would go straight of those large-paned win­dows once par­ents get into the “Christ­mas Panic”.

I had a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that I would have to expect being reached-over, stepped-over and stepped-in-front-of just in case I was to pick up the last of the sac­red toy their child had spent the best part of 6 weeks whin­ing for. I can appre­ci­ate that. I can appre­ci­ate that hav­ing to dis­ap­point your 7 year old with the story that “Father Christ­mas couldn’t make enough Spe­cial Edi­tion SFX Cluedo board games for all the chil­dren, but look at the lovely basic/second-rate ver­sion he brought you instead” is ter­ribly traumatic.

All the while, your stom­ach is knot­ting inside as you real­ise with dread, that this will prob­ably be the defin­ing point in your child’s psy­cho­lo­gical and beha­vi­oural devel­op­ment. In years to come, when they evolve into a narcotic-consuming, joy-riding, public-nuisance-making, teen mum with an eat­ing dis­order and a pen­chant for self-harm, they will break­down whilst at a brief con­sulta­tion with the crappy school coun­sel­lor (because it so dif­fi­cult to get “talk­ing treat­ments” on the NHS) and recount the story.

Cue you later being hauled in front of a rather “con­cerned” edu­ca­tional psy­cho­lo­gist, who tells you that accord­ing to the reports writ­ten by afore-mentioned crappy school coun­sel­lor that your child is suf­fer­ing from some Freudian-based psy­cho­lo­gical and emo­tional ineptitude as a res­ult of not feel­ing loved by her mother. A fact proven by the emo­tional scar­ring caused by that one fate­ful Christ­mas when that woman in the wheel­chair got to that board game before you did and because of social taboo regard­ing the pub­lic beat­ing of the dis­abled, there was noth­ing you could do about it. Thus, off­set­ting this whole sorry chain of events. You ter­rible mother, you! You see, I can fully sympathise.

What I can­not sym­path­ise with are people that park ille­git­im­ately in Dis­abled park­ing bays. In par­tic­u­lar, are the 4x4 drivers that 9 times out of the pro­ver­bial 10 are driven by moth­ers of the “Essex Wife” vari­ety whom occa­sion­ally carry a sol­it­ary spindly child on their jaunts ’round sub­urban high streets and cul-de-sacs. And, because their vehicle of choice is so ridicu­lous in size and unsuited to its sur­round­ings, it’s an abso­lute bug­ger to park. Hence, said drivers feel it is in their case, “neces­sary” to park in Dis­abled park­ing bays as they are wider.

Next time you go to Tesco or any­where in the UK with small-to-medium sized out­door park­ing facil­it­ies, look. I can almost guar­an­tee you will find a 4x4 in the Dis­abled bay sec­tion, with no Dis­abled Badge dis­played.

Now, I have had mobil­ity prob­lems through­out the 2 dec­ades that con­sti­tute to my life and I have been wheelchair-bound for the last 8 of those 20 years.

There is no way on this Earth I, or indeed most moderately-to-severely physically-challenged indi­vidu­als, would be able to eas­ily get in and out of a 4x4-style vehicle. I’d have to abseil down the side of the thing to get into my wheel­chair and then would have to winch myself back up again on my return! It is pain­fully obvi­ous that with few excep­tions, most people that would genu­inely require a wider bay as a res­ult of phys­ical impair­ment, would not drive/travel in 4x4s. It’s exas­per­at­ing, it really is.

Espe­cially, as if there is not a vacant Dis­abled park­ing bay avail­able, I can­not get out of a car. End of story. It is quite lit­er­ally impossible to get out of a car and into a wheel­chair (via self-sliding trans­fer whilst remain­ing in a seated pos­i­tion) in a standard-sized bay. It is dif­fi­cult at the best of times in some Dis­abled bays.

Do not be fooled into think­ing that 4x4 drivers are the only cul­prits, they are simply the major­ity when con­cern­ing my own per­sonal observations.

In the case of the night at Toys R Us, it was not a 4x4 driver but an ignor­ant, selfish mother and her equally ignor­ant and selfish rel­at­ive in their fam­ily estate, that were the sub­ject of my abject disgust.

Whilst strug­gling to get out of the car and into my chair, a large, old, red estate car was parked in the Dis­abled bay to our imme­di­ate left (my side), with no Dis­abled Badge dis­played. The car was void of pas­sen­gers, but stand­ing by the bon­net was a young girl of around 6 and a woman whom I pre­sumed was her grand­mother (not eld­erly, I’d say only in her 50s, no walk­ing stick or limp of sorts that would jus­tify their bay of choice), whom looked as if they were bored/waiting.

As I pushed myself around the front of the car, the able-bodied mother of the pre­vi­ously men­tioned child emerged from Toys R Us, trol­ley stacked to the hilt, upbeat and screech­ing that she’d fin­ished and had spent ages circ­ling each aisle “look­ing for one par­tic­u­lar item”. Cue all three climb­ing in the car with ease and driv­ing off without giv­ing a second thought.

Why had they chosen to park there when there were plenty other “reg­u­lar” bays avail­able? So that they didn’t have to walk just a couple of feet fur­ther. Lazy bas­tards. Sod people like me who have to circle a car park for ages “look­ing for one par­tic­u­lar bay”. At times, I’ve even had to resort to hav­ing to ask K to drive to the next town in order to do the shop­ping we needed to as there has been nowhere suit­able for us to park locally.

To add insult to fes­ter­ing injury, what should we dis­cover on our return to the car? A motor­bike, yes, a motor­bike parked in that very same bay. It beg­gars belief, doesn’t it?

Sadly, this also is not a “one-off”. A couple of months ago, we had the priv­ilege of wit­ness­ing a sim­ilar event involving a motor­bike and a Dis­abled bay. Only that time, it was in a neigh­bour­ing Bur­ger King car park. I was so shocked at the time, I actu­ally took a photo with my mobile. Unfor­tu­nately, I wasn’t quick enough with the Toys R Us incid­ent and missed the opportunity.

I think you could tow a wheel­chair on the back of that a treat, don’t you?