Nail art

I was idly wondering about nail art, and whether it existed as something other than an expensive extra on an impractical salon manicure. I had some time to kill in town, so I went into Claire's Accessories. Yes, I know you're supposed to get that out of your system when you're thirteen. I didn't. Besides, unlike my teen years I'm now in a fortunate financial situation where the occasional fiver does not represent a substantial cash outlay.

Claire's had nail art kits of all kinds. Tiny brushes for people painting their own designs, stickers and stamps and stencils for people who want a shortcut, and also various "wheels" of 100-150 tiny shiny pieces of assorted plastic. The one I got was similar to this one, although the pack I got was being discontinued, so it was slightly different colours than the one I've linked (it was also reduced to £1.50).

You put on nail polish, then while it's still sticky you use tweezers to place a tiny shiny piece of plastic in the desired spot on your nail and tap it down. Then you put on a layer of clear topcoat (a bottle of which was £3) to seal it in place. Total cost came in under £5, which is acceptable for an experiment, especially if the quantities are such that if it works out well you can repeat it.

I did the dishes, and I went to the loo (you should always do both of these things before trying to apply nail polish), then fired up a mouse-only computer game to play during drying-time and started painting.

Getting the tiny shiny pieces of plastic on was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It's definitely a tweezers job, but it turns out that in relation to a fingernail the pieces of plastic aren't so tiny after all.



As you can see, they're only a millimetre or so but they're still quite a significant lump. I figured that despite the hour they'd had for drying, they would come off within minutes of actually doing anything, but that it had been a fun experiment.

I scooped wet laundry out of the washing machine. I could feel the bumps being knocked by the fabric, but they stayed on.

I pegged some laundry out, carefully. The bumps snagged against the clothespegs and I dropped a couple of them, but the dots stayed in place.

Then it started to rain, so I scooped the laundry in as quickly as I could. I felt certain that the rush and the lack of attention would mean I'd lost at least one tiny shiny piece of plastic... nope, still there.

I went to the loo, which means buttons and zips and enemies of a manicure, but the dots survived, and they also survived the washing and towel-drying of hands.

I went for tea and cake with a friend. I could feel it every time the dots knocked against the cup or the teapot but they weren't going anywhere. They didn't mind me putting my coat on or taking it off, or fishing in my handbag for my phone/purse/tablets/etc.

I did some knitting and while I could feel the dots getting gently caught in the holes of the lace stitches, they're smooth and didn't snag. By this point I was really starting to love them.



We went for dinner with a couple of friends and I happily showed off my nails. We speculated about how many out of the ten tiny shiny pieces of plastic would be lost in the bed come morning. With the best will in the world, even I expected to lose at least one.

Wrong. All ten were still present and correct when I woke up and have also withstood showering, drying, and getting dressed, although in the interests of a full disclosure I should admit I didn't wash my hair.

There's a bit of me wondering if they might even survive until I meet up with a friend for knitting on Tuesday. And if not, then unlike the salon version I can repair it myself, since I still have more than a hundred tiny shiny pieces of plastic and an almost-full bottle of topcoat.

Ice cubes

We have the most *amazing* ice cube tray - cute and accessible.

Here's the manufacturer's website for the black + blum brrrrr ice cube tray, but I thought I'd take a picture that was a bit less stylish and a bit easier to link to, as well:



So basically it's a wide-necked bottle that has ten blobs along one side. It's up to the beholder whether this makes it a ten-legged polar bear. The bear's black nose, aka the lid, just pops off, nice and easy, no gripping or twiddling required. There is a hole in the part of the bottle that makes the bear's "back". You hold the bottle upright (the shape makes it easy to hold) and pour in water (hurrah for the wide neck) until it starts to come out of this hole. That means you have the right amount of water. You pop the lid on again. Then you stand the bear, on its legs (or whatever), in the freezer, where the gravity does a much better job of distributing the water than I have ever managed with a dribbling tap or shaking jug.

Another thing which makes it much better than a traditional ice cube tray for me is that I don't have to try and balance it over to the freezer. As long as the bear's nose and back are facing more or less up, then water can't come out. It's very anti-spill.

Getting the ice cubes out is even better. No wet hands, freezing fingers, cracking the tray, fumbling to lever out one or two, failing and sending the whole trayful across the floor. You just hold the bear by the head and bang it against something until you hear the rattle of some pieces of ice coming loose. Then you pop off the nose again and pour them out. Yay icy bear vomit!

Flowers

One of the unblogged adventures of 2013 was my tomato plants. We got a Heinz Tomato Ketchup-themed Christmas present that included a couple of little pots and a packet of tomato seeds. Having a less than stellar track record with novelty-gift plants, we didn't expect anything to actually grow. We just figured that there was nothing to lose by putting them in soil and seeing what happened.



Amazingly, they grew. In fact they grew beyond all expectation, despite snow and frost and neglect. My PA brought over some of her spare plant pots and some compost so that I could pot them on and they could carry on growing. I feared that the act of breaking them apart from their clumps in the tiny pots would kill them... no, they not only survived, but they continued to grow to the point when they got too big again and my lovely neighbour gave me a few more plant pots, plus some bamboo canes and plant ties to hold them up. I ended up with about 14 plants that grew about 50 decent-sized tomatoes between them, the only slight downside being that for some reason they didn't turn red until October, and ended up becoming soup rather than salads.

Once I had not just harvested but also disposed of the tomato plants, I realised that having the soil and the empty pots was a bit sad, so I went to a garden centre to get bulbs which require a level of wintertime maintenance that I can totally deal with, ie, none. Leaving the pots alone for a few cold, wet months resulted in snowdrops, crocuses, and then daffodils this spring.



The daffodils were followed by alliums and then that was it for the bulbs. The yard was bare again.

A day came, about a month ago, when I didn't have any particular tasks that needed doing and had planned to go have a day out somewhere new with my PA. Unfortunately I really wasn't feeling too well at all so I adjusted the activity level down to: go to a garden centre, find a nice little flowering shrub or something already in a pot to brighten up the yard again with minimal effort. Have a cup of tea and some cake at the garden centre cafe, and then come home. Small quiet excursion that is better than staring at four walls.

Unfortunately it was one of those days when even that was too much. I could barely push from the car park to the cafe. I looked at all the cakes and decided that no, I did not want cake (which is not like me). We got the tea for form's sake but I only managed to drink half of it before I absolutely had to go home. Plants didn't really seem like a priority.

My PA was understandably hesitant to leave me all on my own for the rest of the day. Instead she made sure I was safe and comfortable for a nap, and then went to fetch from her own greenhouse the excess plants that she hadn't planted in her garden. While I slept, she filled my pots with all sorts of plants. I was really touched by the gesture, and as the weeks have gone by, the flowers have bloomed into an ever more colourful display.



