Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I am not going wall climbing in Preston tonight.

I've never gone wall climbing in Preston, so why is it noteworthy that I am not doing so right now?

I have a relatively-local mastodon friend who said she's doing this today, as part of a group organized by Galloways, the local blind society. She said she had done it before, at 12 or 13, but not since. I commented on the uncanny coincidence; I'd also loved wall climbing at 12 and 13, when I did it as part of summer camp -- for blind kids, as it happened. And I also hadn't done it since.

I didn't think much else of it, until D said "You could go wall climbing on Monday." I'd assumed it'd be during work hours, my own local society's events always had been and that's why I haven't done any since I started uni in 2017. But he said this one was on Monday night -- and he was even willing to drive me, bless him. I don't know Preston at all so going on my own the first time would not have been at all feasible, unless someone was willing to meet me from the train (the station is the only part of Preston I do know, and boy do I know it; I've spent many chilly hours there waiting for connecting trains!).

Anyway. D said the website details for this event just say "Contact James for details," but with no email or phone number, or even a last name for James.

I had to go back to my acquaintance to ask her how to get in touch with them about this; she said she'd just gotten in touch via the form on the website, after finding out about it in a Facebook group.

So I did that.

And while I was bemoaning this situation, it reminded me that I used to be very vaguely involved in Manchester's own local society, Henshaws, back in like 2015. They had activity-based groups too; I went on a few "hikes" around Greater Manchester, and joined the Museums and Galleries group for a live audio-described tour of an exhibit at Manchester Art Gallery. But all that stuff had been on weekdays, during the day, so I hadn't considered it a possibility now that I'm working full time.

I looked at their website and it was similarly directed at sighted people. The list of groups again was light on detail. I did see that the museum/gallery group was on Thursday afternoons. But it was only once a month, maybe I could take the half-day off for it... I sighed and got in touch the only way I could: via webform. It feels like such an inelegant solution.

A day or two later, both had gotten back to me.

James (who now had a last name and an e-mail address!) said

Thanks for your email
Yes we have a session on Monday evening from 7 till 9
At prestonwall
Please let me know if you are attending
You will also need to pre register with the climbing centre [and here he gave the link]
Thanks

It's fine, but I guess I'd been expecting something a little more informative.

I had a look at the climbing centre's website. They reasonably enough need to make sure everyone is safe. Registration involves reading the Conditions of Use and Rules, and something about supervising Novices. I thought I was more likely to be a novice than to be allowed to supervise them. Next you have to watch a video, "bouldering induction." I don't know what bouldering is. I didn't feel like I was going to learn from watching a video. Then you have to register...as either a Novice, Boulderer, Boulderer + Auto Belay, or Full Registration. Novice sounded about right for me, but that category is "for 18+ years on instructed sessions or being supervised by experienced climber." "Experienced climber" was a link of its own; this is a term with a specific technical definition here.

Would the blind group be an instructed session?? Or supervised by experienced climbers? Surely we couldn't be considered "boulderers," the criteria for which was you had to watch the video I'd already ruled out. But I wasn't sure how to register, and I was looking at this in a break from work, and it was already Friday, and I wouldn't expect to get answers over the weekend, and Preston is a long way away for when there's work in the morning, and so I determined pretty quickly that it wasn't going to happen this time. The mere possibility quickly overwhelmed me.

As for Henshaws, I mentioned the walking group and the museums/galleries group, and they said the walking group (which is still listed on the website but with no details) is "currently on hold at the moment. Unfortunately, I am unable to give a timeframe of how long this will be for." I seem to remember hearing that the guy who ran it (who of course also had a million other jobs) was leaving; maybe the group disappeared with him.

About the other group, this e-mail went on to say

If you are happy for me to do so, I can give you a call and register your details with Henshaws. I would then be able to pass these over to the Group Leader of the Arts, Galleries and Museums Group.

I could ask the Group Leader to share details of the group with dates, times, and venue of the next meet up.

Please call the office on: [number] or let me know when works for you, and I will give you a call.

Such a faff! I appreciate they have to keep track of numbers and things for these groups, but having to register just to wander along seems a bit overkill. Annoyingly, I know I am registered with Henshaws too, but under a different name and different address... it's easier to just be a new person.

