Card Chaos

The following really happened...

I was covering reception at work today. It's a shame I'm not allowed to tell you where I work but if you can just try and imagine what working at a reception desk for the day entails then you'll be able to follow me. It's a real shame that I can't tell you where I work actually because my employer does an awful lot of good work for charity which it doesn't like to talk about. It once saved an entire litter of puppies from drowning in a sack on its lunch break. When the sun comes out on summer days my employer is responsible. It's a real shame I am not allowed to tell you where I work.

All was quiet in the morning until around 11.30 when everything started to go distinctly boobs upwards. Suddenly the reception area was swarming with people asking questions and wanting this, that and can you effing believe it, the other. I had to go into the room next door to reception which I can only access using my staff card. My staff card that is made of gold and sings a joyful ditty at you compliments of my employer. It's a shame I'm not allowed to tell you where I work. I reached into the bag under my chair where I keep my wallet. No wallet. It could only be in one of two places. The toilet, or the room next door to reception where I needed to be, but where I couldn't get to without my staff card which was inside the aforementioned wallet.

After a brief flap during which I thought only of how I was going to have to cancel all of my cards and how I was going to have absolutely no means of buying any dinner I went back into the office to borrow a staff card from a colleague. I was still fairly hopeful that I would find my own staff card in the filing room next to reception. I explained that I had lost mine without going into painful detail about the whole sorry scenario and my colleague kindly agreed to lend me her staff card. She even asked if I wanted to keep it on the lanyard which goes around the neck to keep it safe. But I didn't. I'd just lost one card and I was 100% certain I wasn't going to lose another. Despite my assurances the last thing my colleague said to me before I left the office again was 'don't lose my card'. I wouldn't. As if.

You're probably ahead of me here. I went back into the filing room where fortune smiled upon me in the case of my own staff card. I found my wallet resting on the top of a box of filing. Opened but untouched. I put it away and found what I was looking for the people in reception who were still waiting for me to stop having a dithering nightmare. I put my colleague's card 'safely' in my lap. My lap which has reduced sensation due to something called a disability which I temporarily forget about from time to time. As I pushed back towards reception the thought crossed my mind that I should take my colleague's card back to her. It was a passing thought which I moronically ignored. I was perfectly capable of handing out the items to the waiting people and then taking the card back to my colleague. Except I wasn't. With still at least 398 of the 400 people who were waiting for me to get my sorry shit together I reached down to my lap to pick up the card and take it back. Not there. It must have fallen off my lap while I was moving back into the reception area from the room next door.

By this time it was time for another of my colleagues to come and take over reception for my lunch break. We spent the next 10 minutes looking for the missing staff card to no avail. I was wasting everyone's time and no small amount of oxygen in my floundering attempts to resolve this Keystone Cops situation. I had even been to the bathroom to see if it had slipped down into the depths of my chair somewhere, or even my person. This has happened before. I have found items under my cushion, stuck to my arse, and in all manner of other ludicrous places before now. Onen day last week I left a shoe outside my house and had to drive all the way back home, whereupon I discovered it had been moved to my doorstep by my cousin, who just happened to be dropping her kids off at my auntie's house because they were off school that day. It took some time to get into the bathroom to properly check if I had somehow managed to lose the card in any of these ways because when I opened the toilet door there was a girl there, sat on the toilet with her pants around her ankles. She apologised!! Well, she should have locked the door of the disabled toilet that she should never have been in in the first place, to be fair. I was so pre-occupied by the whole lost card scenario that I barely noticed her holiest of holies winking at me in any case. I just noncholantly shut the door as if the whole affair had never taken place.

Finally I had to admit defeat and went in to deliver the comically bad news to my colleague. Just on the off chance I asked her whether anyone had brought her card back into the office. They had. It turns out another colleague had been passing by and noticed the offending card on the floor in the reception area. Without telling me she had just picked it up and given it back to its rightful owner. I'm used to feeling like an idiot but this was taking it to a whole new level. My colleague had saved my bacon but not let me in on the plot. Well, my colleague would save my bacon because I work for an employer which once averted a full scale nuclear war between the world's leading superpowers before sauntering off out to break the world record for the 200metre dash.

It's such a shame I'm not allowed to tell you who I work for.

Leicester - Day Two

On day one of our visit to Leicester I defied my natural aversion to science lessons to visit the National Space Centre. It was a great decision as it turned out. The National Space Centre is entertaining, informative and, to all but most stubborn of bible thumping fantasists, persuasive. Day two is the encore. For my next trick I am going to meet my disdain for the monarchy head on and visit the Richard III exhibition.

