When we look over the edge of a balcony or regard the lobby from a glass lift, its almost alien, watching the ground move away or towards us… I personally love it – I can handle heights and would happily sit for hours admiring the detail below.
However, stand me on my own two feet and this is completely alien. I get dizzy and fearful and unstable… vertigo, in fact. Just because I am stood.
600ft – nada.
6ft – forget it.
I’ve been incredibly quiet on the blog front lately and for a while – I’m sorry about that. So allow me to explain.
MBW and I have separated. Since the actual separation I’ve had to do things like move out, find somewhere suitable for me to live, move in, acclimatise and get into a new routine. Some things went better than others in all of this. This all happened earlier this year.
I need to stress – MBW and I still get on as friends. This was a fairly mutual thing and we did this to preserve the essence of what we always held dear – our friendship.
However, if you see some grumbly posts just bear in mind, I reserve the right to be grumpy once in a while.
I haven’t written much about the depot yet. I somehow feel that this is going to end up taking more of a life of its own than I currently have, so perhaps I should introduce you to a few of the vehicles…
LK07 CCN – Fleet number 64035. A Firstgroup vehicle, operating the BAA Sponsored service “Series 7”, between Heathrow and Windsor.
This is a Euro V vehicle (in real life, at least) and is DDA Compliant. However, the things I particularly like about LK07 CCN include the accurate detailing within, such as the additional luggage rack for those heading for flights.
Other little bits about it include the DDA compliance (important for service vehicles in my fleet) and the rather neat driver protection screen, which sadly has become a necessity in suburban services. This vehicle is one of two in the fleet with air conditioning, too.
LJ56 ONH – Fleet number DP1. This service vehicle is a Plaxton SLF Pointer 2 Dart. Originally built by Transbus (which will appear more shortly), this vehicle operates route 441 – another BAA partnership service to Heathrow.
DDA Compliant, this is a funky little bus that fits neatly down small streets and around sharp corners.
SN53 ETE – Fleet number 43840. A recent acquisition from the South Wales Valleys, this little Transbus variant of the a Pointer 2 SLF Dart. The SLF means “Super Low Floor”, of which this was one of the first serious contenders in the DDA compliant vehicle market.
This little bus actually still works in the Welsh valleys, however it was purchased for me by MBW for my little depot. It is currently off the road, as Ammanford is a million miles from me.
So, these are a few of my vehicles for today. I’ll have to write some more about the rest of the fleet as it develops.
I was told today that I have to drive around and not over this… It is my balloonabout.
I kid you not.
Each year Christmas comes around. Now, some people could claim they are being fooled that Christmas is looming on our calendars by commercialism or religion or the fact that the chocolate industry appears in cahoots for 24 days with the cardboard door-on-a-box industry, but for me there are several tells that it could be Christmas fairly soon:
For creationism, this is a chance when they get to shake evolutionism by the hand and by token of this, reboot their annual stories by saying “this little dude was born”. In this case, they are not talking about the Baby Annabel or Baby Emmie, both variants of which were given to little people within my household by a jolly person (but was only jolly by virtue of the fact that she wanted to know what was in the big brown box). I am talking about, of course, the baby Jesus Christ.
Evolutionists, by correspondence of this, try not to appear bitter about this by giving gifts (such as Richard Dawkins books) and celebrate Winter Solstice, partaking in the large feast and biting their tongue when it comes to saying grace at the dinner table.
After or before this, everyone embraces and takes the opportunity to swap gifts and for me, this is my favourite bit. Not because I gain some more possessions which will shortly be available on my ebay shop (for I have never ebay’d a gift yet) but because I like to see how much thought or energy people put into gifts for others – its eye opening and it makes me grin at some of the gifts given. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been hinted at by others first – its the sheer effort in one form or another.
So, without further ado – some of my favourites from this year:
Woolly – a spider that appears on a children’s TV show called Woolly and Tig. Monkey adores the show and loves the spider especially, so a nod was given to my Grandmother. Come Christmas day, a smile lit up a little girls face. Woolly has gone everywhere… well, her auntie’s, since.
My bus. No, I kid you not. MBW, who has for ages been telling me that she is not indulging this one, broke her vow of refusing to entertain me and entertained me… with a bus. This one, a replica of some rolling around Wales, is a very cool little Transbus Mini Pointer Dart. This will mean nothing to you unless you are a bus spotter or just very nerdy… but this is my bus. I like it.
Lastly, I was very impressed also by the wind up Thomas the Tank Engine toys that my mother gave me in my ‘sock’ (a family equivalent of a stocking only easier to source and keep your feet warm all day). These have provided the Contwingent and I hours of fun racing them around the kitchen table to see which will go faster and who would win the race.
Having had a bit of a break from writing, mostly because I’ve been writing reports during the time I’d usually blog, I’ve not actually told anyone that I went to the hospital yesterday.
I went because they have now analysed the muscle they took out of my leg – the biopsy. Which means they might know or not know whats wrong with me any better or what prognosis there is…
It is very difficult to know how you should feel about this when you’re 30 years old and mostly in your life all you’ve know is that you have a non-specific muscle disease. Part of me was quite excited – what could they tell me? What could they offer to help improve life? Could they know anything new?