And I know they do this as phone calls because most of the blindies they deal with will prefer that as if nothing else they tend to be old people, but gah why isn't there an option to do this via e-mail or the website too; I'd be long done with it already! It's another way that local blind societies are not set up for working people, because this person e-mailing me will want to call me during their working hours, but those are mine too! I can make some time for this but it's still frustrating. And not everyone can block out time in their work schedule as easily as I can for nonsense like this.

This is what I get for trying to work on my resolution of meeting new people and doing more stuff, ha. This is what attempts to better myself get me!

Me all year: why isn't there a better combination of a white cane and a walking cane??

The internet, after three months of this: People have already had this long enough to write reviews of it!

Goddammit!

Of course it's a hundred fucking quid.

But it might still be worth it, not just for my ankle which hopefully will be less of a problem as time goes on, but because I was already thinking about how useful such a thing would be for like hiking which I'd love to be able to do more of.

But yeah this would make such a difference now. Lately, especially in Brussels where I did a lot of walking but even just around town, I find myself having to bring all the canes and swap between them.

Last Saturday, I sat down at a bus stop, folded the walking cane (MB has plenty and is happy to let me borrow this one for the duration), put it in my backpack, took out my long cane and unfolded. I thought to myself I'm for sure gonna end up on video as "fake disabled person."

It makes sense to me! For instance, this time I used the walking cane while walking through the city centre and around an art gallery. Once I was waiting for a bus home, I knew I was mostly done with walking and it becomes more important for the driver and other passengers to know I can't see.

These calculations are getting more routine, but they're still exhausting. Maybe it is worth a hundred quid to do less of them (depending on how much cognitive cost there is in me learning how to use the new cane...).

Today I had an eye test so my nystagmus has been off the charts for the rest of the day. I needed a nap after work and everything -- more impressively, I was actually able to take a nap!

I only marginally need new glasses, but I'm getting them. Basically the main reason the optician advised I get them because mine are so beat-up. With the new prescription I can only see one more line of letters on the eye chart, and the optician said she wouldn't normally recommend new glasses for that but for me one more line is a big deal.

So I've had to spend three hundred quid on one line! It only had three letters on it and I could only read two of them! Ha.

I have been feeling mentally fragile since, which is only to be expected. It's a combination of triggers and the staff's odd (I thought!) willingness to accept me as a woman, which for Reasons I still am registeted as in this one healthcare setting.

It seems very unfair that I still had to work the rest of the day. And most unfair of all that right at the end of the work day I was told I'm going to London on Monday for something incredibly annoying and shitty.

Yesterday, besides going to the gym I went into town and with D and a friend investigated the new location for a queer bookstore and then had a pint.

It wouldn't have registered as "a lot of walking" before but on top of having gone to the gym I wasn't surprised that, just before we got to the bus stop to head home, I was really glad that we were already almost there because something that might have actually been my ankle -- instead of the muscles in my foot and leg, which is all I'm used to -- started to feel pretty sore and weak.

I was fine getting home, but once I did I crashed pretty heavily. Less because of the physical issues and more because of mental/emotional overwhelm I think: it'd been a big day for the friend, and their situation unfortunately involved some old triggers for me so I was dealing with that. And it'd been another demanding week at work. And even though I feel like I've been sleeping okay the last few days, it's only "okay" by the standards of a chronic insomniac whose dog spent a week waking him up 3-4 times a night.

And this was the first time I'd been anywhere other than a store or our local pub since I broke my ankle, so it was overwhelming to be around crowds and stuff again. The bar we ended up at wasn't busy but it was noisy: what I thought was a loud group of about eight people ended up just being one loud guy, oof. And of the "cis gay who thinks he can't be misogynist because he's gay" type. So that was a lot all by itself.

Also, using a walking cane for my ankle means I'm not using my white cane for my eyes. This has been fine so far because it's not like I've been moving quickly, and I've been in pretty controlled and/or familiar environments, like the hospital or Tesco or the usual streets near my house. Being in town was a lot. People didn't seem to give me as much of a break as I'm used to. I missed my white cane when I had to judge curb heights and find similar unevenness with my feet instead of my cane, which is especially unfortunate when one of those feet is extra weak and I'm particularly trying to avoid any amount of unevenness because it's more likely to make my foot sore! People who need walking aids and white canes must have a whole different kind of training than the one I got -- I hope they do anyway! -- because there are definitely a lot of skills I don't have and would really need if this was going to be a long-term thing.