There's some white ones starting to open on the big plants at the back, and a few tiny blue ones hiding in the gaps between the pots. There's also scented ones mixed in... I don't know what any of them are called, but having them there to look at is making me so happy.

Coombe Country Park

This weekend Steve and I had a friend come to visit, and the three of us went to Coombe Country Park. It's very pretty and a really nice place to spend a sunny day. Entry is free, parking is the really quite reasonable sum of £1.90, and access is pretty good as these things go. It's "natural" paths rather than tarmac, so not the smoothest of rides, but in the dry weather the easy access route is very do-able and the medium access was what I would describe as bumpy, but possible with assistance.

I needed assistance three times.

The first time was to go over a bridge. The gradient of the slope up was just a little more than I could comfortably manage... I probably could have done it but there's no prizes for hurting yourself when you're with people who are entirely happy to give you a boost.

The second time was to go down a slope where the path had a deep rut all the way along the centre, presumably caused by a combination of feet, bikes, and from the look of it I suspect water when it rains. It was just a bit too wide for my chair to go astride it, and there wasn't quite enough space for me to go down one side of it - especially once nettles, tree roots, patches of loose pebbles, patches of loose sandy soil, etc got factored in. So Steve took my chair down and our friend took me, and we all made it safe and sound to the more solid path at the bottom of the hill.

The third time... the third time was the most terrifying, but was nothing to do with the park itself. It happened, of course, at about the furthest point of the two-mile medium access loop around the forest and conservation area. My left front wheel started making a funny noise. The funniness of noises is a bit subjective when you're talking about hauling a four-year-old cross-folding wheelchair along a forest track, but this was a really funny noise with more than a hint of ominousness. I looked down, and noticed that one of the two bolts holding the left front wheel unit on was sticking out by just over an inch. I put my brakes on, reached down, and caught the bolt as it came out completely and the whole wheel unit flopped.

Things got worse as I examined the bolt and saw it required an allen key. Although I had two pocket multitools with me, furnishing an assortment of screwdriver heads, cutting blades, bottle openers, tweezers, pliers, etc... the nearest allen key we knew of was in the car. Which was at least a mile away over terrain which in one direction was completely unknown and in the other direction would include going up the slope that I'd already needed help to get down.

I got out of the chair again and we all took a closer look to see how much of a field job could be done with the tools we had available. We hadn't lost any bits, and it seemed to have simply untwiddled itself rather than having sheared away or anything, so that was good. Unfortunately, Steve realised that lining up the bolt that had come out would mean undoing the second bolt as well to take the whole wheel unit right off, in order to align the whole thing properly for both bolts to go in together.

Being out and about, especially in nature-type places, always gives me a sort of thrill that people who've never been housebound don't quite get. Look at me, how daring I'm being, not only out of the house, but a mile or more away from the nearest car. Which is great until the point you're sitting on a dirt path, knowing that yes, that's right, you're an actual mile or more away from the nearest vehicle, and trying to stay calm while someone fully detaches a wheel from the object you depend on not just to get back to a place of safety but to move around independently once you're there.

Of course it could have been worse. There were three of us. It was a sunny, dry day with about eight hours until sunset. We were on an "official" path, we had phone signal, a picnic blanket, and plenty of water. I was hardly at risk of life or limb. I trust Steve, and I know that he has more mechanical ability than I do, and I know that he's read the manual, and I know he won't put me at unnecessary risk. I was happy to let him lead the repair effort, and he kept me informed and waited for my permission at each stage. Even so I was only one notch off a panic attack at the point the wheel was entirely removed.

Thankfully my faith was not misplaced. Within a few minutes Steve had got the wheel back on and we were able to move again, albeit somewhat cautiously and with all three of us continually peering at the chair every few minutes. The rest of the path was much kinder, and bit by bit we reached the visitor centre, got some lunch, and then I installed myself on the picnic blanket within not just sight but wobbling distance of the car.

On our return home, Steve tightened up every bolt he could find on the chair, using the Official Toolkit. Apparently most of them were pretty tight and the ones on the right front wheel were basically immovable, so we don't know why the left one managed to work loose.

The bad news is, now the car has started making a funny noise.

Dining style

Technically we don't have a dining room. We have one long main room (about 8 metres or 26ft), that sort of gradates from the TV, sofa, and wall of books at one end, through my office-like zone of computer desk, filing cabinet, shelves of ringbinders, to the end near the back door where my wheelchair and the laundry stuff lives.

Growing up, for me, dinners were always, always eaten at the table. Without exception. If you were ill, but still had an appetite for your dinner, then a concession might be made that you could put an elbow on the table to prop your weary head.

There followed a steep learning curve in my mid-late teens as I started taking some meals at friends' houses (which often meant bedsits or houseshares) and experienced the excitement of eating takeaway or ready meals from the carton, often with a plastic fork or even with fingers, while sitting on the floor, or a sofa, or a bed! I learned when someone hands you a college folder or a freebie newspaper at dinnertime it's so your lap doesn't get burned, not because they want you to read it. I learned that cushions are more comfortable but less disposable, especially in the context of sweet and sour sauce.

For their part, some of my friends were caught off-balance when they would come to my house and their plateful of dinner was placed on the table. To this day I know my mother winces at the memory of one of my sister's ex-boyfriends who would sit at the dining table with one foot on the seat of the chair, his knee up by his shoulder, and walk away as soon as his plate was empty without so much as a thank you. I've got to admit that, given the choice of which scenario I would rather be unable to cope with, I think it's better knowing how to sit and eat politely at a table.

When I moved out the first time, into a shared flat, the three of us didn't have the resources for much furniture. The part-furnished flat had come with a cooker, one bed, one ancient sofa, and one coffee table. The crockery we had scrounged was my mother's twenty-year-old "best set" that she had recently acknowledged was taking up vast amounts of cupboard space, had no cash nor emotional value, and was considerably less attractive than the new set of everyday crockery she'd just bought. A slightly bizarre situation then arose where cheap student-y meals at the flat were eaten around the coffee table, but from highly incongruous floral-patterned china.

Back at my mother's house, things had become a bit more relaxed. Some meals would be eaten at the table, others in front of the TV. Having the choice was nice, and when I moved out again, this time on my own into my tiny weeny shoebox-sized flat, I bought a cheap second-hand drop leaf table and chairs (like this) so that I could continue having that choice. The room was far too small to allow the table to open fully, but being able to open out one half of it for the duration of a meal was definitely a bonus. Not to mention that being obliged to fold it away again at the end of the meal meant it could not suffer from Flat Surface Syndrome.

