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

I am always surprised, though I guess I shouldn't be, that even blind people who have never driven can be so car-brained.

But it disappoints me nevertheless.

Today at work I watched a video where the head of a U.S. blind org, in his first Waymo, exclaimed something like "this is the first time in history that blind people can travel long distances independently without inconveniencing anybody else!"

I mean...I regularly travel hundreds of miles independently, on trains. I have traveled thousands of miles independently, on planes!

I have a whole rant about what people even mean by "independent."

I might have to add "what do crips mean by inconveniencing someone."

Not only do I not think that I'm inconveniencing assistance staff by "making" them help me get on a train or plane.

I also think that private cars do inconvenience a lot of other people! (Waymos (or other self-driving cars) arguably more than the human-driven cars.) Cars just outsource most of the inconvenience to people you don't know!

Earlier this week, I read the headlines of the Ipsos Mobility survey, and one has been haunting me ever since:

For many, having a car is an essential part of their life.
Forty-three per cent of drivers across 31 countries feel it would be impossible for them to live without their car. This feeling is highest in the US (65%), France (64%) and Canada (59%). Forty-three per cent of drivers say they could live without their car, but would prefer not to.

They would prefer not to because car-centric design ensures that everything is easiest, makes most sense, or sometimes is only possible for people in private cars. Cars end up being an essential part of people's lives when they're essential to everything you might want to do: work, school, shopping, errands, fun stuff... I know it's asking a lot for people to see that a bunch of systemic changes will address this better and more thoroughly than their individualistic solution of just getting another car, or a bigger car, or a car with brighter headlights, or an electric car, or a self-driving car...

After two days of utter misery at work, I was amazed that I actually got to finish on time -- I had not been expecting to!

The unstoppable force of my executive dysfunction met the immovable object of a deadline to respond to the Government's call for evidence on Developing the automated vehicles regulatory framework.

Ugh. I am so disgusted by the whole concept of self-driving cars that it was...well, not the only reason it's difficult to write about, but it was definitely one of them.

In other car-related news, I'm always delighted to read that other people are noticing the same things I am: not only are car headlights too damn bright, but cars are too damn big.

...while bigger cars may be safer for their occupants, critics insist they are considerably less safe for other road users. "Whether you're in another car [or] a pedestrian, you're more likely to be seriously injured if there's a collision with one of these vehicles," argues Tim Dexter, vehicles policy manager at T&E. He is also concerned about the implications for cyclists.

Research carried out in 2023 by Belgium's Vias Institute, which aims to improve road safety, suggested that a 10cm (3.9in) increase in the height of a car bonnet could increase the risk of vulnerable road users being killed in a collision by 27%. T&E also highlights concerns that high bonnets can create blind spots.

This is also something I've read about in the U.S., thanks to Victoria Scott:

If, in the span of one year, 18 fully-loaded Boeing 747s crashed with no survivors, we’d reappraise airspace. We’d question how we build airplanes and how we train pilots. We would recognize this as a failure of the system, not as individual mistakes of 18 pilots. Our roads should be no different.

The good news is that we have sensible solutions in plain sight: lower speed limits, redesign intersections, build roads that prioritize pedestrians and cars equally, and most importantly, reward automakers for building smaller vehicles with better visibility. The bad news is these require some sacrifice from drivers. Safer roads have lower speed limits—likely enforced by ticketing in one form or another. These roads also require more concentration to drive on. SUVs and pickups would need to revert back to 90s sizing, and all of our cars would need to shrink. These are all a hard sell in America, admittedly, but until they happen, we keep losing lives needlessly.

I genuinely love cars, and I’ve owned some big trucks. I understand the appeal of high speeds and lifted rigs, and I’m loath to give them up. But even I can’t accept a future wherein 7,500 are killed each year, especially when the solutions are so tangible and the rewards so massive. I’d accept small sacrifices if thousands more could live decades longer. I hope the rest of America agrees.

I am so tired I can hardly string a sentence together but I wanted to say that today went great from a "finding a new place on my own" perspective, from actually being incredibly useful from a work perspective. Getting back was actually the annoying part (road works made it difficult to escape the area I'd arrived to by bus, and I got lost trying to walk back to anywhere I could get a bus or Uber; getting back from Stockport took much longer thanks to Piccadilly still being closed).