At this point, I would hope for a drum roll… as the doctor scrolled through the MRI scan images, noting various muscles, bones and… my bladder.
So, first off, no, the biopsy showed nothing. Which means there is no change.
Secondly, its unlikely the girls are affected by my genes – phew.
Third, they’re checking the DNA for other things now…
Which kinda leaves me almost where I was before, except with a little more certainty over the girls.
But otherwise – I don’t know how I feel – am I happy? Annoyed? Sad?
This is it – I don’t know how I feel. It’s almost empty. I kinda wish they had told me something earth shattering… would have maybe given me something to complain about… because instead, I’m whinging about nothing.
On the day that the International Day for People with Disabilities is celebrated (A UN recognised date, no less), I want to share something with you from a wheelchair users perspective, a few jokes and observations.
Have you got ‘L’ Plates? Have you got a licence? No speeding now! Hahaha. Oh how my sides split… except, they don’t. Frankly, its ludicrous that I’d need ‘L’ plates when my three year olds can race my wheelchairs around the house and to suggest I might have a licence to walk about is as funny as you requiring a Shoe Lace Proficiency before being allowed to step out of the front door.
Joking about my choice in mobility might make it feel acceptable to you, possibly even opening you an opportunity to talk to me and say hello, but I would like to offer an alternative: “Hi”.
On the other hand, it is very acceptable to note that my softroll front wheels look slick, or that you have suddenly noticed that the dark paintwork on my chair is green, not black. It’s pushing the limits (but acceptable) to dream of having lights in your shoes like my old chair has in the front wheels. (It’s not acceptable though to draw comparisons to your child’s scooter.) It is fine to sympathise with my as to how cold my hands must get – I’m sure your digits freezing with be just as annoying for you, too.
Its ok to joke with me about the latest political gaff or bitch about the weather. I am perfectly fine with your knee complaint – I don’t feel uncomfortable just because you are having trouble climbing stairs and I can’t. I don’t even mind hearing how expensive it is to buy shoes – mostly because I can sympathise with these (especially the last one, being a tight fisted male!)
But I am more than a wheelchair – I am DaddyDoink. I travel an hour each way to work on the train. I walk wheel down the hill to work each day. I communicate in fair fluid English (exceptions apply). I eat lunch. I socialise with colleagues. I joke with them. We discuss my growing bus habit. I finish work at 5 and get the train home again. But all this will be forgotten at the end of the day.
Especially if the thing that ground my gears the most was someone shouting “Got yer licence mate?!”
If I look through my drafts, there are five or six pieces of writing I never finished. This isn’t one of them. This one is about buses.
I have long come to accept that it would not be a good idea to buy a bus. Mostly because I am unlikely to be able to drive one. Even as much as I’d like to. But I do have my little concession.
If you are a Bus Operator, you need an operators licence. I don’t have one of those.
But I don’t need one if we’re talking about my own little domain.
Lets see, we have a USA Metro Articulated, a couple of Enviro200s, a Mercedes Citaro (version 2), a Metrobus (the heritage bit of my fleet) and a new Citaro mark 3.
I like my fleet, even though it lacks some Scania or Volvo influence.
I might even introduce them on this blog over the next few months, just to show how funky my buses are.
So, I’ve complained a lot in the past week or two about my biopsy. It’s healing nicely, by the way. However, I have not really said much about Scratch, mostly because those I’ve really wanted to tell whats going on to, I do so over the phone or email.
Scratch hasn’t been well for some time – she’s had a very distended belly, especially after sugar (especially fruit sugars) and other problems that have shown she’s not a well girly…
Right now she is having an Endoscopy and other tubes looking in her in places that give me shivers to think about, quite honestly, as well as a gastric tube being inserted for a barium test tomorrow.
Its difficult, in one part, to know how to tell you what is going on when I don’t fully know it myself. The doctors, too, are not sure and obviously working towards trying to find out. All I know is that she is in the right place, where the specialists of the specialisers are and that she is getting the attention she deserves.
The other part of me worries for MBW, who with her own health problems, is putting herself on the back burner to watch over Scratch.
So, forgive me if my tweets appear half-in-tune or my facebook is fairly cryptic. Its not you, its me.
I’m sat here still waiting.
And its beginning to really frustrate me, piss me off and get annoying.
I don’t particularly want to have the biopsy. I live quite happily in my life and get on with it – I’m doing it because MBW (bless her) wants some answers for the girls. I think I’ve mentioned I’m petrified about needles and pain.
But its being delayed and I suspect that although very good, the surgeon doesn’t quite get that in my head I’m managed to psych myself up for this at the times specified.
I recognise its his choice to juggle his surgical list about. I recognise that he might be having a long-running morning.
However, it would be really nice if he could recognise that I’ve made a number of arrangements, I’ve managed to convince myself that I can do this – if he stuck to the timetable submitted last night.
Instead, I just feel really crap and I am beginning to consider if any of this is actually going to be worth it – mostly because they’re allowing me to sit here and stew.
I feel bloody sick and fairly close to chucking the towel in and going.
Although playing with the blood pressure charts is becoming fun. I might have to seek some solace in that game.