I hate the monarchy. Not the individuals within it, obviously. I don't know any of them, although I did meet Princess Anne when I was about seven. I remember complaining about having to go to school that day. A photograph still exists somewhere of me and a group of my friends waiting around for the dubious honour of a handshake or the exchange of a few words with the Queen's horse-faced daughter. To describe the look on my face in that photograph as unimpressed or apathetic would be playing it down a little too much. I was seconds from either throwing rotten fruit or slipping silently into a boredom-induced coma. I can't even remember why the school were taking us to meet her. Possibly because, this being the 80's and the education of disabled people being fairly low on the agenda, they thought it would be something nice for us to do while the 'normal' children carried on learning their times-tables. They were wrong. The very idea that someone can be given all those riches and privileges just because they have been born into a certain family is repugnant. I believe in equality, not deference.

The history of the monarchy is of far greater interest. In years gone by the kings and queens of the day had real power. They had to fight, quite literally, to hold on to that power. All of which was a bit too much for some of them and they ended up either succumbing to madness or traipsing around Britain psychotically beheading anyone who didn't agree with them. Power corrupted well before Mr Blair came along. You can't condone this sort of behaviour but it is more interesting than the waving and er...more waving favoured by this current crop of unchallenged, buck-toothed parasites. Avoiding the pointless debates with royalists about whether or not they generate or cost money in modern Britain, the most compelling reason for getting rid of the whole lot of them is that basically, they don't do anything. They're like the reality tv stars we're all so obsessed with nowadays. Sitting there doing absolutely rock all while the idiot nation hangs on every bit of that nothingness, discussing it with their friends in lieu of any real life of their own to talk about.

But as I say that has not always been the case, and it certainly was not for Richard III. Old Richard was the last English king to be killed in battle on British soil. And it just so happens that the scene of his slaying was the Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire. In 2012 archaeologists were arsing around at a car park in the city hoping to find bits of an old church choir and cloister. They wanted to piece together the artefacts they would find to give them an idea of what the friary in the city would look like. In turn this would tell them more about how the friars would have lived. While doing so they stumbled across what they thought was the remains of the last Plantagenet king. Our man Richard. The Richard III exhibition recounts the story of their find, and their subsequent quest to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Richard buried there under that car park.

It also tries to shed more light on Richard's character. There are some who would brand him a ruthless, child-killing tyrant. A total bastard made of piss. He came to the throne in 1483 after the death of his brother, Edward IV. Within a suspiciously short period of time thereafter Edward's two sons (and therefore the only two humans ahead of Richard in the queue to be Edward's successor) were whisked away and locked into the tower. Richard claimed that both were illegitimate in any case, making him the true heir. Some say he had them both killed to avoid any doubt as to who should take the crown. Others deny this tale, painting Richard as no more villainous as the next psychotic bully with designs on the throne. No angel, but never capable of slaughtering his two young nephews to further his career. An audio feature at the exhibition presents the two sides of this argument in greater detail and probably does so more efficiently than I just have.

This being Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard we are always looking for a disabled angle. Brilliantly, we have one in the fact that Richard suffered from scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine. It was this curvature which first led the archaeologists to believe that the skeleton they found underneath that Leicester car park could be that of the former king. It was already well known that he was a scoliosis sufferer. That's right, Richard III was a biff. Of sorts. The most powerful man in England between 1483 and 1485 was a disabled person. What do you think about that, you able bodied shitclown? And not only him, but also the ill-fated early 90's grungemeister Kurt Cobain had scoliosis too. And most startlingly of all, world-record-breaking fastest man in history Usain Bolt too. Finally, after all my years of drum-banging for the disabled we have inherited the Earth. Not before time. If we must continue with the monarchy we should probably sack the Queen right now and move Hannah Cockcroft into her place. Fuck that. I don't even like Hannah Cockcroft, but you get my point.

Richard was a man who never let his scoliosis get in the way of a good dust-up. As we know he died in battle, and at the exhibition you can read about some of the gruesome details of his violent ending. He was doinked on the head with a sharp blade numerous times, causing severe brain trauma. For the nutjobs among you who it is also said that a blind beggar woman had predicted that Richard, having bumped his spur on crossing the bridge on his way out to battle, would bump his head in exactly the same place on the way back in. And that he did exactly that, though it would have been hard for him to take care not to on the way back since he was very definitely an ex-person at that point. If it is true then the blind beggar was a wise woman. There are two things you need to know about the wise woman. First, she is wise. And second, she is a woman....

Yet it is the wounds that Richard suffered after his death which are the most wince-inducing. When the skeleton was found it was without any feet but worse than that, there was evidence that he had sustained a 'humiliation wound'. In short, someone stabbed him in the anus. When the body went on display after his death to convince the doubters that the king was dead it was also important to someone to graphically demonstrate just how dead he was. Tsk, those 15th century japesters....For those of that kind of persuasion there is a digitally interactive impression of the skeleton in the exhibition where you can push buttons, touch panels and fiddle with knobs to reveal more about the king's ruined, rotted form.