With Steve, dining was not originally, an issue. I would come to stay for a week, we would spend that week mostly eating food at restaurants. He also had a folding dining table but as we discovered when we tried to use it, the leaves could not boast stability in the horizontal plane as an attribute. To press down with a knife or fork was to risk a lap full of dinner. Over time, we formed a habit of eating in front of the TV, and even bought a couple of proper, cushioned, wipe clean dinner trays to make it easier.

Only in the last couple of years did it register to me that it wasn't really easier. All through my teens and early twenties I'd felt that non-table dining was more relaxed than going to all the fuss and trouble of laying a table and sitting up straight. But now... getting older and (why not admit it) bigger and less flexible... I found that for a lot of meals it was quite awkward. Having a meal with gravy meant not being able to stretch or lean to get my drink off the floor. Leaning back meant drips on my clothes. Sharing items and condiments ended up neglected in the middle of the floor because they couldn't be reached for mid-meal. When I was tired or in pain, the plate was just one more thing to try and factor in to balancing. As for having people over for dinner, well, for anything apart from pizza it was outright embarrassing, especially when they declined a tray and didn't know about using the freebie newspaper to protect the cushion...



The table is solid mango, the chairs are solid oak and surprisingly comfortable. It's Proper Furniture. The whole lot is heavy and sturdy enough to lean on when standing and I can see it lasting well beyond the five-year warranty period. And! Sitting at this table to eat our dinner is so enjoyable. Especially for sharing foods, like bread and salad and fajita fillings, to sit with a plate in front of you and help yourself from a central dish is just better.

Of course this does mean we'll have to sort out the decor of that blank wall. And the light fitting in that part of the room is frankly tat. And I've been thinking about curtains...

BADD: Less hostility, please!

Could everyone please stop glaring at the people who support me?

No, seriously, knock it off. The people who support me, which encompasses friends, family, and paid employees, are absolutely invaluable to me. They increase my quality of life more than I could ever describe.

Yet all too often, when we are out in public, they are subjected to tutting, glaring, and occasionally verbal abuse. They're sick of it. So I have to put myself in the way of it. I'm sick of having to do that.

The Battle Of The Blue Badge

We're out and about. We've parked, legally and legitimately, in an accessible parking spot for blue badge holders. My blue badge is correctly displayed.

Half an hour later, we're not going home yet, but one of us needs something we've left in the car - a jacket, an umbrella, a bottle of sun cream. Or maybe we've purchased something that's a bit too bulky to carry around all day that we want to lock in the car while we continue shopping.

Fatigue is a big part of my illness. An extra few hundred metres to the car and back can make a significant difference to me. Especially if to a person using the stairs it's only fifty metres. It should be possible for me to ask my non-disabled companion to nip back to the car while I use the opportunity to sit quietly for a few minutes and gather my spoons. That would be the sensible thing, right?

Instead, I end up going with them so that the visibility of my wheelchair provides a force field to protect them from the hostility of the self-appointed parking police who believe they can assess disability and determine legitimate blue badge use at a single glance.

No companion of mine has ever reported any trouble from an actual parking attendant.

Drive-By Training Sessions

Since I got the power-assisted wheels of awesomeness, I've really developed a taste for independent mobility. I know, these wacky concepts some people are into. The rule, therefore, is: unless I am losing consciousness, or I am oblivious to an imminent danger, or I have specifically requested that you do so, it is never okay to take hold of me or my wheelchair. It's pretty much the same rule that applies to physically grasping anyone to take control of their movement.

I can go up hills. I go more slowly than I do on the flat, but the wheels do the work. Sometimes passers-by ask me if I'd like any help, and - as long as they believe me when I say No Thank You - that's okay.

What's not okay is when they stare pointedly at my companion while saying "someone should be helping her," or worse, "you should be ashamed, letting her struggle like that."

On one occasion it got so bad that the friend who was with me asked for permission to just put their hands on the handles of my chair lest they be fried alive by the laser-beam eyeballs of a particularly indignant stranger. I refused - I will not reinforce the false prejudices of others by pretending to be more helpless than I am - and to my friend's credit, they respected my refusal.

It did impact the mood of the afternoon, though. If we'd been walking at that pace, no one would have batted an eyelid and we'd have been free to enjoy ourselves without intervention.

Dominion Of The Golden Throne

Yeah, you knew this was going to crop up. The accessible loo.

My companion waits outside while I'm doing what one does. The locks and indicators on the doors of accessible loos are notoriously unpredictable, so sometimes I'll ask them to let any other would-be widdlers wanting to go in know that it's occupied.

And this is the one where disabled people themselves are the prime offenders. From the other side of the door I hear them refusing to listen to my companion's explanation, barging past, rattling the handle, and launching into a rant about the facilities being for disabled people only - a statement which also includes a lot of assumptions about the "disability status" of my companion. On a less dramatic and more frequent level, there's the people who position themselves to block my exit from (and my companion's potential entry to) the cubicle. As a rule, they have the good grace to blush and get out of the way when they deduce from my wheelchair that oh, I am disabled, and maybe this person was just waiting for me, and oh gosh, what if I'd opened the door because I needed them to come help me, oops... but that doesn't help. It just makes me thankful that my wheelchair, as well as being a mobility aid, is a symbol. It makes me worry that one day when I'm walking with my stick, which has less symbolic impact, the situation won't be defused as efficiently. It makes me scared for the various people I know with leg or back impairments who can stand and walk quite well unaided but need a fixed handle to safely manage to sit down.

Situations like these make me upset that yet another everyday non-event has been turned into a battleground, and guilty that I have exposed my friend or employee to abuse, and powerless because I feel fairly certain it'll happen again.


Again and again, the barrier that is hardest to knock down is the attitudes of other people, and our own. Even when I have privileges like the blue badge, equipment like the wheels, accessible facilities like the loos, accessible environments with step-free ramped routes, and appropriate human support - the issue of disablist attitudes remains, and impacts negatively on me and on the people around me.

This is the barrier that Blogging Against Disablism seeks to overcome.



If you haven't already, please visit Diary Of A Goldfish to read more posts.

BADD 2014

The ninth annual Blogging Against Disablism day will be on Thursday, 1st May. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

Due to the overwhelming everythingness of last year, I didn't participate in BADD 2013. However, I loved taking part in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. I'm thrilled that it's happening again in 2014.

BADD is not just for disabled people. If you feel like you have anything to say on the topic, then please go to Diary Of A Goldfish (Blogging Against Disablism Day) to sign up.

Bank Holiday

The bank holiday weekend managed to coincide with some absolutely magnificent weather, so on Friday we loaded up the car - me with my picnic blanket and knitting, Steve and a friend with more camera equipment than you can shake a stick at - and set off for Wales in search of Scenery.

