Accessibility and a Tale of Four Airports

Blind Spots in Accessibility

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I have come to notice how many blind spots exist in the provision of access and accessibility services across so many domains. Nowhere was this more obvious than at the international airports in Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, and Cape Town.

Using the customer assistance service, the first thing I noticed was that while a space had been set aside for people who required help to get around the airports and then to or from their flights, the toilets were never nearby.

The ideal would be simple enough: situate the toilets close to the waiting areas, and perhaps ask the people who actually use the service what they would like improved about their experience.

Lost Without Signage

In Amsterdam, there was a setup where you had to go through security simply to use a toilet. I was beside myself with frustration and discomfiture when I needed the facilities, for there was no information or signage to guide you, and all at the risk of soiling yourself.

You wonder, did anyone really think about what the need for an accessibility service actually entailed, or did they merely tick a box for providing a space without any further consideration? The mind boggles.

One would think the most immediate need of anyone using that service would be reaching the toilets without being lost in the wilderness, like the Israelites of old.

A Tale of Four Airports

The failings were not all of a kind. In Manchester and Cape Town, the problem was the sheer distance from the waiting areas to the toilets, which becomes acute when you have no one to look over your things.

Paris, frankly, was forgettable: language barriers at an airport that deals with an international clientele, and the experience of being abandoned without any information on who would serve you or how you would be taken around.

I raise all this not out of grievance but out of expectation. We all want to travel and enjoy the experience as much as possible; it is the very reason we apply for airport assistance in the first place, expecting not to be put upon or frustrated by it.

In Fairness to Staff

To be fair, the staff are generally helpful. The trouble is that some airports are badly short-staffed. I can recall one occasion where a single member of staff had to handle four passengers who all needed this service at once. You feel for them, caught in a logistical mishap that leaves us victims of what amounts to sheer incompetence higher up.

Cape Town, I must say, has provided the best help of all. I am met at the flight and wheeled through passport control to baggage reclaim, where my helper is joined by another to collect my luggage. I am then taken to the taxi stand, where the two of them help load my things onto the vehicle, as happens at no other airport.

Priority Spaces Ignored

Beyond the airports lies the public understanding of disability, or of needing assistance. I have lost count of the times I have boarded a bus and found the priority spaces for the pregnant, the aged, or the disabled not only occupied by seemingly able-bodied people, but taken up further by their bags and goods, the owners totally oblivious and unconscious of those who need them.

Sometimes you will be noticed and offered the seat, yet I know how many times I have had to ask, especially on the trains or on the tube in London.

Not Fred Astaire

Walking the streets presents another dilemma, as I use a walking cane. Though I am a brisk walker, I would not pretend to be nimble on my feet. Even so, you find people expecting you to give way, as though you were Fred Astaire stepping out to dance, cane in hand, sweeping across the pavement with the fluidity of a swan floating on the air, displaying the kind of dexterity that modern dancers could never aspire to perform.

Well, I simply stump my cane into the ground and wait. You go around me, rather than expect me to manoeuvre around you, when you have perfect ambulation to swing, swerve, skip, or jump. The walking cane is not a fashion accessory; it is an aid to get me around.

Mind the Blind Spot

Access and accessibility have their requirements, so please, do not usurp the space ahead of those who need it more than you do. None of this is difficult to put right. Site the facilities where they are needed, staff the service properly, and, above all, ask the people who use it. That is all we are asking for, and it is not very much.

These, after all, are the blind spots that good intentions leave behind, and they are mended not by grand gestures but by the simple act of noticing. That, in the end, is all accessibility asks of any of us. Thank you.

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Thought Picnic: Snippets Through the Strings

A Change of Station

Some time ago, and I cannot remember how long now, I switched my radio to a news channel, hoping to keep abreast of global events. I can assure you, it is not healthy.

Way back in March 2022, just at the advent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, my life of listening to BBC Radio 4 changed, as everything on the news had become depressing.

The news brings the world into my space, the knowledge of what is happening beyond my own; yet if that knowledge does not engender wholesomeness, it can be troublesome. However, I need sound around me, especially when I sleep, though I should also learn to appreciate silence more.