After a leisurely amble around the Jewry Museum in the afternoon it was time to explore more of Leicester's social delights. We settled for Bella Italia in the end but before we got there I was collared by a lagered-up half-wit just desperate for his fix of inspiration porn. Scott just can't resist coming over to tell me that he thinks that those people in the Winter Paralympics are fantastic for just 'having a go'. I have no patience with this sort of thing but I tried my best to explain to him that they weren't doing it to 'have a go' and that it was the bloody Paralympics. You don't just sign up for it or get a go because you have won a viewers' competition on the Alan Titchmarsh Show. But try as I might I couldn't get him to understand the idea that these athletes train and compete constantly to a professional standard, and are not just coming together for a few days for another misleading Channel 4 documentary on disability.

To his credit Scott could sense my irritation at this point, even through his alcoholic fug. But rather than just leave us alone and get on his way he decided instead to re-direct his focus from inspiration porn to piss poor comedy banter. When I told him that I come from St.Helens he came out with a line that is so old that even the archaeologists who dug up Richard III wouldn't be able to find its remains;

"I went there once, and it was shut" he chortled.

"Yeah. We knew you were coming." I answered with as much pompous disdain as I could muster.

Several glasses of red wine later I was all but burned out. Lenny Henry had blatantly lied to me again about the quality of sleep you can expect to get at the Premier Inn. Lenny Henry is a liar and Tiswas was shit anyway.

We retreated to Room 101 to prove him wrong again.

Leicester - Day One

I got an 'E' in GCSE Science. Probably not the 'E' for effort that is often joked about, but more for Enormous apathy. I didn't care. I didn't like my science teacher, nor the school they made me go to in order to have science lessons. To me a bunson burner is a cricket pitch conducive to spin bowling, and there is nothing I care less about in this world than how to tell the difference between Earth and Live and whatever else it is.

And yet my decision to visit Leicester this past weekend contradicts all of that. It came about though idly googling cities that Emma and I haven't been to and the attractions they might offer. That's how I stumbled upon the National Space Centre. Who even knew we had a National Space Centre? I have been to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, details of which can be found somewhere in the bowels of these pages. Do pages have bowels? Especially pages that aren't pages at all but are electronic screens? Anyway, I remember what a fascinating and awe inspiring experience this was, even for a science-dodging luddite like myself. With the Richard III exhibition also located in Leicester that was that, we were going. More on Richard in the next part, or at least his 500 year-old skeleton recently dug up from a Leicester car park. Let's get back to the National Space Centre for now.

The building is shaped like an enormous beehive. It's set back from the surrounding roads which have exciting sounding names like Exploration Drive and Discovery Road. We arrive about lunchtime on Saturday. We couldn't go on Friday night because Saints were playing and well....it's Saints and we've paid for it anyway and we can always take Monday off and.... So we did exactly that. It being lunchtime the first thing we do is eat. This decision is also influenced by the fact that the cafe is the first place you hit when you go through the entrance. The entrance to the exhibits is a little further along. All of which means once you are in among the exhibits you cannot then use the lift to gain access to the canteen from another floor if you get a touch thirsty at any point. You have to go all the way back through to the lift on the opposite side of the building and then back through the gate on the ground floor. Which frankly is a little silly but I am supposing they are worried about people grabbing a sandwich before taking the lift to the upstairs exhibits and cutting out the inconvenience of having to pay for their visit. On which subject, you can expect to pay £13 per adult to visit the centre, and £11 for concessions of which I am one. Everything is accessible except the space travel simulator but that's probably a pretty big deal. Big enough to knock off a few quid from the admission price.

The most interesting thing about the cafe is the model rockets which hang from the ceiling. They probably don't hang. They're much too heavy for that but from my position at a table on the other side of the room I can't actually see what is holding them up. Something big and strong like Simon Cowell's ego perhaps. Below one of these rockets is a table at the centre of which is a red button. Most adults can barely reist the temptation to press buttons despite not knowing what they do, so you can imagine how often the children at the centre poke their tiny, tampering fingers in its direction. When they do they get a set of scienc-ey instructions which are indecipherable to me and a countdown, all delivered in a Transatlantic drawl. But that isn't the fun of it. The fun of it is the fake smoke which then descends from the rear of the rocket. Kids line up to stand underneath the rocket in order to get overwhelmed by the fume fakery. It's all a bit like a 70's episode of Top Of The Pops. Except nobody will get arrested as a consequence. Hopefully. As gimmicks go at least you can say it is fairly original, though the sight of young children violently swatting the smoke away from in front of their faces does make me wonder how much they have enjoyed the experience. Apparently enough to do it again. And again. And again.