It'll be a while before the lads get round to uploading anything from their Big Cameras, but here's a snapshot from Steve's action cam:



This is Lake Vyrnwy, as viewed from a picnic spot accessible from the perimeter road. Getting from the parking area to the grass, while only a few metres, was a bit precarious in places. I opted for wobbling rather than wheeling, although I think a fit person in a more sporty chair might well manage. No filters have been added to the picture - the sky really was that blue. I started off knitting on my blanket, but after a couple of rounds I was just sprawled out, soaking up the sunshine and listening to the water.

We considered trying to visit the area by the waterfall where Steve and I got engaged, but the track now has a locked gate across it, so we had to abandon that plan. It's slightly sad that I won't be able to get to it again, but we're not planning to get engaged again, so it's not too much of a tragedy. And it was a bit of a dire track.

So instead, we carried on with a scenic drive along to Bala, with another couple of stops around the lake there. I seem to have avoided getting sunburnt, although that's more luck than judgement. It's a good start to the summer.

Doorbell: a revision

I waited oh-so-patiently for the sugru to set. The full 24 hours, and then an extra night's sleep to be on the safe side and to share the trial run with Steve (only fair since it was him who sourced the doorbell itself and created the mp3 for it to play).

Ha.

The sugru blob I'd made - thick enough to accommodate the smiley face drawn onto it - was, when set, too thick to be flexible enough to push the doorbell-button through it with a single finger. It was also too large in diameter to press the button with it, as the whole red circle couldn't go into the casing.

I haven't explained that well, but the upshot was that the only way to press the doorbell was to hold the unit in your hand and squeeze as hard as possible. Not really practical.

In retrospect, the sugru blob needed to be smaller than the original button, or thin enough to be bendy, or both. At least, unlike with the daffodils I ruined, I know what I did wrong.

Thankfully, the folks at sugru are aware that their products may be used by the inept and hard-of-thinking and give tips on their website for how to remove it. A few minutes of running my fingernail around and around the red button loosened it enough for me to be able to peel it away.

As a happy side effect, the previously white button has taken on some of the red hue from the sugru, making it visible - which was the original aim.



I've managed to correctly spell my name, so that's something.

Bill Bailey's Devil's Interval Doorbell

The other night, Steve and I were watching Bill Bailey's Tinselworm. It's entertaining in many ways - interesting as well as funny - and we've both watched it several times before.

For some reason, this time, we got to the section on doorbells...



... and looked at each other.

To the internet!

Step one: a doorbell which can be personalised. Soon Steve had found one that would play mp3s from an SD card.

Step two: creating an mp3 of the notes we wanted. The notes in question are at about 1:50 on that YouTube clip. But trying to get those few seconds from the DVD, without the crowd sounds, would have been tricky. Since we only needed three notes - and since Steve has enough of a musical ear to be able to identify what those notes are - the free trial version of Pianoteq was our friend here.

Step three was a poor design issue. The "button" part of the doorbell is white, and the bit you press, is also white. It needed to be more visible. Clearly a job for Sugru.



Twenty-four hours for the Sugru to set, and then who knows how long desperately waiting for somebody, anybody, to press the doorbell...

Daffodils

These are the daffodils that had not yet bloomed at the time I was messing up primary school science. The ones in the black pot on the right, as you can see, were not so fortunate.

The two in front seem to have double flowers on them - almost like a second daffodil blooming inside the "nose" of the first. They're rather topheavy.

I think it's for the best if these ones remain in their pots, attached to their bulbs, and beautifully bright yellow.

Not the return I'd hoped for

You thought the adventures in cake were pathetic?

Ha.

It can be safely said that 2013 was a catastrophically bad year for me. Things happening to and around me that I could not influence, things I tried to do going horribly wrong despite my best efforts. I would go so far as to say that it was the worst year of my life (the previous contender being around 1998; the big difference being that now I'm in my 30s I have more and better coping strategies than my teenage self). Some of it was single events, some of it was longer-term dramas that just went from bad to worse in ways that would be dismissed by soap-opera writers as simply too implausible. Much of it is still ongoing. Most of it I prefer to keep off the internet.

Still, there were good things. There was sunshine. There was a trip to see friends and family. There were two trips to the Eden Project. There was blue hair.

And through it all, there was my blog, dusty and neglected. I kept thinking about posting but couldn't. Every time I sat down to write, it just seemed too personal or too pointless - or sometimes both.

Coping strategies, right? I should just sit down and write something. Get on with it. Worried about it being too personal? Okay, write something impersonal. Can't think of anything to write about? Well, do something you can write about, and then write about that.

Out came the daffodils, and they reminded me of a primary school "science experiment" where we put food dye in the vases of cut daffodils. The flowers pull up the coloured water, and the petals take on the colour of the dye. For the competent among you, here's the instructions.

So. This blog post was meant to be a nice, positive comeback, lots of pretty pictures, of my lovely yellow daffodils, followed by my lovely multicoloured daffodils.

Unfortunately, this week I've thrown out about a dozen daffodils that... well. If you peered closely, under a good light, you'd recognise a few streaks of colour, but before that, the word that would come to mind would be "dead". "Withered", perhaps, if you were feeling generous.

It's only a mercy that I don't have offspring to look disappointed at me and demand to know why it hasn't worked.

Cake (picture-heavy)

For reasons too complicated to explain, I found myself committed to baking a cake for a friend in another country who isn't going to be here to eat it any time soon. The only relevant part of the backstory is that I was meant to make a cake some months ago and made a bloody great mess on the floor instead. It's almost like I got DLA for a reason.

Nevertheless.

Part One was done in advance. I found a recipe, of the sort that tells the cook to get an adult to help them with the oven, and went and bought the stuff I'd need.

I think eggs and butter were the only things I had in the house anyway, and I didn't have enough of either, so I purchased the whole recipe. Using mostly supermarket-own-brand ingredients this came to about £15. Admittedly I have a lot of stuff left over - flour, sugar, icing sugar, vanilla essence - but I'm really unlikely to use any of it. Even if we just add up the things that were entirely used up it comes to over £8. It would definitely have been cheaper, in monetary terms, to just buy a cake.

Nevertheless, again. This is not about eating cake. This is about making a cake.

Greasing the cake tin wasn’t too traumatic. Measuring ingredients was a bit okay if a little messy at points. Creaming the butter and sugar brought me back to that whole "DLA for a reason" thing. But that's okay, because the difference between making a cake and cooking a meal is that I can take as long as I like to make a cake, and it doesn't matter if it's the only thing I do today (I will now stop banging on about DLA. I'm just always worried, when I post about my biannual adventures in cookery, that someone's going to try and use it to report me).