But I made it just in time to get to a much-needed yoga session, and got home to eat delicious takeout, and a basically-empty weekend and most-of-a-week off now stretches before me.

This morning I got to call one of the candidates we interviewed yesterday and offer her the work placement. That felt nice.

But also weird. I've never done anything like this before! I am in a very technical sense her line manager, in that her actual manager, my manager, is now on leave for the next week and a half and he asked me to take care of this. Which meant not just the fun phone call but doing paperwork, and that meant having to write down my own name and contact details where it said "Manager."

Wild.

The less said about the rest of the work day the better, but the rest of the day was good. I went for a nice long walk in the warm(ish) drizzle with Teddy, who drank from so many muddy puddles that he had a big dirty circle on his snout. Like the dog equivalent of a kid with a milk mustache. The air smelled amazing, the plants and the soil are starting to wake up.

Then angelofthenorth invited us over for cheesy toad in the hole, which is a genius idea and I think I might have to make it in future. It was great to see her, and Mr Smith.

And since we'd all planned to go to the gym, she and I walked there while D drove V home and then came back to join me (Miriam having gone swimming). The gym is so much more fun with him there.

I did an interview that might become part of a radio piece on e-bikes as pavement obstacles for blind people today.

He'd done some reconnaissance before I showed up and had found the most e-bikes I have ever seen in one place, taking up most of a pedestrianized side road. We came around a corner to this nest of chaos and all I could think of was "If we were in a science fiction movie about aliens invading the Earth, and the aliens were Lime bikes, I feel like this would be their mothership."

He pointed his microphone at me and said "Say that again." Ha! I gotta watch my goofy metaphors better.

So if you ever hear someone on the radio say they found the giant egg all the Lime bikes hatched from...uh, that's me.

So many meetings today. I had to run a focus group, I had to talk to my manager about something stressful (it turned out fine), I had to have a meeting that felt important but probably wasn't, about a task I totally overlooked somehow (very erikphobic of the DfT to launch a consultation with a deadline right after my own big deadline!!), which was supposed to last half an hour after the usual end of my work day and actually overran even that tomorrow...

Also today, in other Boo Meetings news, I realized I have the other focus group tomorrow evening, which means I can't go to any of the Transgender Day of Remembrance events that my friends are going to (though me being unable to go does free up D for another thing that's more "fight like hell for the living" than "mourn the dead" and I think that's fine too).

The good part of my meetings today is the one where a colleague and I were in an external meeting which was arranged by the other organization so it was held on Google Meet rather than Teams as we are used to. This is only relevant because on Teams I have my background blurred and in this thing I never used before (I could barely even unmute myself or hang up at the end of the call, never mind such niceties as adjust my background!).

In the debrief with my colleague, after the normal stuff, she said "off topic but I spotted the distinctive design of a pits and perverts power in your background. Dope, love it." I had noticed my background was clearer and sharper than I was used to, but I didn't think anyone else would notice that! And indeed I didn't really notice the poster, as distinct from the mirror or the door covered with coats (they hang on hooks over the door) that are also visible behind me. It was very sweet that it was one of my queerest colleagues in this meeting and I'm glad she noticed.

She asked where I'd gotten it from and I explained about this event the others had gone to, put on by one of V's friends, and that I'd been brought the poster as I hadn't been able to go (I think I was in London for a work thing actually, or something like that). My colleague explained that she'd been wanting one of these posters for years but always wanted the money to actually go to a queer person or something. She decided a museum would be close enough, some good cause. I checked and they're still selling the poster, and at a very reasonable price too! So much so that I feared the shipping would ruin the good deal and offered to pick her up one and get it to the London office the next time I'm there for work, but she ended up finding other stuff in the shop that'd make good Christmas presents for her friends so she didn't need to take me up on that offer.

The shop listing does a good job of explaining the poster:

Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) is an activist group that formed in solidarity with the striking miners in 1984. Mark Ashton, one of the founders, saw the struggle of the miners as the same faced by gay people fighting for their rights against a government that would not listen.

LGSM organised fundraising events like the one depicted in this poster from a concert from 1984 featuring Bronski Beat at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. Designed by LGSM member Kevin Franklin.