The two peculiar requirements for sleep, in my case, are sound and light. I like to keep some light on, for I do not care to sleep in darkness. I have now switched back to BBC Radio 3, the classical music station, where only snippets of the news sneak through the cascade of string, wind, and percussion instruments, most of them relaying the music of dead white men.

The Weight of Knowing

The sense of injustice, unrest, violence, murder, terrorism, war, and general societal unease seems to keep the world moving along a trajectory towards perdition. You have to extricate yourself from these cycles of information before you become absorbed in them.

Worse still is knowing so much and realising there is little you can do to help. The powerful abuse their power; the rich are consumed by their avaricious quest to acquire more at the expense of everyone, including the poor; technology threatens humanity in unfathomable ways; and the truth is lost to a systematic, determined effort to make you believe something else. You almost begin to question your own sanity.

I appreciate, though, that I have the luxury of being merely a listener to the news, rather than a participant in the disasters, tragedies, violence, mishaps, and accidents. That is the privilege I hold: the ability to switch off, which so many victims rarely, if ever, have.

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Holding on to Hope

Yet you must hope that there are many more reasonable people out there, not entirely powerless, who know the proper use of their votes to choose rightly, having informed themselves of the facts. How we despair when the rational fails in the face of the irrational.

One aspect of that hope, I suppose, is simply the acknowledgement, regard, consideration, and respect we extend to another; the loving of one's neighbour, the sharing of life's burdens, the knowing that we exist in society to foster goodness above all else.

What appeals to our best instincts must always be in the ascendant. Lawlessness, no matter how pervasive, cannot set us back to the days before Noah's flood, even if all the signs seem to point that way. I still have hope that humanity will find the light, and the good conscience, to change for the better.

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A Doctor, A Sleuth

Researching the Doctor

It is interesting how, after having a conversation with a doctor, you find yourself researching their background and qualifications. Obviously, if I am acquainted with the name of the person before I meet them, I will have done my investigations and acquired all the essential knowledge about them beforehand.

I had opted for the full medical coverage provided by my company, which included both a health and a mental health assessment. After answering the questions ahead of the appointment, a profile had been built up of what services might be required and how to address whatever questions I might have.

The Assessment Begins

I was booked in for a two-hour session and first welcomed at reception, where I confirmed or updated the information they held about me, then signed a document authorising the engagement.

Soon, I was ushered into a treatment room with a health advisor, who went through my assessments and checked my heart rhythm using a device on which I had to place two fingers of each hand, before taking my blood pressure from both arms at the same time.

Blood, however, she could not get from either arm, so we settled on the fingertip prick, which did not yield enough for extensive tests. I had not taken in enough fluids, and perhaps, as sometimes happens, my veins were simply not up for it.

The measurement around my belly button suggested I should lose a bit of girth, but besides that, there seemed to be little else of concern. The mental health questionnaire I had completed beforehand drew little comment either; my answers, it seemed, concluded that I was doing alright before I saw the doctor.

Meeting a Model Patient

The very confident and chatty medical doctor took me into her consulting room and first inferred that I seemed to have all the features of a model patient: moderation in the right places, with a few tweaks needed elsewhere. She started with mouth health, moved to diet, then the need for exercise, and how my medication could be affecting my fitness; nominal changes one should consider for a healthier life.

I suppose what struck me was her attention to detail and the minutiae. There was something incisive and forthright in the way she engaged, a readiness to enter the fray, to discuss and to have her own presumptions challenged, which I suspect owed as much to her life beyond strictly medical fields as to anything within them.

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She had hinted that she was involved in medical malpractice and often appeared as an expert witness. This led to a discussion about medical personnel practising medicine defensively, with much caution and a fear of litigation.

Treating Patients as Individuals

To that, I could only consider myself fortunate, as in all areas of my medical service requirements, sometimes owing to questions or challenges to the orthodoxy, I have had much better outcomes. Her view was that doctors needed to engage more and to treat their patients as intelligent individuals to whom medical studies might not directly apply.