And it was dark (well, at first just getting dark but that's nearly as bad), and wet so the ground was shiny and reflecting all the points of light that were already doing my head in.

I say all this to say that I'm really glad that after all of that, I actually feel great today! Some combination of ibuprofen, ice and rest when I got home meant my ankle didn't disrupt my sleep or hurt today. I took it easy enough in the gym that the next day I'm not beset by muscle soreness to the sam extent as the people I went with. And we had no real plans today which meant I could stay in my pajamas and sit on the couch and read and stuff (amid a million dog walks and other demands he placed on us all!). Still a day with some emotional triggers in it, but much less so and I'm hopeful that this particular set of external events will feel less intense to my lizard brain after today.

The first thing I heard about my physiotherapy referral is that I had been discharged

( The saga! Has a happy ending though: tl;dr I got my first appointment today. )

So anyway, today the very kind diffrentcolours came with me because I was convinced I'd get lost finding the part of the hospital I needed, and indeed we did get pretty lost (the signs were terrible, but luckily people were nice about directing us) but it was also good having him there for the appointment. He took notes of the exercises I was told to do and we ended up in a funny routine where the physio asked me a question, I answered it, and then D and I went off in some kind of familect-laden or generally confusing-af tangent while the phsyio took advantage of this time to type up notes on whatever I'd just told her.

The phsyio had a ponytail and was named Becky and was in all ways exactly what I thought a physiotherapist would be like...except she was awesome about blind stuff! When she called my name of course I bonked my walking cane into something in the process of walking towards her, and then did it again in the short trip down the corridor. She seemed surprisingly (to me, but I guess that's being a physio!) alarmed at this even when I brushed it off as normal for me (and I wasn't hurt at all; it was the cane that bonked into things, my squishy human body was untouched) and said "would you like me to guide you?" and stuck her arm out just slightly in exactly the perfect way for this. She was so proactive and so skilled and so casual about this that I was actually confused -- I do not expect any of this from the general public! -- and figured she had pretty close contact with someone visually impaired. Sure enough: her mum (she later told me that she was pleased at getting to tell her mum that yesterday was World Braille Day because she saw it in a work email and her mum didn't know about this even though she's a braille user; that was cute).

The appointment was reassuring on a number of levels. For one, she told me that all they can do when someone still has foot-jail is get them to like wiggle their foot around a little. The real work starts at the stage I'm at now. I did tell her I'm only unofficially at this wearing-both-of-my-shoes stage, since my followup fracture-clinic appointment was delayed by the holidays and then canceled by the junior-doctor strike, but she seemed totally unbothered about that and basically assured me I wasn't doing anything wrong by abandoning foot-jail based solely on vibes.

She measured my range of motion which has gotten surprisingly good (one of the big reasons I abandoned foot jail is that it was actually hurting me more to not be able to move my ankle than it does to move it) and is now only slightly less than my other foot. She also found that ankle to be weaker than the other one to the expected extent ("otherwise why would you be here?"), nothing to worry about. She showed me the exercises to do, gave me the resistance bands for them, and I'll see her again in two weeks!

She even said I can go back to the gym (very carefully of course!), and said a few minutes a few times a week on an exercise bike with low to no resistance would be good for my ankle, as long as it doesn't cause me any pain. So that's exciting. My trans gym class doesn't start up again until next week so I'm looking forward to doing a super-careful version of it then.

I'm glad I didn't really miss much in practical terms from not starting this a month ago. But I do wish it had happened for the sake of my mental state; I've been feeling confused and abandoned to my own devices, which aren't very good! Having no experience with this kind of injury, and finding that I wasn't in pain at the time if I overdid it but only that night when I couldn't sleep at all meant that I was always conscious of the possibility of overdoing it and setting myself back without knowing it at the time. But also I didn't want to be too driven by avoiding pain and fatigue because that would set my recovery back too. But without help I couldn't know which kinds of pain or fatigue to avoid and which to induce!