Once you are inside you had better be prepared for a lot of reading. I read everything but, being a luddite with the attention span of a recently concussed goldfish, I find it hard to hold that information inside my brain for more than a couple of hours or so. The video and audio exhibits leave a longer-lasting impression on me. One section speculates, through a variety of talking heads and written quotes, about how the universe will end. An eight-year-old boy is quoted as saying that the universe will end when someone eats all the Galaxies. It's as good a theory as any. Certainly better than any piffle about horseman of the fecking apocalypse. And what kind of a universe would it be without Galaxies anyway? Would you want to live in it? In another clip clever-arsed film director Woody Allen can't come up with a thesis for the possible end of the universe, and instead questions people who would want to 'know' the universe in any case.

'I can't even find my way around Chinatown' he muses.

But if you want a real visual and audio experience at the National Space Centre then head for the Sir Patrick Mower Planetarium. You have go when they tell you but it is worth a look. By which I mean that when we pay our entrance fees we are informed that we have been booked in for the 1.50pm screening of 'We Are Aliens'. Well, you might be aliens. I'm definitely from Thatto Heath. If I were a superior being I'd probably find a better way to get around than an NHS wheelchair. Now, normally when I go to a theatre or a cinema or something of that nature I like to bail out of said NHS wheelchair and transfer on to a seat. The Sir Patrick Mower Planetarium is not the place to do this, for me anyway. I'm not the tallest, and when my backside hits the cinema-style seating I sink into it and can't see anything except for the back of the seat immediately in front of me. The screen surrounds you so this might not have been such a problem, but I do like to be able to see what is directly in front of me. Besides I look like Kermit The Frog's nephew Robin sitting on the Iron Throne. I get back into my chair.

I remember wondering why they had chosen Rupert Grint to narrate the film. For those of you who have been living alone on a remote island for the last decade or so Grint is most famous for his role at blathering idiot Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films. I can't see the connection. Harry Potter films are about wizards and magic, not space travel. Space travel is not magic, it's science. Although as we know I got an 'E' in science so what do I know? For 25 minutes or so Grint speculates about the possibility of life on other planets or even in other solar systems with the help of some distinctly cartoon-like graphics. He concludes that Mars is the place that scientists are 'most excited about' because there used to be a lot of water there. I'm not so sure. There's water in Wigan but I'm not sure you'll find any signs of civilised societies.

Some five hours after arriving at the National Space Centre we head back to the Premier Inn, where we have booked to stay for two nights. We are assigned Room 101 which, for people as ignorant as I am pompous, is not only a mediocre panel show hosted by Frank Skinner but also the room containing all of the Hellish nightmares in Winston's mind in George Orwell's 1984. Only we could be burdened with such an omen. Thankfully there seems relatively few fears within the walls and no sign of the four R's I would select should Frank ever be kind enough to ask me on to his show. Religion. Royalty. Rugby Union. Rihanna. That just about completes my list. Neat and tidy. No need to use words starting with any other letter.

Having been told on arrival that the town centre was 20 minutes walk away we are pleased to find that it is more like 10, and within just a few minutes we have found a trusty old Wetherspoons. While we eat and enjoy the first alcoholic beverages of the evening I still can't refrain from getting annoyed. First by two Scottish men arguing in very strong accents so that you couldn't understand the problem, and then by a bunch of girls taking 'selfies'. I hate selfies. I hate the word 'selfies'. Curse me for polluting my column with such a vile word. Selfies are the ultimate expression of narcissim. Can you really not wait that long for someone to take your photograph? I hate having my photo taken anyway. Taking a selfie for me would seem like poking both of my eyes out and then skinning myself alive. With a potato peeler. I don't like selfies.

Later on in another bar when things get really tipsy there is a girl dancing to a Katy B song. She's doing that generic arm-dancing that girls with no rhythm do. She hasn't moved her feet at all. Again, why would you want to dance when you are shit at it? She's no Katy B. She's Katy Z, at best. We peruse a few more watering holes before calling it quits in preparation for our Richard III themed exploration tomorrow.

But I fucking hate royalty, don't I?

Thatcher Day, Electronic Skeletons And The Lockout

I signed a petition the other day. I don't normally sign petitions. Ordinarily my Olympic sized apathy concerning everything and everyone prevents me from bothering. That and my award-winning laziness. Admittedly signing an online petition does not involve getting off the couch and missing the end of Pointless, but it invariably involves having to read a long winded message about what it is they want you to sign and why. I just can't be arsed.

