disability
I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...
15 January 2022
Ironically, whilst trying to write for months about mental health, I have been struggling with a mental block in putting pen to paper. Or finger to keyboard. Actually it’s been so long it should be quill to parchment. So long that the word ‘blog’ probably wasn’t invented and I should call this ‘ye olde chronicle update’. Awkward. I have faintly covered up my failures with virtual speaking engagements and a shiny series of new podcasts, https://www.prca.org.uk/Disability-at-the-Table . Available on all your favourite gramophones now, with a thrilling new episode out soon. So I can blame my workload on a good few distractions and my fave new invented phrase, ‘other nonsensing’. I’ve stayed tastily busy. Not to mention on telly a […]
23 June 2021
[A guest blog I wrote for the PRCA https://prca.org.uk , our worldwide PR body. Click here to skip past my nonsense and listen to the podcast: https://www.prca.org.uk/Disability-at-the-Table.] What do we want? Real change in Diversity! When do we want it? Now! Yeah, right. More work to be done. Launch day is upon us. Finally I can proudly confirm I’m helping lead the charge – or in my case the slow, creaky wheelchair roll – with the PRCA’s shiny new ‘Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council.’ (EIAC). I’m the lead in the Disability workstream. As such, I’ll be pushing hard for disability to figure in every Diversity & Inclusion conversation. We’re not there yet, despite our community being comfortably the largest […]
21 February 2021
Look. I know I’m ‘different’. Isn’t everybody? I’m sure not many people aspire to be disabled, even though, over the years – I have come to be proud to be so. Prouder and happier still to have ‘achieved’ membership of an amazingly resilient and supportive community. Not biased at all, but https://shift.ms is my fave place to hang, of course. I shout out for multiple sclerosis peeps, for everyone disabled, and have even spread my wobbly wings to talking up all things diversity. Neither am I a shrinking violet about it. As far as wheelchairs can be sexy, I have a funky, eye-catching https://trekinetic.com/ one. It’s racing red and can do about four miles an hour. I like to think of it […]
27 October 2020
There are plenty of despairing ‘Things not to say to a disabled person’ lists if you google them. A couple of lead contenders appearing on the majority of these: – ‘You look so well!’ Actually, we know we don’t by ‘normal’ standards, but I have some sympathy with this. It is meant in good faith, and to me at least as a Brit, not unlike talking about the weather. Might rain later. – ‘Yeah, I know how you feel’. ‘Yeah, I get tired too’. These ones are tough to respond to. No, you don’t. You may, at times get the briefest of glimpses and insights into snippets of our life. But you are likely to see light at the end […]