Being from an ethnic minority herself, she was aware of all the other issues we encounter when using the medical establishment, from cultural insensitivity to inadequate attention to particular concerns.

The Many-Hatted Doctor

Even on the questions my other medical teams could not answer, she had an expansive view of the options I might have available, differentiating the medication used to manage cholesterol from the way it impacts heart disease. This is obviously an area in which I need a good deal more knowledge before I agree to a suggestion, of which I have had no conviction.

So, back to the doctor: a general practitioner, an expert witness, an injury lawyer and a medical examiner. It is like having someone a third the age of Miss Marple, or half the age of Jessica Fletcher, holding a stethoscope to your back as you take deep breaths and she notices your lizard skin, or xerosis, for which she recommends Cetraben cream. It might as well have been Dana Scully unravelling the mystery of my human body.

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Troubled Waters

Threads of Connection

It is interesting how threads are woven through a set of seemingly unconnected events, with our perception of things becoming the glue between them. I confess I am given to a kind of apophenia, forever spotting strange connections, though that word does not quite capture what I mean.

Here, I was drawn to a headline about cannibalism: a daughter had ingested flakes of her mother's ashes. Why she would announce or publish that information escapes me, at least until we put names to the dramatis personae. The daughter was Rachael Stirling, and the mother the late Dame Diana Rigg. [The Guardian: ‘I didn’t expect to be portrayed as a cannibal’]

Perhaps eating a parent's ashes is a way of reconnecting with them in death; but how an urn became a spice shaker is never going to find a convincing explanation beyond the bizarre. I will resist the temptation to ask whether it was a ready peppercorn grinder, though the thought is beneath me and I confess I had it anyway. Each to their own, I suppose.

Remembering Diana Rigg

I should say actresses, or actors now, since the gender classification for that profession seems to have been lost to modern parlance.

We know Diana Rigg, of course, from "The Avengers", where she played an emancipated female spy and partner to John Steed, portrayed by Patrick Macnee. In the first series she was paid £150 a week, and it was for the second series that she held out for the increase, demanding £450. [Meaww: Diana Rigg was a 'lone voice in the wilderness' when she demanded equal pay back in the '60s as Emma Peel]

What strikes me as equally interesting is that the money was there to pay her properly all along; she had discovered she was being paid less than the cameraman. Yet until she made the case for why she was worth that much more, no one thought to pay her adequately. [BBC: Dame Diana Rigg: How the actress battled TV's gender pay gap]

A Sunday with Columbo

My Sundays revolve around a standing date with "Columbo", the detective series endlessly on replay for as long as I can remember. I could watch the episodes over and over without ever feeling exhausted by knowing the plot, or by trying to fill in the gaps from memory.

Now, guess who is the guest actor in the episode playing from 9:00 pm this Sunday night? Patrick Macnee, cast as Captain Gibbon of a luxury cruise ship. The episode is "Troubled Waters", in which Hayden Danziger, played by Robert Vaughn, murders his mistress aboard the ship.

His wife, Sylvia Danziger, played by Jane Greer, is the older and wealthier partner in the marriage, and she holds a quiet, dominant sway over her husband. She shares a wonderfully sharp exchange with Lieutenant Columbo, played by Peter Falk, in which she lets slip just how firmly she keeps the reins, hinting that Hayden would come to rue the day were she ever to catch him straying.

Troubling Convention

It occurs to me that each of these women is quietly, or not so quietly, troubling the waters of convention: one defending her mourning, one her wage, one her marriage.

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It is remarkable how things link up in almost incomprehensible ways: amidst the troubled waters of people revealing what is best kept to themselves, of people claiming what is rightfully theirs by standing up to a system set against them, and an episode on a cruise liner where the murderer believed himself far too clever to be caught.

