Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I’ve never been laid-back. Ever. I am laid-back’s ulti­mate ant­onym. I am in a con­stant state of heightened ten­sion; fid­gety, jit­tery, nervous and ter­ribly impa­tient. Now! Now? I don’t want it now, I want it yes­ter­day. I am rest­less, anxious, rant­ing, stressed out, uptight and I have a huge rod up my arse and I am proud.

This lun­acy gives me a (com­pletely unfoun­ded) sense of con­trol. On the sur­face, it looks like I’m hold­ing the reins, by listen­ing to me talk, you’d be for­given for assum­ing I’ve got it all mapped out. I know what and doing, where I’m going and why. Only, I don’t. For such an anally-retentive per­son­al­ity, I man­age to exist in an inor­din­ate quant­ity of com­plete and utter disarray.

I don’t know where any­thing is, or what’s going on, I sel­dom know what day of the week it is and I never do things when I say I will. I lose everything, I put it all off until the last minute.

How­ever, I still some­how man­age to make it look like this was part of the plan all along and that it’s all going swim­mingly. For that, I like to credit my Father’s inher­ent abil­ity to sell ice to Eski­mos which, he has seem­ingly passed on.

Being wound-up like a clock­work mouse isn’t without it’s side effects, any slight alter­a­tion to my men­tal and/or emo­tional state and I’m reminded that my stom­ach is as del­ic­ate as a coral reef Eco-system.

It doesn’t mat­ter if I’m ecstat­ic­ally elated or in the depths of des­pair, either way I’m sat doing breath­ing exer­cises, try­ing to stem the bile and stom­ach lin­ing, which out of sheer des­per­a­tion for an exit, feels as though it will inev­it­ably re-route and will soon be spill­ing from my ear canals.

Should the world ever end dur­ing my life­time, I can only hope that com­ple­ment­ary amen­it­ies and fully-accessible toi­lets will be provided. Or at the very least, a bucket.

I can see it now, as the Four Horse­men of the Apo­ca­lypse cavort by, uproot­ing the neighbour’s block-paved drive­ways and caus­ing the double-glazed win­dows to rattle in their PVC frames. There’ll be people pray­ing and scream­ing and res­cuing the “less able”. Chor­uses of “Where’s Claire?” will simply be referred to the “Occu­pied” status of a door lock as I pre­pare to meet my maker whilst star­ing at my decidely grim reflec­tion in the por­cel­ain basin.

I can’t help it.

I was reminded of my rather pre­cari­ous physiolo­gical state yesterday.

Yes­ter­day, I received my tick­ets. These aren’t just any tick­ets, these are Placebo tick­ets. Remem­ber…? This Placebo.

I nearly laid an egg.

The tick­ets went onsale in July. Fans could get sneaky tick­ets the day before they went on gen­eral sale, but I had to count myself out as fan clubs only provide Stand­ing tick­ets, no Seated, wheel­chair space or con­ces­sions. Over the years, this has been a mat­ter of great anguish, but I’ve learnt to let it slide. At least Placebo now play at access­ible ven­ues, this hasn’t always been the case.

As the morn­ing of Fri­day 28^th July 2006 arrived, I was well-rehearsed and pre­pared. I had my mother’s debit card in hand (just incase they didn’t accept my naff Elec­tron card) and the Dis­ab­il­ity Assist­ance line of the box office on speed-dial on both my mobile and land­line telephone.

The time between 7:00 and 8:59 AM is a naus­eous and hazy blur. I barely ate nor spoke as I wob­bily awaited what began to feel more like lethal injec­tion than the oppor­tun­ity to pur­chase gig tickets.

I began with my now cus­tom­ary breath­ing rituals, when con­cern­ing Placebo. I’ve got­ten used to the Fan-Girl hys­teria and now see it as par of the course.

It began when I first went to see them at V Fest­ival in 2001. The gates to the fest­ival arena didn’t open until noon, but I was there 4 to 5 hours before with all the hard­core hangers on, fash­ioned to the iron gates, the wheels of my chair already square with mud from the state of the grav­elly drop-off point and twist­ing walk­way to the bar­ri­caded entrance.