I usually treat the petitions I come across as just another of the many annoyances plastered all over social media. On which subject, don't you just get fucking mad with rage and hell fire about people posting pictures of various forms of physical abuse on Facebook and Twitter? Don't be posting disturbing images on my timeline unless you are going to actively do something about stopping the abuse. Don't just leave it there like a dirty bomb while you fuck off back to watching Towie and eating bacon butties. What are you trying to prove? That you disapprove of cruelty to children and animals? Don't we all. Your position is not revolutionary. All right thinking people disapprove of cruelty to children and animals. The only people who don't are either psychotic and should be removed from your friends list and arrested immediately, or have beans for brains. You are not going to be considered some kind of modern, independent free-thinker by contaminating cyberspace with pictures of malnourished dogs or tortured children. But you might get 583 'likes' which if you are honest, is what it is really all about. Cut it out, as my mum used to tell me.

Back to petitions. This one was different. This was a petition to try to stop the August Bank Holiday being named after Margaret Thatcher. No, really. Some delusional Tory, specifically Peter Bone MP, is sufficiently unaware of the depth of hatred of Thatcher in many quarters to have seriously suggested dedicating an otherwise pleasurable late summer holiday to her. This displays a staggering level of ignorance at best and arrogance at worst. Even if, like old Bonehead, you are one of those Greed-Is-Good turdwits who liked Thatcher because you did very well out of her premiership thank you very much, how is it possible to not understand that at the very least she polarises opinion across the country to extreme levels? There hasn't been a more divisive figure in British history. Where I live, Joanna Dennehy would get more votes in an election than Thatcher. If you're going to name a Bank Holiday after her you might aswell go the whole hog and rename Christmas after Mussolini.

I'm happy to report that I am one of 124,000 people who felt moved to put my name to the petition to stop this and that we have been successful. Bone's bill was due to be heard on February 28 but it was one of over 30 due to be discussed that day. They never got round to it. Well, it was Friday afternoon and most MP's are asleep by then. You would like to think that those who remained awake would, had it got that far, been aware enough of what is going on around them in the country they claim to represent to laugh the idea out of the house. Knowing what we know about our politicians that is far from certain, but at least they had the wherewithal to prioritise the afternoon's agenda in such a way that this turgid idea will now never get off the ground. Had it done so I might well have felt compelled to boycott that Bank Holiday, preferring instead to sit outside my place of employment banging on the door until they let me in. I'm not celebrating anything in her name except maybe the fact that she is no longer running this country. It would have been a moral dilemma of the worst kind though. Celebrate Margaret Thatcher Day or lose your August Bank Holiday because of the evil old witch? Thankfully I'll probably never have to decide.

I was having a conversation with a friend and colleague yesterday about some kind of research into therapy for people who have become paralysed. You know the kind of stuff Christopher Reeve was into before he sadly shuffled off the proverbial coil? It transpires that some crazy boffins somewhere are trying to develop some kind of electronically powered skeleton suit or whatever the hell it might be to try and trick the brains of the paralysed into making their affected bits move. Can you tell I wasn't listening all that well and that I haven't really done much research into this since? Why should I when you can get significantly more 'likes' on Facebook by posting a photograph of a dying puppy than you can from trying to write something accurate and informative? Anyway, at first I scoffed at this in a way that only I can. I'm a champion scoffer, as we know. I saw it as an attempt by the able bodied to rid themselves of the shame of having disabled people living among them. I'm not that bothered about walking and I see the task of making things accessible for me as the duty of a civilised society. It is not incumbent upon me to find ways to start walking, surely?

Having given a bit more thought to the question of whether I would like to eliminate my disability I now accept that yes I probably would. But not by simply moving my legs. Getting my disobedient limbs to comply is not going to eliminate the worst things about disability. If research of this kind can find a way to give me control of my bladder and my bowels so that I may not have to use implements which make me more susceptible to infection and the subsequent organ damage I have suffered then that's worthwhile. Of course, you can't go back in time so no amount of research could reverse my kidney damage. But in theory I would support that idea for future generations. Provided the shamed, socially inept teen mothers of the modern generation haven't aborted us all out of existence by then. Genuine results from this research are so far away that they won't affect me in any case, so I'll hold out and request only that people start showing a little more respect for disabled people and treat them as equals. That would cost an awful lot less than an electronic skeleton, I would imagine.