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Redeeming the Time

Ringing the Bell

On the 9th of October 2024, I rang the bell to mark the end of my radiation therapy for prostate cancer, and that moment heralded the beginning of a new life. For those unfamiliar with it, ringing the bell is a tradition at the close of treatment, a small but resonant act that marks the end of one chapter and the start of another. [Photons on the Prostate - IX]

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The process was tough, and the side effects were almost debilitating. I had problems with my bowel and bladder, my voice had gone, and there was so much else to contend with, quite apart from the fatigue I had to manage over time.

Surviving and Thriving

Two years on, things are a great deal better. There are still issues, of course. My voice remains in a funny state, and sexual function is a problem, but I do not let these things bother me. I simply carry on, glad that I am still here: surviving, thriving, and telling stories.

The stories I tell are about life itself, from adversity to triumph, and the continuing sense of hope for better things. That hope is what keeps me writing.

To Signal, Not to Revel

I had wanted to write this blog, yet I felt rather lethargic, and I was a little unwell too. I like to commemorate these occasions, not necessarily to celebrate them as such. By that I mean I mark them rather than revel in them; I acknowledge the dates without having to throw a party. It is the spirit of gratitude on display.

Sometimes you feel too tired to do the things you want to do, so you come to them later instead. Nothing is lost. You always have the opportunity to redeem the time.

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Thought Picnic: The Dignity of Choosing

The Mystery of Love

One thing I have always held sacrosanct is not interfering in relationships. There is a complex dynamic between people who choose and admire each other for all sorts of reasons that outsiders may never be able to fathom.

The book of Proverbs 30:18-19 in the Bible informs me quite clearly, in the following words:

There are three things that amaze me—
no, four things that I don't understand:
how an eagle glides through the sky,
how a snake slithers on a rock,
how a ship navigates the ocean,
how a man loves a woman.

In the King James Version, it is written as "and the way of a man with a maid."

In these times, relationships are so diverse that the singularity of heterosexuality is no longer the sole expression of love, nor the only way to choose a partner. The way people choose whom they love, and why, will always remain a mystery.

Duty Rather Than Spark

This is different again from arranged settings, where external parties make the decisions that the participants must adhere to. Familial, customary, societal, political, or financial responsibilities usually influence such unions. People then have to make the best of the cards they are dealt.

Arranged unions are borne of duty, and the spark that arises out of attraction and leads to falling in love hardly fits with this topic. I acknowledge that such unions exist, and that affection may well develop within them over time, but that is a different matter from autonomously finding love for oneself. My concern here is with those who choose, not those who are chosen for.

When Love Turns to Harm

Even where I have harboured misgivings about the suitability of a match, I have always been reluctant and reticent to express a view, except where abuse is evident, and a partner is endangered. By abuse, I mean both emotional abuse and domestic violence, for neither is conducive to a loving relationship, and both can lead to harm of different kinds, including fatalities.

People in such settings need to be extricated before irreparable damage is caused. In those cases, there is no reason to sacrifice the person to an age-old institution for the purpose of saving face; the institution is not worth a life, nor the quiet erosion of one.

I am aware of the difficulty in all of this, for it sits uneasily beside my own principle. If an outsider cannot truly fathom why two people choose each other, that same outsider can seldom read what passes behind their closed doors. Abuse is rarely performed for an audience.

Harder still, the one being harmed does not always recognise the harm; what others would name as abuse can feel, from the inside, like an ordinary texture of the relationship. There is also the matter of shame. To admit to being abused is to admit, as many feel it, that one chose poorly, and so the stigma keeps people silent and keeps them where they are. Choosing to leave is therefore rarely as simple as being told to go.

None of this changes my conclusion; it only tempers how I hold it. The exception for danger stands, but it must be exercised with care, patience, and an honesty about how little we can see.

Freedom to Love

Beyond that, you are free to choose whom you want, and I bid you Godspeed that the companionship will be happy, fulfilling, and wonderful. How a person loves another can only be a thing of joy.

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I appreciate that there are people who would encounter great difficulty in understanding those who deviate from the heteronormative, but that difficulty does not invalidate the reality of it. Whether it is accepted or not, when one person meets another for the affairs of the heart and falls in love, it is always between them, to the exclusion of others.