"Well that meeting has been productive on several levels" she said after all this. And that was a nice way to go into my last meeting of the day (the one that took until what I thought was dinnertime if not bedtime!).

I was an hour late for the away day, thanks to a combination of my own doofusness and regular transport hell. And this was so stressful for me because I knew an hour in that I was gonna be involved in the agenda item.

But of course it turned out not to matter because nothing ever gets done on an away day. I mostly think I'm pretty extroverted and neurotypical in this regard but since covid I'm like "...does any of this justify the increased chances of contracting a deadly and disabling illness?" and of course few things are.

One thing that would feel worth it for me is to have someone here to rub my feet. I just got back to my hotel room after wandering around, sometimes with my colleagues, finding food and trying to be normal enough.

The planned afternoon session couldn't happen and so we just carried on with more of my topic from the morning. It was hard work and stressful, and I'm not sure if much good came out of it.

I don't want to sound miserable; I did have a nice evening because I spent it with my favorite team member K, her support worker who's great company and who's also very kindly willing to help me out if I tag along with the two of them, and her friend W who I hadn't met in person before.

I kinda wish I had a support worker, not for every day but for trips like this. But I don't know anyone feasible and I don't want to deal with Access to Work so. This is the lesser evil. But it is nice to be able to borrow K's support worker on team events. And I met W's support worker today too who's also great.

I had a long day, full of meetings and people talking too much. The last was a focus group that went on too long because of one person talking too much and not following the very specifically stated brief: I said we're here to give recommendations to decision-makers and service providers, and this guy did what he always does which is "here's how I get around that by being Resilient and taking individual responsibility for this systemic problem!" Cool story, bro.

After a day like that, with an ending like that, it was very sweet to get a message from my favorite person on my favorite team (mine). Our manager has asked her to work with me on the latest report, so this morning I asked if we could arrange a meeting and it'll be tomorrow morning. So at the very end of the day today, she sends me this:

Hi, this is just a message to tell you that I have reread [the last report, 2 of 3]. I now have an overwhelming urge to tell you that you are such a smart cookie. The report is brilliant and incredibly comprehensive. I'm quite intimidated in supporting you with [report 3 of 3]. Anyway this is me belatedly telling you that you are an awesome [our job title] and maybe you could eat a celebratory chocolate biscuit and pat yourself on the back.

A few sentences like that go a long way!

Welp. Remember when you told me I shouldn't need to chair a work meeting while I'm on vacation?

The good news is, I'm not going to.

The bad news is, it's because I can't. The plan was that we'd be at our Airbnb by tonight and D and I would both work from there tomorrow while V started to recover from the journey.

And we're not at the Airbnb because our ferry to the island we're actually planning to visit, where V's son lives, was canceled. So last-minute that when we got to the port we saw vehicles driving off of it that had already boarded.

We couldn't stay anywhere in the small town where the ferry port is. It has hotels and B&Bs but not enough for an extra ferryload of people at short notice. Poor D had to drive forty minutes back the way we came just for us to get a room at all.

And our ferry crossing has been re-booked, for Saturday. No ferries until then. Allegedly; apparently this can change at short notice. But even if it does, it's hard to plan accommodation or anything else.

And in the meantime we're grateful just to have a roof over our heads (we're staying in the attic, so the slanted roof is only just over my head on this side of the room!). And we'll figure out what happens tomorrow.

But in the meantime, checkout is at 11, and so is this precious meeting. I already told my boss, when we didn't know where if anywhere we'd be tonight to explain, and he wrote back that he was sorry to hear this and to message him in the morning if he's needed to sit in. If! I'm not impressed that even I don't know where I'll sleep tonight and I won't have WiFi tomorrow lunchtime isn't enough to get him to understand that he has to chair this meeting.

Except for this massive snag and the possibility of V not being able to see their kid at all this year, which is a real "other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play," we've actually had a lovely day. We all were up and at 'em in good time to leave the nice place in Stirling where we broke the journey last night. We had time to visit the Highland Folk Museum on the way, which D picked up a brochure about when he was in a long queue to buy sandwiches for lunch at the café with the highland coo (Scottish for "cow") statue everyone gets their photo taken next to, including me now, and we were delighted at the serendipity. It was lovely to see an example of the blackhouses that I'd heard V talk about, and a loom shed for weaving the famous Harris tweed.