Adding the eggs to the butter and sugar was… well it started okay and then I thought it looked a bit lumpy, but no matter how much I stirred the lumps wouldn’t go away, so I figured, it’s butter, it’ll have to melt when it cooks if nothing else, and pressed on, adding a tidge of vanilla essence, a tidge of milk, and the sifted cocoa and self-raising flour.

The resulting dough was tasty… uh, did I say tasty? I meant it looked tasty. Yes. Looked. Having no great cake-making expertise I did wonder whether it was meant to be dough. If it was meant to be batter then I’d done something really badly wrong at the measuring stage. But I was too messy to Google it, or to take pictures and ask Twitter. So I kept going.

Wrangling the wodge of dough from the mixing bowl was awkward, and then it kind of sat in a big sticky messy lump in the middle of the cake tin. It didn't really look like any kind of proto-cake so I sort of splatted it out a bit. Not squished it flat or anything, but made it a bit more circular and more evenly shaped. I probably should have taken a picture before it went into the oven, but it was already in the oven when I realised that, and even I know you're not allowed to keep opening it.

The time it took to bake was longer than the time I needed to find instructional videos on how to check a cake is done and how to get it out of the tin. I have a springform cake tin with a removable base, so getting the cake onto the cooling rack was remarkably easy. A couple of people have already expressed jealousy about my cake tin. Seriously, it cost less than the cake ingredients. If you enjoy baking, and are frustrated by normal tins, then just get one.

And lo! Cake! Properly baked, not dry, not burnt, not soggy!


There was, however, one small problem.

At just an inch and a half in height, the stage of the recipe that called for cutting the entire cake in half horizontally was going to be more of a challenge than this novice could handle. Happily, I'd been looking for a way to avoid that particular challenge anyway, so it didn't take me too long to decide that actually, I'd just cut the cake in half the easy way, and stack the halves into a semicircular cake.

I mixed up the filling and while that was chilling in the fridge, I had my lunch:


It was very tasty.

Finally, it was time to assemble the cake.

From this side it pretty much looks like chocolate mousse with cake somewhere in the middle...


... but from the other side it looks much more cakelike.


If I was doing it again, I would probably try and get a smaller cake tin. I also think that while the whole raspberries look good on the top, for inside the cake, making it a sandwich of chocolate filling on one side and raspberry jam on the other would work better than thick chocolate filling with whole raspberries added.

I have a great sense of accomplishment for having successfully made a cake. All things considered, though, I probably won't be doing it again. The cost of ingredients, the pain, the time, the cleanup, are just all too much for what's basically a pretty mediocre cake. In future I will continue to outsource all of my cake requirements to the lovely experts at Sweet As.

Eden Project - Time of Gifts

(picture heavy)

Steve recently finished what I shall tactfully describe as a "gruelling" work contract (and yes, that is putting it mildly) which took a toll on both of us, and we decided that we were owed a little break before getting into the fun of preparing for Christmas and trying to figure out where our life goes next.

Given a free choice of anywhere to go, nine times out of ten I will pick the Eden Project (the tenth time I will beg to stay in bed and be brought cups of tea). In the last year we've been to Cornwall three times, and on each occasion we've visited the Project for two or three days, and I still always feel sad to leave.

Last time we went was in May, when it looked like this:


In November, even inside the Biomes, it's more like this:


I still get a great sense of peacefulness and well-being from the Project. And the access. Oh, the access. No being sent round the back, no staff tutting at you if you can't keep up, no "special" holding pens areas, no leaving you sitting by the bins while they try to find out if anyone knows where the keys for the service lift have got to. Universal design, access is front doors and main paths all the way. The slopes can be a bit of a workout and there is a certain amount of mileage involved in getting around the place, but they have scooters and powerchairs which can be booked in advance. November being the off-season, they weren't all booked out, so at the gate I was politely offered the option of using one of their powerchairs "if it would be easier." More importantly, my choice of sticking with my own chair was accepted without fuss.

As he tends to, Steve took hundreds of photographs of all sorts of beautiful plants, flowers, sculptures and suchlike, and I'm sure soon he'll load them up to his Flickr stream which will be much better than me trying to describe. But he's let me pop a few onto my own Flickr stream so that I can blog this.

The second day of our stay, the Friday, was the beginning of the winter celebrations at Eden, which they call the "Time of Gifts". There is, of course, a Father Christmas with a cohort of elves and a stable full of actual reindeer, much of which is centred around the Sami people of Northern Europe. I was more interested in the goings-on within the Mediterranean Biome, though - storytelling, music and craft activities particularly. There are definitely worse things to do on a Friday afternoon than to sit and make Christmas decorations and chat with a bunch of friendly strangers, listening to live music and surrounded by the gorgeous smells of Mediterranean plants. As it got darker, Steve returned from his photography spree and brought me a hot chocolate to warm me up while we listened to the evening story and music.



Then it was time to leave the Biome and get ready for the lantern parade. There were large sculpture lanterns being carried mostly by staff and volunteers, but anyone who wanted could join in the parade with a pyramid-shaped lantern on a stick, with a candle inside it. Anywhere else, I'd have assumed I couldn't participate. At Eden, no one batted an eyelid. So here I am, in front of the big Christmas tree outside the Core, carrying a lantern wedged between my legs and my wheelchair, waiting for the parade to start:

And modelling my own handknit hat by the light of my lantern:


The procession began with large sculpture-lanterns coming down the ZigZag path towards the Core building, where we were waiting. It was an impressive sight, although with a slightly hairy moment as a nearby child forgot to pay attention to his own lantern (my reaction of "excuse me! please don't set fire to me!" made me realise just how incurably English I can be). As the sculpture-lanterns and their accompanying drummers came past, we were filtered into the procession. It was quite a strange experience to be actively participating in something like this, being one of lots of little bits. There was a very carnival atmosphere.


The procession wound around the gardens outside the Biomes, lit by flame torches with occasional groups of non-participating onlookers. It ended by a gazebo of fairy-lights, where the Eden Choir were waiting to perform. Since the wheelchair makes me an honorary short person, I was ushered to the front with the kids so we could see.



Listening to the Eden Choir was lovely, and some of the drummers joined in ad lib. Then there was a short and unexpected burst of fireworks which sent Steve whirling around to try and catch a shot:


Finally, this lovely piece of fire art, lit while the choir sang, reminded me very much of the Paralympic closing ceremony which meant that in a strange way it reminded me of summer again.

Bad Sexual Etiquette

Warning: this post is about rape issues.

If you are affected by rape issues you may wish to visit the Rape Crisis website (England and Wales).