Sit­ting in the piss­ing rain, I was. For clearly no appar­ent reason, as it’s worth not­ing at this point, I had no idea of the order in which the bands would play (with excep­tion of the head­liners) and dis­covered on my arrival (after pay­ing extor­tion­ate sums for a rain-sodden pro­gramme) that my beloved Placebo wouldn’t even grace the stage until at least 5:45 that evening!

At that point, I can only assume that my san­ity dis­solved in the sum­mer down­pour and I got it into my head that I needed to go home. Now.

Before I con­tinue, I’d like to make a point clear. The fest­ival did not have any wheel­chair access­ible toi­lets. None. I was sat in the driv­ing rain at about 8 in the morn­ing, wouldn’t be picked up until about mid­night and through­out that dur­a­tion was for­cibly pre­ven­ted from pee­ing. Things like this hap­pen with alarm­ing fre­quency, to be hon­est. You’d be amazed at how so many pub­lic places, high streets etc lack suit­able facil­it­ies. I’ll always remem­ber how Cam­den Town boas­ted a large pub­lic toi­let, com­plete with wheel­chair sign on the door, that resided at the top of a steel stair­case. As a res­ult, I’ve become a bit of an “oppor­tun­istic pee-er”. If I see an access­ible toi­let, I make a point of using it. Even if I don’t always have much urge to go, I do any­way just because I know that if I don’t, I will have wished that I had and I’ll be busy fret­ting that there won’t be another.

I digress. As I was say­ing, I had to go home now. I knew that there was no way on God’s Earth I was going to hold out for a bath­room until mid­night and I’d con­vinced myself that I needed to go now anyway.

Cue me arran­ging a lift home with the premise of return­ing at around 3 PM-ish. Dur­ing those few hours I was at home, I worked myself into such a lather that I con­vinced myself on some level of utter mad­ness that I no longer wanted to go (I got­ten myself so anxious/nervous/excited I was now quite unwell). More (quite lit­eral) hys­teria fol­lowed where I lay laugh­ing and sob­bing sim­ul­tan­eously for quite some time. Until even­tu­ally, I was car­ted back to Chelms­ford, doing my utmost not to cry or be sick for the length of the journey.

I failed miser­ably at both, vomit­ing pro­fusely in my waist-length hair, down my sister’s coat and in the passenger-side foot­well of the bor­rowed car in which, I was travelling.

Moments prior to pro­du­cing my ticket for Fest­ival Secur­ity to grant my admit­tance to the venue, I also “Christened” the grassy verges that lay in the wake of the afore-mentioned iron-gated entrance, with what was left of my par­tially diges­ted lunch.

Rest assured that the gig was worth every morsel of misery that pre­cluded it.

Although I haven’t lost the plot in such spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion since, all Placebo gigs that have fol­lowed have har­boured stomach-knotting echoes of that day.

Back to July 2006, I was frantic­ally stabbing at the speed-dial but­ton on the land­line ‘phone as the digital dis­play morphed into 9:00 AM.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

Then, an answer­ing mach­ing mes­sage struck-up, curtly stat­ing that the line wouldn’t be open until 10:30 AM.

My insides went into melt­down as my lungs felt as though they’d been vacuum-packed flat in air-tight cel­lo­phane and sub­sequently plummeted to my ankles. The con­tents of my stom­ach went in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, how­ever. Bas­tards.

Not only could I not get the “fan club” tick­ets, but now I had to wait over an hour and a half after the tick­ets went on gen­eral sale. Sod the venue selling out in an hour and a half, entire tours can sell out in less time than that!

After even­tu­ally calm­ing down to a point where I was in a fit (enough) state to hold a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion if required, I took to redi­al­ling every 2–5 minutes. Someone picked up at about 9:40 AM.

I ordered 4 tick­ets, one each for my mum and step-dad and one each for K and myself. For some reason my order had to be broken into sep­ar­ate orders, which meant my mum’s arrived a day earlier than mine.

Hav­ing seen my dis­ap­point­ment at not receiv­ing my ticket wed­nes­day, my sis­ter inter­cep­ted my post on thurday and play­fully made sure to hand all envel­opes to me indi­vidu­ally, with the gig tick­ets com­ing an unsupris­ing last — just so she could watch me squirm just that little bit more.

Vin­dict­ive? Never.