A Hierarchy of Choices

It is a hard conversation that eventually has to be had: if your expectation of familial ties is to be chosen over an intimate companion, you have read the situation incorrectly. Once you understand the mystery that brings people together, you fall into a hierarchy of choices. A partner will be chosen first, over all other relationships, including close familial ties and long friendships. People should fall in line and respect that choice, just as they would expect others to respect their own.

What you will not get away with, then, is disrespecting, disparaging, ignoring, or deigning to reduce a significant other to insignificance. I know many will remain unpersuaded by that construct, and so they will land in the irrelevant scheme of things.

Relationships are acts of great determination on the part of the participants. The least that can be done is to accord them the courtesy of acknowledging that they exist, and to respect the one you know has chosen rightly for themselves.

In the end, this is only a plea for individual choice and the respect it is owed, and for the humility to accept that no one, however well-meaning, is equipped to choose better on another's behalf.

Postscript

Ignore this at your peril. The person who insists on knowing better, who meddles where they were not invited and talks down to the one another has chosen, does not preserve the relationship they disapprove of; they forfeit their place in it. You are not owed a seat at a table you keep trying to overturn. Respect the choice, or be left out of the life that choice builds.

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Thirteen Jabs and Counting

A Saturday Ritual

Yesterday morning, I stood in a queue at the invitation of my GP. There were two queues, one to the left and another to the right. We on the right were the double jabbers, there to receive both the annual flu jab and the biannual Covid vaccine booster. The ones on the left were there for the flu jab alone.

The GP surgery is not usually open on Saturdays, but for this annual ritual, a day is set aside in September, October, or as late as November. I only began taking the flu jab ten years ago, though it had been recommended to me much earlier.

Thirteen Jabs Later

In terms of COVID-19, this was my thirteenth jab, or more correctly, the eleventh booster following the first two doses in February and May 2021. The Coronavirus is not a distant memory, as the statistics still show that people are being admitted to hospital with complications from the disease.

According to the most recent figures available from the UKHSA data dashboard, there were 261 COVID-19 hospital admissions in the seven days up to 31 August 2026, an increase of 15 per cent on the previous week, with 289 confirmed patients in hospital on that date. [UKHSA data dashboard, COVID-19]

Receiving the boosters is now much more convenient. For a while, it seems, delivering the Covid jab was a niche activity that only a few pharmacies found profitable. In times past, beyond the first two years when I could go to a sequestered place in the town hall, the centres providing the service had progressively moved out of the town centre.

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After the first three jabs, things moved further afield still to chemists out of town, so much so that it became rather more difficult to find ones that had the booster in stock to give it. Twice, I had booked appointments only to arrive to disappointment.

Back to the Surgery

On one occasion, I got the booster in a van on a large supermarket car park, and then last year, the Boots Chemist in the shopping precinct on Market Street started offering Covid jabs. Imagine my surprise when I got a message from my GP surgery that they could now deliver the jabs, once they had a sense of how many people needed it.

It should always have been managed through the primary care system at the GP surgery, and I am glad that is now the case. That it is back within the management of the surgery is, for me, the greater relief.

At the surgery you are seen by people who know your medical history and can access the critical information needed to support your treatment; the chemists and the vans cannot do that, for they can only register that you have taken the shot. The staff at the surgery are always attentive, professional, and helpful, and it is an easy place to fall into conversation with others.

Aftermath and Advice

I took the flu jab in my right arm and the Covid jab in my left arm. Both an aching arm and a headache registered their presence throughout the day, so much so that I spent most of it in bed until dusk, when I got up to have a meal. Brian, my partner, advised me to take Paracetamol, which I rarely do; I had hoped to sleep it off. It is only mild discomfort, yet it is energy-sapping, leaving you quite irritable and uncomfortable.

I hope I regain my verve for tomorrow. I know some people have advised against taking the booster shots, but they are not from the medical establishment, so I have paid them no heed. Meanwhile, if you are immunosuppressed and, or invited to take the flu jab, my advice is this: don't think twice about it. Get the protection for the winter ahead.

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