It doesn't really matter who he is. Maybe he's your boyfriend, of weeks or months or years. Perhaps he's the old schoolfriend who you met again a few hours ago downstairs at the party. Perhaps he's a "friend-with-benefits" who you've known for years. Maybe he's your husband. Maybe he's the man you don't want your husband to find out about. Maybe you've had sex with him before, maybe not.

It doesn't matter. He's a nice guy. You have no reason to think badly of him. Your taste in men is surely not that bad. You've dumped plenty of idiots and refused to even consider dating plenty more. This one has passed the filters, and you want to have sex with him.

That said, you want to use a condom. Again, it really doesn't matter what your reasons are. Maybe you want to avoid disease. Probably, you don't want to risk getting pregnant. Perhaps you're feeling aware that it would, for whatever reason, be awkward for you to try and get hold of the morning-after pill. Maybe you're on the everyday pill but you missed one, or are just wanting that extra layer of reassurance.

So you're kissing him, and both of you are enjoying it, and you want to have sex, but you slam on the brakes and one way or another you raise The Condom Question. And despite the hormones and desires and excitement, you refuse to go any further until he's agreed and there's a reassuring square foil packet sitting ready on the bedside table (or the dashboard, or the refreshments trolley in the company boardroom, hey, whatever works for you).

Then, with gleeful abandon, the brakes, and the rest of your clothes, can start coming off. You're excited. You're aroused. You are spread out, relaxed, enjoying all sorts of foreplay and eager to have wonderful, enthusiastically consensual, penetrative sex.

And he's between your legs
Oh!
kissing his way up your body
amazing kisses
making you feel fantastic
and suddenly
no, he can't be
he's pushing into you
he wouldn't
and the little foil packet is still sitting there, unopened.

"No!" you say, and your voice sounds like it's coming from a long way away, so you try again, "no, we need to use a condom..."

"It's okay," he says, his familiar, nice-guy face smiling over you.

"No, it's not okay!" you shout? whisper? not even sure any more and you try to push him away but your muscles won't work properly even as he caresses your useless spaghetti arms and gently, almost lovingly, but quite firmly enough, holds them down over your head, and tells you to relax I would relax if you would just put the bloody condom on because he's not going to come in you.

As if that makes much difference. You were awake in sex-ed class, you had it drilled into you that pregnancy and disease are possible from pre-ejaculate. You're certain that at this point in your life you don't want to deal with the mental and physical strain of a pregnancy, or an abortion, or childbirth, or raising a child, or giving a child up for adoption. This is not a risk you wanted to take.

But "no" hasn't worked and I can't move and my mind is whirling too much to give a lecture on sexual health issues...

His face is still over yours. He's still smiling, still kissing you, mistaking your panic for pleasure. He tells you that he wants to feel you orgasm like this orgasm? I'm not even turned on any more and with a shiver you realise that if you can't physically force him off you then the only remaining option is to fake it, get it over with, quickly as possible, minimise the risk, get him off me.

So you breathe, and you try to ignore the little voice that's screaming getoffme getoffme getoffme and you say oh, mmm, yes, NO! and flex your Kegel muscles as best you can until oh thank god he's convinced, and he withdraws, and the smile on his face tells you that your faked orgasm has reassured him that you actually really enjoyed that experience when in fact you're lying there still and boneless and in shock, trying to process what's happened.

He didn't come. Do I still need the morning after pill? Would I even be able to get hold of it without admitting what's just happened? Am I prepared to take the risk? How do I arrange a sexual health screening without anyone finding out? What's an abortion actually like? First things first, what's the date, how long until my next- WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW?

What is happening now is that he's pushing into you again, and this time he's wearing the condom, and you are expected to be grateful for this can't be happening, can't be happening, can't be happening you feel sick and your stomach muscles clench and you gasp for breath and this is also interpreted as excitement and finally he comes and he withdraws and this time you practically leap off the bed and get your clothes back on and you're out of the room in ten seconds flat even though your arms and legs still aren't quite doing what they're told.

He follows you. He's the clothed, smiling man who not half an hour previously was an entirely nice chap, talking to you and making you smile and showering you with affection.

He doesn't think he's a rapist.

Do you?

Problem?

The big line being pushed by our beloved government this week is about "problem families" and the need to "crack down" on them. The right-wing press have seized on this, breaking out charming descriptors like "Britain's worst scumbags". There are apparently 120,000 of them, costing Our Brave Nation £9bn every year. Even the supposedly-neutral BBC agrees, although by now their oft-used phrase "according to ministers" basically translates as "you might want to take this with a pinch of salt."

So, what makes a "problem family"? How do we define the country's "worst scumbags"?

Well, that's where it all gets a bit runny. No one's quite sure where the figures of 120,000 and £9bn have come from - those ministers so keen to make these assertions aren't so keen to have their assertions examined and have not been forthcoming with their sources. Fullfact.org have given it their best shot and come up with the 117,000 families in England classed as "Families with Multiple Problems" as the nearest likely contender. The definition of that is clearly set out. An FMP is a family that matches at least five of the following seven criteria:

• No parent in the family is in work
• Family lives in poor quality or overcrowded housing
• No parent has any qualifications
• Mother has mental health problems
• At least one parent has a longstanding limiting illness, disability or infirmity
• Family has low income (below 60% of the median)
• Family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items.

This quite surprised me because by that yardstick, I spent most of my teenage years in an FMP. My mother was not in work (1) due to her longstanding limiting illness, disability or infirmity (2) which meant that once my father was gone, we were a single-parent family reliant on state benefits which were a low income (3). We had difficulty affording proper food (a regular meal was "pasta and gravy", no meat or vegetables, which I didn't even realise was unusual until I was 19) and most of my clothes were second-hand (4). And our house was in a pretty awful state of repair, cracked windows and dangerous electrical wiring being two of the simpler issues (5). Ding, Family with Multiple Problems.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has been ranting about these families not in terms of their circumstances, but in terms of their behaviour - crime and social disorder, truancy, alcohol abuse, and "ruining the lives of their neighbours".

Hmm. My sister and I were never in trouble with the police, we always had a parental note on the rare occasions when we missed school, the only alcohol in the house during our teenage years was the occasional bottle of wine given to our mother as a gift, and we got on well with the neighbours on both sides. We performed well in school, engaged in extra-curricular activities, got home by our curfew and were basically normal, boring, well-behaved kids.

Which on one level is admittedly irrelevant. My personal circumstances are anecdote, not data. To examine the data, go back to the Fullfact article, which is excellent in that regard and links back to all manner of primary data sources, and indicates that the number of FMPs which also have children exhibiting problem behaviour is closer to 46,000.