She also reminded me that ice and ibuprofen are still a good idea even trough I'm not in pain because I still have swelling (and to be fair sometimes even soreness) on the inside of my ankle where there's a ligament the surgeon didn't fix because he said it doesn't make a difference to people's recovery. So I did both of those things yesterday evening too.

So I'm feeling so much better now, mentally. Physically, I was totally exhausted by the longest trip out I've made since I broke my ankle (which is why this entry is going up late). Just talking to someone I don't live with felt new! It made me laugh just how much D and I were caught up in our own in-jokes and references and stuff; listening to us and imagining what we must sound like to strangers in the physio department was so funny to me. I am just not suitable for human company these days.

I came home and barely got through the rest of the work day, when it was done I immediately went to bed and slept so hard afterwards that when D woke me up to tell me dinner was ready I didn't even know where I was or what day it was.

I am so sympathetic to calls to pirate stuff because Netflix is bad and Amazon is bad and Disney is bad. They sure are!

But... pirated stuff never has audio description. (It's just getting around to having reliable subtitles, I guess!)

And without AD, I'm tired and I'm still left out.

I was thinking of this again today because I really would love to watch (and let my family watch!) more than one episode of Our Flag Means Death a night, but after working at a computer all day I just cannot deal with more than one episode of something that has no audio description.

This morning I emailed the artist to reply to his invitation with my apologies for not being able to make it to London for today's event for it.

His (very quick!) reply included "You have made a very important contribution to the project, and people find your story compelling."

I'm honestly shocked at that because a) I'm no artist and b) I barely remember what I said to him on the phone, haha.

Especially since this piece is partly about memory and fragmentation, it's so funny that I'm desperate to know how I contributed to it and I never will.

I finally did a personal response for the awful plan to stop staffing almost all ticket offices in England (and one in Glasgow. Link is to advice on what to write, since of course there's no questions in this consultation and there are two separate bodies you have to respond to depending on whether you're talking about stations in London or not in London, with no clear definition of what "London" is for these purposes...

The government and the rail industry have sure made this consultation unusually complex and confusing to engage with! It's almost like they don't want anyone to respond!

I'm sure glad that such a ludicrous notion could never be the case, because they would be disappointed with the response if they did -- I don't have exact numbers, but I've heard 460,000, and maybe as much as half a million, for the number of responses received as of a day or two ago. All this in a consultation that, even having been extended, is about two-thirds of the length that the delightfully-named Gunning Principles would suggest for a consultation with such drastic impact.

I finished our organisational response at work today and sent that in. And of course my own overlapped with that a lot -- I know the stats by heart of course -- but I also got to say some different things. I put one of the most important points at the end, for rhetorical impact, which I also wouldn't be allowed to do at work, heh:

Among my first thoughts when I heard about this consultation is how are blind people going to know that the stranger on a platform or concourse who tells us they're a member of staff actually is one, and not a member of the public who reckons we're vulnerable people they can exploit? None of the TOCs' [train operating companies] proposals address this anywhere! I imagine they haven't considered this problem at all -- with three-quarters of working-age visually impaired people unemployed, that means most lines of work are missing out on our perspective and train operators don't seem to be any exception.

One of the main benefits of ticket offices is that they're a fixed location -- I can learn the route to the ticket offices in familiar stations, and I can ask the way to the ticket office in unfamiliar stations -- and only staff can get inside them! So I know where to go if I need anything, and I know I'm speaking to someone trustworthy.

I don't think sighted people appreciate how, when you're handing over cash or your bank card, or when you're asking for sighted guidance -- i.e. to be led around by holding on to a stranger -- you can feel so vulnerable! It is inhumane to take away the trust and confidence we can currently have in staff at a ticket office, only to replace it with stress and a world that's more hostile to us.

Always a good sign when your boyfriend is like "do you want to add this to the list of things you're complaining to Northern about?" when it's not even 10am and you're still in Manchester.

I was so angry I would've done some shouting if there had been time. But there wasn't. That was part of the problem...

So: this morning D and I were traveling to Bournemouth. For a few days, so we've got luggage. We're tired. I'm already incredibly uncomfortably because it's that kind of weather where you get rained on and you get sweaty. We found somewhere quiet and ventilated (thus, blessedly cool) enough to take our masks off and put down the bags.

