Glass half-full

I used to work with a Health & Safety manager with a wry sense of humour. When I accused him of being a ‘glass half-empty’ sort of person he replied that my comment demonstrated I didn’t understand the H&S mindset. “There are glass half-full people and glass half-empty people and then there are those who see the glass itself as a possible hazard as it could break and cut you. Those people are the H&S managers!” he replied.

I am discovering that the disabled-life is a continuous process of risk-assessment and a constant battle within yourself as to which mindset will prevail. Will the place I am going to have easy access, how even is the path, especially if it is going to be dark and will there be chairs to sit on that are high enough for me to get out of or should I take my own?

Our local pub for instance is a typical country establishment with toilets that are up a short flight of steep steps and which are therefore totally inaccessible to me: they are pretty inaccessible for able-bodied people too after a few drinks! That means a trip to the pub requires careful bladder management in the hours before setting-off and a strict regulation of liquid intake whilst there. Helpfully they sell a particularly potent brew called Bee Sting which allows the consumer to take on-board the requisite quantity of alcohol without straining the bladder too much, but unfortunately it makes my face go numb so I tend to avoid it 😳.

An invitation to an event (theatre, concert, restaurant etc) all require an assessment of the likely hurdles that will present themselves and I am discovering too that ‘accessible’ often means that places are geared to wheelchair users with toilets and seats at wheelchair-height and do not address the needs of someone who needs raised seating, without which I am like a stranded whale. Thank goodness for the guard on the Great Western train recently who was prepared to haul me out of my seat so I could get off at my station and not be swept on to Swansea where the train terminated. (This is not to cast aspersions on Swansea you understand, it’s just that wasn’t where I wanted to get to).

As an aside it does give me sympathy for the railway workers who are protesting about the removal of guards from trains – I am not sure there are sufficient facilities at Swansea to accommodate all the disabled passengers who will wash up there like flotsam and jetsam on the beach having failed to disembark at the right place!

The tendency of course, when you are faced with hurdles and uncertainties, is to take the easy option and to not go out. I understand why it is that disabled people can so easily become house-bound. It takes effort and a conscious act of will to trust yourself to go out: to see the glass half-full rather than half-empty. To understand too that life is best lived in the company of others and therefore you have to take the chance that things will turn out ok.

You just have to make sure you have gone to the loo before you set out!