I am with my two humans and we are going to wait for more decision-making information and capacity after a night's sleep and maybe some updates from the much-cursed ferry operator.

I stayed in London last night, an extremely good idea after a ten-hour work day full of travel, the last thing I wanted was almost three more hours' travel to get home.

So I worked from the London office (gosh I sound like a wanker saying things like this) for most of today -- my manager suggested yesterday that I sleep in or leave early but I couldn't do much of either because of long-planned engagement with campaigners where I'd have really been letting my team down if I wasn't around.

So when I booked this train ticket I calculated that if I left right as that meeting finished this afternoon I'd be able to get the last train before afternoon peak time (which rendered my ticket unusable) would start.

And I would've been right but of course the meeting overran. Campaigners!

I got to Euston like six minutes before my train, so I didn't have time to go ask for passenger assistance. But since they have display screens I can actually read now, I could try to run and get the train myself.

Platform 3. So far so good. I rushed there, fishing out my work phone as I did because I have an e-ticket.

I have an e-ticket because I've had problems collecting paper tickets from the inaccessible machine or the office that's staffed for two hours early in the morning...except when it's not.

Neither paper tickets nor e-tickets are actually accessible.

Normally this is better (although I couldn't charge my phone today because Apple chargers suck and also my work laptop sucks but whatever).

But the app logged me out!

It never logs me out! It was fine yesterday! There was no warning or anything.

I was at the ticket barrier freaking out, shaking so I couldn't type my email address or password.

Even when I did finally manage it, it demanded a code sent to the email address. Which Outlook hid from me (all the other many many emails I get from this benighted institution go to the Focused inbox but for some reason these went to Other, which I don't get notifications of and which are more difficult to locate. Especially when you're freaking out because your train is visible and you can't get to it yet.)

I had to ask for another code and then I had to pay attention to which was the newer one so I didn't use the older one. This website has been known to lock me out for twenty minutes when I got my password wrong twice, so I was terrified of that happening too.

I copied the code and pasted it accordingly. Only at this point did I remember that my work phone doesn't let me paste anything. Because it lets me copy things as normal, oh yeah, no problem there. But when I try to paste them, my phone instead spits out a sentence something like "Your organisation does not allow data to be copied" or something like that. It tells you off. For expecting that you might ever want to copy something even when you have logged in with the same account to Teams and Outlook and Word and SharePoint... Surely no one ever needs to copy things right? Especially not a blind person who now has to memorize a string of random numbers...

My session timed out.

I had to start over again from the beginning. The shaky typing of my email address, the concentration it took to make sure my password was right when it's just showing up as a row of black dots... Getting a new email and knowing at least to check the Other inbox for it now. Trying to paste the six digits because my panicky brain had already forgotten that I couldn't. I had to do that three times before I got it to work.

I was almost in tears by that point.

I had also gone from hoping that the staff member standing just the other side of the ticket gates would help me, to worrying that he was seeing me about to cry or scream or more obviously have a panic attack, to wondering how Euston finds its staff because they really are an extraordinarily unhelpful bunch. I tried to imagine being as physically close as he was to any living being in such obvious distress as I was and just not reacting in any way.

When I finally got logged in and could access the lovely magical QR code, I tried to line up my phone and the scanner -- which is ridiculously hard to do, two smooth featureless panes of glass, and I find it ridiculously difficult not to accidentally touch any part of my phone screen in the process of trying to hold the phone there because if I do it'll select something, close the app, do something to ensure that the QR code isn't available for the scanner...

Turns out I was trying to use the outbound part of the ticket and not the return part.

This whole time the staff member stayed so exactly on the other side of the ticket barrier from me that when it finally opened for me I almost had to shove him out of the way.

Nothing but empty space in either direction and he still didn't move.

I can't help but think he didn't expect me to actually get through and get on my fucking train. I know that kind of stuff sounds paranoid but, it's not like it'd be the first time someone was waiting to laugh at a disabled person being prevented from doing something ordinary that everyone else is managing to do.

But: fuck that guy and fuck the app and fuck Microsoft and Apple because despite them all I did get my train and now I'm happily back home.