D hasn't had breakfast, and we'll need lunch on the train. He offers to go to a shop in the station, I can wait with the stuff so we don't have to drag everything with us. Good plan!

D comes back way too soon. He says "they won't let me through without your railcard."

I was immediately livid.

To get off the platforms and on to the station, he had to have his ticket checked. It says it's connected to a Disabled Person's Railcard because those entitle the disabled person to a companion at the same reduced fare. Staff on the train regularly ask to see the railcard when they check the tickets and they are perfectly entitled to do so.

But it never happens on the platform. I have never in many years of using one been asked to show my railcard while I'm trying to get to or from the platform in a train station (and I don't always use my cane so I'm not always visibly disabled). It would be a huge burden to do so at the very least (it's very difficult to faff with fiddly things like wallets/bags/phone when one hand is taken up with your cane! I have to stop walking to use my phone, put a mask on/take it off, do anything that requires my hands). And it's no exaggeration to say that a demand to see my railcard in this context could be a hazard at busy times when the area might be crowded and people might be in a rush behind you.

Railcards are offered in digital form as well as a physical card these days. Because when I renewed mine I needed it in a hurry, I had to get the digital one which is just an app on your phone that shows a QR code. So for D to show my railcard, I'd have to give him my phone. I trust him with it, but that would leave me without it if one of us needed to contact the other. We had a tight schedule for getting food and making it to our train, anything going wrong in the next 15 minutes would wreck a whole day's travel and set me up badly for my early start tomorrow at this work-related conference I'm here for. I really didn't want to give up my phone, my connection to the world, at such a time.

Another thing that made me mad was how arbitrary this is. If D had tried to get through to the concourse via one of the platforms that has automated ticket barriers, the railcard couldn't have been checked. He'd clearly come off a train to be coming from the platforms, so the job of checking the railcard was the responsibility of train staff, not this random person on the platform.

All this flashed through my head in a millisecond and I was angry. I jumped up and we both, with all the bags, went all the way down to the ticket checkers. D aimed for the same one as last time. When he showed her his ticket she looked at us both like she was losing control of this situation and said "which of you has the railcard?"

"I do," I said, glaring. I hadn't even been able to get my ticket out, it was tucked away deep in my wallet deep in a pocket and I now had to hold my white cane in one hand and pull my wheelie suitcase with the other.

She didn't challenge me, didn't say another word to us but just turned to other people. It was kinda crowded. She didn't really need to see my railcard. She saw a visible sign of my disability and decided to let it go. It makes me so mad because there are so many disabilities that don't come with such inarguable evidence as a white cane. Most people with sight loss don't even have one! So many disabilities are invisible. Clearly she only challenged D because he "didn't look disabled." And that's not on.

Not only is anyone totally capable of having an invisible disability, it's also totally valid to have the disabled person's companion go do chores like this while the disabled person rests! That's precisely the kind of situation where I really benefit from a companion traveling with me! It's a potential downside of the digital railcard that I can't give it to said companion without losing access to my whole phone (and without them needing my password etc. to unlock the phone, which would be a faff to teach them in a time-sensitive situation like this even if that was something I wanted to do). But it's all the more reason for station staff not to challenge people when they're just trying to buy food and get back on another train.

They should be able to trust their fellow staff on the inbound train. I don't understand what this adds to any "revenue protection" or whatever justification she would've had. I'm worried the justification would have been a cover for the real motivation: the pernicious worry in this country that someone, somewhere, might have something they don't "deserve."

When I woke up this morning (about 4:30, as is becoming my usual, ugh) I found myself gently pondering what kind of day it would be. Normally I'd look at my Monday meetings on Sunday night to remind/prepare myself, but I had been way too tired the previous night.

My idle pondering of my schedule suddenly turned into a sharp pain. Wait a minute. If it was Monday...wasn't I going to London?!

( I was! Despite many travel-related hardships, apparently! )

So that's my day of going to a meeting to talk about how blind and partially sighted people are more disrupted and stressed by public transport delays and cancelations than sighted people are.

I have noted the irony.

But with no surprise. Something like this happens every time I travel for work; I could always be my own case study.