What I can say - anecdotally - is that while my teenage self would have accepted the descriptor "Family with Multiple Problems" as an unpalatable but undeniable truth, she'd be rather upset by the idea that to live with those problems was interchangeable with behaving in an antisocial or criminal manner. When getting home at 5pm after doing her homework on the school computers with a bunch of other kids in similar circumstances, she'd be quite put out by Mr Pickles' view that children like her needed to get their truancy under control. When babysitting, for free, the child of someone who volunteered one evening a week at a social group for people with learning difficulties, she'd be quite angry to hear Prime Minister David Cameron assert that people like her and the person she was babysitting for were creating "a huge amount of social problems, for themselves but also for the wider community".

Please, please, please, can we stop conflating "poverty" and "immorality", "lives with problems" and "is a problem", and "not in paid employment" and "does nothing of any use at all."

Timing

I often feel quite frustrated about the poor synchronicity between my physical capacity to do things, my opportunities to leave the house, and the weather. For instance, when it's sunny and I feel good and I want to go out and get stuff done, but I'm stuck indoors. Or when my work desk is clear, the weather is okay, and Steve/my PA/someone else is loading my chair into the car for a gleefully-anticipated trip somewhere, but I feel awful and wish I could go back to bed.

So it's with a sort of wry satisfaction that I am sitting here, admittedly in quite a lot of pain while feeling really quite unpleasant with medication side effects, but listening to the rain thrash down outside, snuggled up in a fluffy jumper and the safe and certain knowledge that the nearest I need to get to going Out There today was this morning when I brought the milk in.

There's not even much I need to do In Here.

I'm dopey and tired and I can't sleep for pain, but at least for once my brain's not filling itself up with all the things I should or would rather be doing.

'Cept maybe make another cup of tea.

First Anniversary

It seems hard to believe, but Evilstevie and I have been married for an entire year.

Truth be told, the year, while not tragic, has not been a terrific one either. His work schedule has involved a level of "out of hours" work rather higher than we had expected and this extra work tends to crop up at extremely short notice - we rarely know in the morning whether we will be having an evening meal together. His workload over the last twelve months has been so heavy that it was January before he was able to take time off work for our "honeymoon" and he is still accruing "time off in lieu of hours worked" faster than he is getting a chance to actually use it. For my part, chronic illness does not respond well to such chaotic routines, so my pain and energy levels are no longer as well controlled as they once were, which in turn means the carefully balanced dominoes of my overall health and ability to Do Things (work, socialise, eat properly, manage disability bureaucracy) have crashed. It's all a bit of a mess, really.

On the bright side, we're very much still hanging on to each other and making each others' worlds that little bit nicer. This is definitely a more positive outcome than the alternative, which would be each of us yelling at the other "this is all your fault!"

And on the even brighter still side, at the beginning of May, Evilstevie came home with the biggest grin I'd seen in a long time and proudly announced that he'd booked the week of our anniversary off work, and we both squeaked and hugged each other and began to make plans.

On the morning of our anniversary, we had a quick photo-session to try out an idea I'd picked up via Ravelry. This was to take a picture of the two of us holding a picture of the two of us from our wedding. We took several - this is one of my favourites, although you can click through to see the others:



Then next year we print off one of those pictures and do the same thing again... you get the idea.

Photos taken, we packed ourselves into the car and set off to use an outstanding wedding gift from some very generous friends - a night at a luxury B&B in Devon. The weather steadily improved as we drove south and by the time we arrived I was regretting my failure to pack sun-cream and sandals. Instead we got a chance to sit in the shade looking out at glorious countryside, with tea and knitting for me, and coffee and camera for Evilstevie. Dinner in a nearby pub/restaurant was delicious and falling asleep in a beautiful room under crisp, fresh sheets felt like the holiday had properly begun.

The following morning, after guiltily declining most of the humongous breakfast spread on offer in the B&B's dining room, we loaded back into the car to go to one of my favourite places on earth - the Eden Project.





We first visited the project in January, and if you GiftAid your entry fee then you can get a year's pass to return as often as you like (or at least, as often as you can, because I think I could go every week for a year and not get bored). A brief stop to share the joy with Twitter, and then we spent the morning trekking up and down the outdoor areas, the idea being that if it started to rain, then we could head for the indoor biomes. Of course it didn't rain at all, and by the time we'd decided to stop exploring outdoors and head for the Link, my shoulders were about ready to drop off. We had a break for a late lunch, but I felt that I wouldn't manage much more pushing and that I'd like to just go into the smaller Mediterranean Biome to relax, instead of trying to hike around the larger, steeper, hotter Rainforest Biome. Evilstevie agreed and we made our way across.

That was where we found "the Back-rub team" offering 15 minutes of reiki back massage for £10, which to my burning shoulders and floppy exhausted arms seemed like a wonderful idea.

It really was. I mean, I didn't leap up and dance my way around the citrus grove or anything, but after a bit more of a rest and stretch I was able to not only get around the Mediterranean Biome but in short bursts I managed the Rainforest as well.

That night we crashed out at an unremarkable Travelodge in Bodmin, with the idea being that in the morning we'd be able to head home or elsewhere as the fancy took us. I'm sure nobody will be surprised to hear that in the morning, despite being shattered, we went straight back to Eden - we didn't find the back-rub team but we caught the Storytelling and had a lovely lunch before reluctantly heading for home and a couple of days to recover.

This is a technical document

Well, of course, it isn't, but I could put words like Cisco and network and voice over internet protocol all over it, and then it would look a bit like a technical document. It wouldn't make any sense, but I can't imagine who'd notice.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, there have been complaints. A particular reader is being a Bad Example To The Younger Generation by reading my blog at work, and apparently I must post more often. It's okay, English is unlikely to be the first language of anyone peeking over his shoulder. Yes, hello you. :)

There now follows a diagram. This proves the technical nature of this document which is entirely work related.



Look, I'm sorry. I mean to write more. I also mean to not just write about disability. I want to write more about my life and what I'm doing, but things divide into two groups:

• Things which are too boring and inconsequential to write about.
• Things which are quite interesting and I want to write about, but after doing the things, I'm too tired to write about the things until later.

Perhaps I should try doing shorter posts?

Today, I did some grocery shopping online. The best bit of doing online shopping when your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, is that when the shopping arrives, you've forgotten what you ordered. It's as if some kind of benevolent pixie sent you £70 of delicious food, and there isn't a single item you don't like!

I also had my laundry done. Yes, that's right - don't tell any of the women in my family, but I use a laundry service for my towels and bedlinen. I am a slattern who does not do her own housework. Or possibly a person who prefers not to injure herself wrestling large, wet, heavy pieces of cloth. Either way, in the morning the nice man picks up a sports bag of smelly linen from my house and in the evening he brings it back, fresh, clean, dry, and neatly folded.

