A splendid night out

Walking miles around Paris without my stick (see last week's blog) was obviously a huge confidence-booster. It meant I could walk the streets without fear of one thing which many disabled people dread - being picked out as somehow different because we use a stick and we're not in our 70s or 80s.

My new status was going to be challenged pretty quickly, as well. Twenty-hours after our return from France, I was due at (yet another) leaving party for some of my former colleagues at the Birmingham Post & Mail. This isn't the place to recycle the argument over the rights and wrongs of the decline of local newspapers, but I will say that this event was to mark the departure through voluntary redundancy of five highly-experienced and talented journalists with well over 100 years of experience between them.

It was being held in Birmingham city centre on what turned into an absolutely filthy night, weather-wise. I boarded the train safely at Tamworth station (no sign of my stick, by the way....) and managed to get to the venue without looking too unsteady on my feet.

The venue itself, however, was a different matter. This pub is always crowded; at 6.30pm on a Friday, it's chaos. Luckily, I found some of our party quite quickly but soon discovered that walking across a packed pub with little control over your balance is not fun; I apologise to anyone whose pint I may have accidentally spilled if I bumped into them.

In the end, it was a terrific night. The cream of Midlands journalism was in attendance and I managed to remember that drinking too much would not just have been silly, but thoroughly stupid.

That does, however, bring me to a pet gripe of mine; toilets for the disabled. When you are unable to climb stairs safely, these ground-floor facilities are essential. But most of them can (for obvious reasons) only be accessed by a special key, provided through the RADAR national key scheme. Those disabled people who are 'in the know' buy their own, but plenty of us don't and have to rely for access on a key kept behind the bar/counter and provided on request by the staff.

That's OK most of the time, but trying to get to the bar in a crowded city centre pub when you are unsteady on your feet, then get the attention of busy staff, then ask them to look for and find the key, then fight your way back through the crowd.....well, by the time you've done all that, it may be too late.

I decided not to bother; For a split-second, I considered struggling up the stairs to the gents until I realised that this pub has a lift. Suffice to say I used it, did what needed doing, got back downstairs in the lift and found a comfortable seat on the ground floor.

But this little incident just highlights one of the hundreds (thousands? millions?) of little difficulties with which disabled people fight daily. Until December 16 2013, I was as unaware of them as the rest of the population; now, especially since I threw away my stick, they shine out like beacons.

The loss of independence and control is one of the most frustrating things for a brain-injury survivor. After this little incident, I felt as if I had achieved something substantial on my own to which able-bodied people wouldn't give a second thought. But I would ask for a little understanding at times - especially because stroke can be an unseen disability in people such as me. So let me try to get up the stairs, get to the bar, get to the gents on my own; but please understand that it might take me a little longer than you.