Before I leave you for another prolonged period of introspection (which mostly involves reading through old columns and squirming at their pomposity) I can't neglect to mention that the lock on my front door is broken. Emma went out to the shops this morning and when she got back she couldn't get in to the house. Her key turned but the door wouldn't budge. I tried to unlock it from the inside but had the same problem. The lock turned, but the door jammed. I had to go through to the back door to let her in, which sounds simple but such is the amount of junk now stored in our house it actually meant that I had to bail out of my chair and crawl on the conservatory floor in order to get to the back door. I looked like Leonardo Di Caprio in that awful, offensive cerebral palsy scene from the vastly over-rated Wolf Of Wall Street. Although I concede I was not nearly as good looking as Leo. Anyway, If only I had an electronic skeleton type suit thingy I could have walked there. By about 7.30 on Tuesday. On route, I had to move an enormous blue basket-shaped contraption which I'm told helps dry clothes. I don't go into the back room of our house that often but every time I do it seems like another new attraction has been added. Like they do in Disney Land from time to time. The upshot of all this is that we now have to get a locksmith out to attend to it, and since they are cheaper in the week than they are at the weekend it's going to have to wait till Monday. To compound things, this happens only a year away form a complete overhaul of the way the house is laid out and when we will therefore need an entirely new front door. With classic Emma-and-Stephen luck on our side, what is the betting that we will have to buy a new front door now aswell?

Fortunately, Emma has been good enough to plot an escape route for me past the blue, basket-shaped clothes-drying contraption.

Easyjet's French Farce

The increase in airport security since 9/11 is rightly considered to be A Good Thing. Most people would consider an extra few minutes spent going through extra security checks to be a small price to pay for ensuring that the aircraft they are about to travel on is not hijacked and flown into the most famous and highly populated building that the terrorists can find. But at what point does security go too far? Is there a point where security is just used an excuse to treat people like shit?

Well yes there is, and the evidence was provided by minge-bag budget airline Easyjet this week. A court ruled that they must pay a £42,000 fine for ordering a disabled woman off a plane for what they claimed were security reasons. Initially they were only ordered to pay £4,500 but the fine was increased by almost ten times after the crappy airline appealed the decision. Back in March 2010 a French woman named Maria Patricia Hoarau boarded a flight back to Nice from Paris but was told that she would not be able to travel. Hoarau had committed the heinous crime of being a disabled person and being alone, the two things which the able bodied community appear to fear the most. Especially those in big business, for whom the merest whiff of a risk is reason enough to take discrimination to absurd levels.

Despite having taken the flight from Nice to Paris just a few days earlier Hoarau was told that since she did not have a 'helper' she would not be able to take the flight. Ever more brilliantly they informed her of this decision AFTER she had boarded the plane! Even when another passenger offered their assistance in the event of any emergency the airline refused to change their stance, claiming that they could not allow it as the pair had not checked in together.

Now let's talk about the word 'helper' for a moment. By and large, disabled people don't have 'helpers'. They have friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives. Just like you lot. In the event that none of these people are present at the time they wish to travel, they do so alone. Just like you lot. I get this shit when I ring up to order tickets for an event. I used to go to watch Saints on my own at Knowsley Road, but now they have a proper stadium I have to buy a season ticket. Not that I mind that, particularly. I'd much rather pay for a better view and a spec that you don't have to wheel through shit to get to. It also means I get to rock up five minutes before kick-off whereas previously if you weren't in your space at least half an hour before the game you could forget about seeing anything. Now I get one ticket free for my 'helper', the implication being that I could not possibly go anywhere on my own. Particularly not a fully accessible rugby stadium. Obviously. Or work. Bugger that. I'm an Undateable living on Benefits Street, remember. Back in the real world Emma comes to Saints with me most of the time, and on the rare occasions she does not I take my nephew Joe with me. My partner or my nephew. Never my fucking 'helper'. She's never available because she has gone on holiday with Easyjet.

Back to Hoarau, and the language used gets worse. Even from people who were speaking in support of Hoarau but who should know better, frankly. The French disabled rights association the APF commented that;

"We are pleased at this exemplary sentence against Easyjet for discriminating against this woman because of her handicap."

Handicap? Fuck off. If you are handicapped you are somehow worse off than everyone else and that is not really the image we are trying to project. A handicap is a disadvantage, an archaic term associated with the days when we were all educated in special schools away from the 'normal' children, lest our horrid diseases be spread around. Please can we not go back to that?

For her part, Hoarau was suitably miffed by the whole experience. After being marched back into the terminal and having to wait until a 'helper' could be found she remarked that;

"Being ordered off like that in front of my fellow passengers was a slap in the face. I felt humiliated and like a pariah who has no place in society."

You're spot on Ms Hoarau, that's exactly what you are in the eyes of far too many people considering it is 2014. A pariah who has no place in society. Tell you what though, you want to try being dragged backwards down an aircraft aisle while Rio Ferdinand stares at you impatiently on his way to his golfing trip in Portugal. Then you'll really feel like an outcast and a burden.

By now none of you will be surprised when I tell you that the words 'this has happened to me' are hurtling inexorably towards this article. This has happened to me. Or something like it. During my former life as a basketball player we had to take flights to Belfast and Dublin among other places with money-mad budget airlines masquerading as champions of our safety. They insisted that for every person we had in our party who could not walk we had to have one who could. Luckily disability is a wide and varied conidtion, so many of our party could actually walk (albeit some of them with a little less grace than others). So we got away with it and were able to travel. Oh how grateful we were. We were a party of probably 10 or 15 people. Try that on your own and you are very likely to end up in a similar position to Ms Hoarau. In the 21st century.

