Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

This post wasn’t meant to be this post. This post was meant to be a long-arse helpy thing about eBay­ness and how eBay can rock, so long as you fol­low my nice long lists and nifty tips.

Instead, there is no helpy things for eBay doo-dahs. Instead, there is a big ranty Claire, all red and ranty with the ranty­ness of it all. All big frazzled rats tail hair, pinky shiny face and wild eyes because some­times, just some­times people’s obscene level of incom­pet­ence astounds me to the point where I just want to vomit in their shoes. And run over each of their stu­pid little toes with my big-ass wheel­chair. There, I said it. I WANT TO CRUSH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR LITTLE PIGGIES. ESPECIALLY THE ONE THAT HAD ROAST BEEF.

Squil­lions of years ago before dino­saurs were even inven­ted yet, K and I signed up to vari­ous things so that maybe, just maybe, some far off day when pigs are aloft over­head in yon­der sky and I man­age to find Mariah Carey vaguely tol­er­able, we might have a place to live and be proper grown ups.

I spent hours filling in forms that resembled the Yel­low Pages in scale, record­ing every syl­lable of the last twenty-odd years of my med­ical his­tory. I wrote in big huge boxes with iddy-biddy hand­writ­ing and still I had trouble fit­ting it all in. Ortho­paedic Sur­geons, Pae­di­at­ric Con­sult­ants, Occu­pa­tional Ther­ap­ists, Physio­ther­ap­ists, Speech Ther­ap­ists, Edu­ca­tional Psy­cho­lo­gists, Social Work­ers, Fam­ily Care Work­ers, Sur­gery, Med­ic­a­tion, Ortho­paedic Appli­ances… The list goes on and on… By the time I’d fin­ished, they knew everything, short of my bra size and how often I pee (which is quite often, I’m a self-confessed oppor­tun­istic pee-er).

In addi­tion to this, we called sev­eral times to really send it on home. In short: Claire + wheel­chair = ABSOLUTELY NO stairs/steps/narrow doors/narrow hallways/high-level kitchens/any form of bath/conventional showers.

Yes­ter­day, I was issued with a load of pamph­lets regard­ing changes to the cur­rent scheme we’re registered on. Dis­ab­ley peoples get pri­or­ity on the access­ible places, but the whole thing now works dif­fer­ently and you have to go on a web­site and now there’s coupons and leaf­lets and phone num­bers. It seemed like a bit of a faff, to be hon­est, so I logged on straight away to famil­i­ar­ise myself with the process.

Once I’d logged on, I was met with the details of our application/account, includ­ing the line:

Assessed mobil­ity level: not applic­able

Yes, that’s right. My wheel­chair? Doesn’t apply. Ceases to exist. Is no more. Is no longer appar­ent. My dis­ab­il­ity? Not applic­able. Irrel­ev­ant. (Is it me, or is this turn­ing into the Monty Python/Dead Par­rot sketch?)

But, I. Are. Dis­ab­ley. Weally, weally, hon­est! (Or, should that be “wheelie”?)

Bas­tards.
How am I sup­posed to get pri­or­ity when the land­lords are going to look at my applic­a­tion and think: “The silly bint’s ‘nor­mal’, what’s she wanna live here for?”

I’ve since hammered off a couple of blis­ter­ing emails.

I can’t walk, I can’t “do stairs”, I can’t even put socks on my own feet by myself, and this time 10 years ago, I couldn’t even wipe my own arse. But, one thing I can do is write a fuck­ing good let­ter of complaint.

Well, that and squish toes.

EDIT 22/11/07: It worked! They’ve changed it and apo­lo­gised (and given me a load of old fanny about “new sys­tems” and “teeth­ing troubles”. Yeah, yeah, Jackanory…)