Wheelchair and Manchester

Took the wheelchair for a test run in Manchester for the first time yesterday. Can't say I'm overly impressed. Every single pavement in Manchester is one giant slope towards the road, meaning my chair would quite happily throw me into traffic if The Music Man let go for a second. Not that he would, it's just that it was difficult for him trying to push the chair forwards in a straight line. Imagine a shopping trolley that always veers to the side. Imagine pushing that for about 4 hours, up and down kerbs, and trying to stop it rolling into traffic. Fun times, right? Poor guy.

Rambo would have come with us but he was at work. Going into town again on Sunday to see The Music Man play with his new band at the Manchester Ska Bar*, and then they can take it in turns pushing me around and maybe I won't feel like such a hassle.

On top of the sloping streets and bumps in the ground and cobblestone pavements and all that crap...most of the shops have steps to the doors. Half the pubs, too. Felt quite left out.

Then we figured we'd head into the Arndale centre and have a look round, as at least the floor would be smooth and unslanted in there. All well and good, but at half the entrances to it we were faced with an escalator up and an escalator down, nothing else. Back out, find another entrance, try again, same problem. Back out, find another entrance, try again, get inside. Have a look 'round the ground floor. Get annoyed 'cause we can't find a lift to other floors. Find little information things that are low down enough for me to use in the chair but tilted upwards so I can't see anything on the screen and The Music Man has to use 'em. Fun. Oh, speaking of having trouble using things, have a buttload of fun trying to get money out of the ATM. Damn near wrenched my shoulder out of the socket reaching up to get my card in and out.

Anyway, we eventually found a lift up the food court, outside the actual centre, then found a lift down to the first floor from there. I'm sure that lift would have gone all the way down to the ground floor but we couldn't find it when we were down there. Maybe we just suck at finding things.

So yeah, things aren't exactly easy in a wheelchair, but we wandered around Manchester for four hours and I was only slightly hurting from all the bracing and flinching and catching myself when I got thrown out of the chair (only once, today). Fucking exhausting though, and I'm not sure why. I think it might be the mental stress of having to talk to strangers. A lot of people seem to handle the whole 'omg cripple, have to be nice and PC' thing by joking with me. I believe I got told by 10 different people yesterday to watch the speed limit. And they all thought they were being original.

That wasn't so bad though, I didn't really mind that. And I thought it quite amusing how everyone apologised to me whenever The Music Man bumped me into them. We even knocked some guy's bike over, and he apologised. Whoops.

The thing that got me was some guy handing out Christian pamphlets. I said 'no thanks' and he said 'don't you want Jesus to heal you?' Uhmmm, well, that would be great, but seeing as how this thing's genetic I'm thinking if your God does exist then he kind of made me this way.

Uhh, where was I? Oh yes, exhausting, being pushed around all day in a wheelchair. Not much physical breaking. Some aches of sitting still for so long (had to keep moving my legs around to stop my knees locking), but exhausing nonetheless. And then we're still getting The Music Man settled in. And I've just been so exhausted the last couple of days that I can't be bothered to do much on the computer. Have literally been logging on to check messages and then curling up in bed with a book. And then crying that holding the book hurts too much and making someone come play chess/monopoly/TCG with me to keep me entertained instead. And then not being able to focus much on that, knocking all the chess pieces over and sulking in front of the TV. Goddamn it must be annoying having to live with me! I pity Rambo and TMM. I really do.





*He's not even met the guys yet, auditioned over the phone and they were just like 'yeah, learn some songs, come play at our next gig!'