In defence of his rag-tag organisation Easyjet's French director Francois Bacchetta believes speed is the most important factor here. He hasn't got time to wait for social pariahs to get off his airplanes without the aid of a 'helper';

"In the event of an emergency, we need to be able to evacuate all passengers in 90 seconds." he explains.

Since Ms Hoarau boarded the plane without assistance I hardly think it likely that she would need more than that in the event of an emergency. I cannot board a plane without assistance, but only because to do so would be arduous and embarrassing. Were I to find myself on board one that had recently crash-landed in the Atlantic Ocean then 90 seconds to crawl from my seat to the nearest exit would be forever. Anyone who saw me ascend those stairs in Crystals in angry pursuit of my ex-girlfriend all those years ago can testify to that. I daresay that Ms Hoarau would have been able to disembark even more quickly. That they refused to allow another passenger to assist in the incredibly unlikely event of an emergency just craps down more shame on Easyjet and it's shitty, anti-disability, risk-fearing ways.

Oh, but they would like me to finish by pointing out that they did not charge Ms Hoarau for another flight ticket once they had found her a 'helper'. Hearts of gold.

The St.Valentine's Day Massacre

Today is Valentine's Day. I hate Valentine's Day. Fucking loathe it. I'm getting angry about it now just thinking about it, hence the expletive. My fury may just be reflected in the remainder of this piece but that's ok cos it is just a blog. Not a newspaper column. Nobody said I was Henry Winter.

I hate Valentine's Day for all the obvious reasons really. It's a crass, overly commercialised vom-fest. An opportunity for card manufacturers to cash in on your guilt and the duress you're placed under by your signifcant other. To break your balls, in other words. I'm fortunate in that I have a partner who genuinely does not give two shits about Valentine's Day. She possibly hates it almost as much as I do. So I don't have to bother. Obviously that means I don't receive anything either but really, so what? We spend our money more wisely, let's put it that way. Not that anyone believes this when I tell them. They shake their heads in disbelief and come to the conclusion that I am an anti-romantic, lazy, rubbish boyfriend. Which I am, but that doesn't change the fact that my Mrs doesn't care.

Some people think I am lucky to have a partner given my general level of misery and grouchiness. Again they are right, but again it is what it is. The Sun shines on a dog's arse some days. Someone told me the other day that if she was my girlfriend and I didn't buy her a Valentine's card then she would dump me. This seems a little knee-jerk on her behalf so I'm suspicious of it's authenticity. Would any sensible person really throw away a long-term relationship for the sake of a bit of card with a tacky message inside? Or a bunch of flowers that will die by Thursday week if you are lucky? A box of chocolates that they will stuff down their necks in one night and then start moaning about putting on weight? Besides, if this person and I were the only two people left on Planet Earth I still don't think I could bother my arse to try and make it work out. The human race just isn't that important to me. I fucking hate people anyway. Why make more of them? I Can't work it out.

Valentine's Day also offends my anti-religious sensibilities. It's a Saints day, like any other. The only thing worse than people going to restaurants and eating heart-shaped desserts because it happens to be February 14 is people going out in large green hats and pretending to be Irish on March 17. It's fucking moronic. Stop it now, before it's too late. I am no more likely to celebrate St.Valentine's Day or St.Patrick's Day than I am St.David's Day (how many of you even know when that is?), or St.Swithens or whatever the fuck that is. I take my atheism very seriously. I have no patience with the view that God exists. It's just a completely illogical pile of horse shit. Like Valentine's Day. I celebrate Christmas but that's basically because I have stolen it from the God Botherers. Like The Grinch, which aptly suits my personality I think.

I think the other reason I hate St.Valentine's Day is that I never got any female attention until I was about 17. And that worked out really well... Meanwhile, the rest of my friends were groping girls in tents. I really think I should get over this blatant climate of discrimination that I used to live in (and but for Emma, still would but without the tents) but I don't seem able to. It's stayed with me forever. I'm holding a massive grudge against all things romantic, including the rather less romantic endgame of what elderly people call courting.

Actually, now I think about it I don't believe any men like Valentine's Day. I don't think I am unique. I'm just in the fortunate position of being able to admit it without spending the rest of my life in Coventry. I reckon about 90% of men who are doing something to celebrate Valentine's Day tonight are doing so to please their women. Valentine's Day is for girls. Like netball and mood swings. So anyway I think perhaps I should thank Emma for not forcing me to go through the shambolic facade that is Valentine's Day. I think there was a time, in the dim and distant past, when we bought each other Valentine's Day cards but it is long ago. Valentine cards are the preserve of people trying to impress someone or trying keep their dinner out of the dog. Perhaps it should be allowed for newly attached couples, but then anyone caught celebrating it after more than say, five years in a relationship should be taken outside and beaten to death with a hear-shaped spade.