I'm struggling with the paperwork for my assistants at the moment - making sure they get paid, and the monitoring that Social Services conduct to be sure I am using the money properly. I set up my systems really well, and my more lucid self has written out clear instructions for how to do each stage so that when I am not very well, I can still get things done. The problem at the moment is I quite literally don't know what day it is. I have "today" and "yesterday". All other days are confused together in a big tangle. So the timesheets and invoices got in a muddle and weren't submitted at the proper times... I think I've unpicked it, though.

Steve and I have been married for nearly a year and we are wondering what we should do for our anniversary. He's been able to book a little bit of time off work and we're looking at options. We have all these ideas - we'd love to go back to the Eden Project, or alternatively there are a few places in London we'd like to visit, for instance the Science Museum - but Steve is so tired out from work, I think he could sleep for a fortnight. We could just stay home and try to put together our wedding photo album. Right now we have thousands of photographs backed up to multiple storage devices, but unless you count shoving a USB stick into a digital photo frame, no album. There are also several guests who we have no pictures of, which is a bit sad.

The book I'm reading at the moment is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have read it many times - I first picked it up in high school. It's a bit of escapism, I suppose. I have the DVD as well, but I think the DVD won't make much sense to people who haven't read the book because it misses out an awful lot of backstory and historical detail. Some of the "historical" detail is inaccurate but then it is a fiction novel.

I don't know. What else? What do you want to know?

Following technical complaint about the diagram above: (written by evilstevie)
This diagram clearly only holds true for a relatively small number of passwords - above a certain point you are either some kind of memory-whizz or use a password-manager program to ensure the right password goes in the right box. This has to be the case as most applications of passwords also have something in place to prevent brute-force guessing of passwords, either a counter or timer (or in some cool applications, both) to make it difficult or impossible for you to try more than a few passwords. At a certain point on the graph you simply get a flat-line as you can't enter any more wrong passwords and you stop making new ones or come up with a new way of dealing with passwords. Also, I'd like to add that Batsgirl's clearly been around me too much when she considers VOIP usable in everyday conversation or blogging...

Naidex 2012

On Wednesday, I went to Naidex National at the NEC, Birmingham.

I have to say, Naidex itself wasn't as good as last year. Last year, I saw all sorts of innovative products and came home with lots of literature and a wish-list as long as my arm. I also picked up goodies like the National Trust's Access Guide, and was able to have demonstrated to me how much more comfortable an ergonomic office chair can be. A number of stallholders were communicating on Twitter, having actual conversations with people who said they were going to Naidex, encouraging them to come and say hi at their stall, and I dropped in on several of them. There were also a few inventor/entrepreneur types there, interested to hear ideas about what products we'd like to see in the future. I felt like I was the target market as a disabled adult in charge of her own home, equipment and finances.

This year was different. Only one company - PoolPods - engaged with me on Twitter. Their product, while I'm sure it's lovely, isn't really relevant to me - but I thought I would say hello anyway. Except I couldn't find them! Step One was easy, finding them in the list of exhibitors, they were listed under "P" for "PoolPods", simple. Stall G82. Step Two was slightly more difficult, trying to find Stall G82 on the printed room plan, but after a bit of hunting I spotted it tucked somewhere at the back of the hall. But Step Three, actually finding that stall? Couldn't do it. There were frequent traffic jams because a small cluster of two or three people standing in front of a stall could block half the aisle. Add to that the lack of signposting or labelling of the aisles (would it be so hard to have North-South aisles numbered 1, 2, 3, and East-West aisles labelled A, B, C?), the manoeuvrability issues of many attendees (wheelchairs don't tend to sidestep well, mobility scooters are often quite long) and the usual pedestrian traffic flow problems (people stopping for a chat on a busy intersection), and it was nigh-on impossible to follow a planned route to a particular point on the map. Nor was it possible to just wander up and down the aisles until you found what you were looking for - the layout was confusing, the aisles weren't continuous, and stalls faced all directions. There were several stalls I saw twice or three times and others I didn't see at all.

The small, interesting vendors with "everyday" disability products (such as Trabasack and DisabledGear) didn't seem to be present this year. I also felt that there were fewer stalls aimed at "people like me". For instance, I saw umpteen companies offering incredible, amazing off-road wheelchairs, powerchairs, hand-cycles and suchlike. We're talking massive knobbly off-road tyres, aggressive-looking LED arrays and exciting metallic paint finishes. That's great, but these aren't the sorts of chairs you can use for your everyday needs. You couldn't ride them into Starbucks, or a high-street shop, or a work meeting, or your kid's school for the parent-teacher evening. They also probably won't fold down to fit in the boot of the average Ford Focus, either. They're aimed at people who are disabled but who also have TENS of THOUSANDS of pounds to blow on leisure equipment over and above what they use every day. This made me feel sad. I mean, on the one hand it's terrific that disabled millionaires have so many choices of how to spend obscene sums of money, but on the other hand, products like comfortable wheelchair jeans are going to be far more relevant for far more people.

But! That was only part of why I went. The other part was to have the opportunity to meet up with other disabled people, and that was managed with great success. One is a very good friend who I have met before on several occasions, and we had a much-needed cup of tea together that in itself made up for the disappointment of the exhibition. Another person I have "known" and considered a friend for many years, but only online, and my PA tells me that my face lit up like a Christmas tree when I saw her for the first time. Others had familiar names and I'm pleased to be able to add faces. Eventually our group - consisting of two powerchair users, two manual wheelchair users (myself included), one person using a mobility scooter, and two people without any visible mobility aids at all - made our way into a well-known pub/restaurant chain for lunch.

Incidentally, I still get a thrill from that. Us being able to go and have lunch together in a pub is concrete proof that campaigning for equality works, has worked, and can continue to work. There's still a way to go, but it would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.

The meal was not spectacular. The company and the conversation were. There's an unusual sense of freedom when socialising with other disabled people, because you can actually go ahead and talk about disability issues without having to draw a diagram of the welfare/social care systems, and without being pitied, and without having to listen to any ablesplaining about how surely X doesn't happen any more, and the real problem is Y, and if you try Z it'll all be sorted out. No one feels the need to make the stupid jokes about running over people's toes and there's no sense of being the "odd one out". For me, it's also really refreshing to socialise in a role other than as "Steve's wife" - Steve is a nice person and so are his friends, and I like spending time with them, but it's a completely different thing to socialising as purely myself.

Of course we're all rather wiped out now. For spoonies, a look around an exhibition followed by a couple of hours having lunch and a chat with half a dozen friends can have repercussions for days on end. It's embarrassing to think about how long it's taken me to write this post. Nevertheless, I still think that despite the disappointment of the exhibition itself, the day was worth it.