FROM A WHEECHAIR EYE VIEW

I am still in the early stages of recovering from my foot operation. Yes, I was aware of many of the difficulties that disabilities present in daily living, also, I am aware of what measures  can ease the path for many.  Being aware is not quite the same as first hand experience.  Imagine then, my dismay when I was confronted with little or nothing where I would have expected a minimal something.

Sitting in a wheelchair - it needs pushing by an able-bodied person - I am about the height of an average 10 year old. It provides an interesting viewpoint. Now, I cannot see over some sales counters. If an assistant is standing,  I can see the upper torso and head, a speaking head, not always a pleasant one.  It's a similar experience at the store checkout.

I cannot browse in a store from a wheelchair unless whoever is pushing the chair does not mind doing it as well. I am dependent on my driver to place me so I can either reach for something, or, check it, if whatever it is, is within my grasp. Anything else is reliant on being in a position to see what there is and asking for it/them to be selected for me.  Patience is in high demand by all parties.

In one store, which mostly sells household goods and bedding - not too big a store - I attempted to use my alternative crutches with my new foot dressing, (a story for another time).  To save energy and time I asked  directions to my department of interest from an assistant who accidentally came in view. When I specified what I wanted, she left me standing to ask advice from someone shelf-filling and hidden from view.  It was the girl's first day....anyone who knew the stock was elsewhere. The store did not have a chair available for me to sit on while we waited for another member of staff....'sorry', she said.   A sour assistant who eventually turned up directed me to the opposite of what I asked for.  She didn't know much, if anything.  I was fed up and gave voice, very politely, to my thoughts. 

There were plenty of these chairs for sale and plastic ones too.

A fellow patient, who, like me had been fitted with new footwear and crutches that day, told me she had the same experience a bit earlier in the same store.  The store sold chairs, albeit,  picnic seats of all types.  Surely one could have been dedicated for customer use.

This would have been nice to sit on .

IT HURTS

Two friends with whom our families have grown up are selling up and leaving the area. In one case it is primarily for work, though it will be easier for the children to meet up with their parents. The other friends want to be nearer better transport links to their children and to family.  In both cases the children do not want to travel to a remote place for a weekend, mostly taken up with hours on trains or buses - it's not easy to get here - and when they are home longer, none of their friends are here; the ones they went to nursery with; then primary school and high school.  They've all moved on. I recognise this too, as I hear the same thing from sprog.  It hurts.  

This has been a lovely region of the country in which to bring up children, to give them freedom to play out, to have stop-overs, to go for walks with their friends, join in group activities,  and to learn all sorts of extra-curricular skills from the talented people who have lived here.  The children - now adults - are educationally and socially well-equipped and have moved on and out into the world.   I accept that is how it should be. We as parents have provided as best we can for our children's futures, together with the teachers and a supportive community.

All that said, it grieves me to see friends disappear who have provided special links with a very important chunk of my life and my family life. It feels like I am losing close relatives.

LIVING LIFE TO THE FULL

Death is a strange concept and is one that is part of the fabric of life. Without life there can be no extinguishing of it. When you are young, unless you have seen death at close quarters or had some experience of it, there is nothing to draw upon that really enables you to comprehend it.

Our youth think they are invincible and the majority in our society, live modern life to the full. Sometimes, it is so full they hurtle towards the very state of fallibility they believe they have no stake in. Was it always thus? Living conditions of earlier societies would have introduced quite young children to the notion of loss. If then, as young adults, they did make the most of what life they had, bearing in mind that they did not live to ripe old ages, and rarely beyond the biblical three score years and ten, what would living life to the full have meant?

For men, would 'living' have been 'sowing their seed', making the best use of any and every haystack in the rural fields. Would it have meant becoming 'a man' by being enlisted into the militia. For women, apart from spurning the local yokels' charms, as and when they did, it was probably a different story. Either you were home-making with your mother, assisting with other young ones in the family, and working on the farm, or in the factory. A woman may have been in service somewhere, helping to support those at home by being away and one less mouth to feed, probably also supplying a few pence into the family budget. As a woman in the 18th, century, for example, you may even have been a militia or naval follower.

Whatever living life meant before, whatever our ancestors did before they died, they made sure that mankind continued into the present day. We, like them, procreate for our posterity. It is curious, but what I take from this, is that the path of life leads to death, but, both nurture new life.