Happy Valentine's Day.

The Jump

You may not have noticed amid all the publicity being undeservedly hogged by former bigoted racist turned national hero Jim Davidson, but the Winter Olympics starts next week. Two weeks of people doing crazy things on bobsleighs, sleds, skis and skates begins in Sochi, Russia on February 7.

But Channel 4 can't wait that long. So to fill the void until then they have done what all television companies like to do these days, and based a celebrity reality television show on it. 'The Jump' pits a series of slebs and no-marks against each other in some highly dangerous sporting pursuits, presumably in the hope that one of them will suffer a serious injury. Because that would be great television.

And one of them almost did during the episode that I watched on Thursday night. The Olympic connection may just be a coincidental bonus, but the sight of five-time rowing gold medallist Sir Steve Redgrave stumbling into the snow at break-neck speed was probably exactly the sort of thing the producers were after. I just felt a little embarrassed by it all. This well respected Olympic hero reduced to a crumpled heap on the snow, letting out moans which reminded me of when Alan Partridge got stuck under a cow;

'Are you alright, Alan?'

'No, I'm not alright. I'm stuck under a cow...'

But the show must go on with or without Sir Steve. At the point I join proceedings there are only seven celebrities left in the competition. The idea is that they all compete against each other in a series of winter events, with the bottom two celebrities suffering the indignity of 'The Jump', an actual, real-life if slightly smaller-scale ski-jump. Whoever jumps furthest out of the two gets to further their careers for another night. The loser goes home, metaphorically speaking. In reality they stick around to comment on what happens to the others in subsequent events. Tonight's expert analysis comes from Amy Childs, much to the delight of her interviewer and Last Leg pillock Alex Brooker. Spellbinded by Childs' boobs on legs form, Brooker is reduced to a blathering imbecile. I'm certain he's trying to flirt with her. He then turns his attention to reading out viewer tweets, of which remarkably there are several. What kind of people sit at home watching this shite and think 'I know, I'll tweet Alex Brooker to see if they read out my keyboard warrior false name on television'? And anyway why does Brooker have to have a role in everything broadcast by Channel 4? Anybody would think that he actually has some talent. As for Childs, she is no longer in the competition after she actually refused to perform her ski-jump when she found herself in the bottom two. There's footage of her sitting terrified at the top of the slope, like a mortified deer refusing to drink from the river in case they are eaten by a crocodile. Also hanging around after being knocked out is Sinitta. The thought crossed my mind that this show cannot have been the first time that Sinitta has tried to further her career with a jump.

And so to tonight's event which is the bobsleigh. The bobsleigh is not all that compelling when there are Olympic medals at stake, so what chance does it have of creating excitement when the most interesting possible outcome is watching a celebrity's head roll slowly down the track like Vyvyans on the railway during that classic University Challenge episode of The Young Ones? With Sir Steve in hospital it has therefore been established that this is not even live, thus reducing the chances of any celebrity deaths being broadcast to an almost miniscule level. Sir Steve's bobsleigh run had already been filmed before his accident so he is there and yet not there, if you see what I mean. His run is particularly harrowing for me as the camera inside the bobsleigh dwells unnecessarily on his bollocks as he endeavours to get into the bobsleigh. By the way, the celebrities aren't driving the bobsleigh. That would be madness. Instead their task is to run as fast as they can pushing the bobsleigh down the track before hopping in, bollocks-cam and all. After that their only concerns are holding on for dear life, screaming intermittently, and pulling the brakes on when they hit the finish line.

It's all presided over by shouty former Big Brother presenter Davina McCall. Big Brother is a steaming pile of sewage, but being shoved on to this guff probably qualifies as a demotion for McCall. There's a wonderful sketch on Dead Ringers in which McCall is depicted along with Claudia Winklman as a grunting lunatic, incapable of actual speech. The two meet in the park pushing prams and just thrash their heads about while they grunt. It's one of those rare sketches which you know is not accurate, but you have to love it because it gives you the feeling that this is how the two of them should communicate were they to meet in the park. When she is not shouting McCall is there to provide sympathy for the celebrities as one by one they look back disappointedly on their bobsleighing efforts. To be fair she has done well to recognise some of these celebrities. Who is Kimberley Wyatt anyway? And Laura Hamilton? Then there is Joe McElderry possibly making his first television appearance since X-Factor, and Richie Neville from Five (who in preparation for his bobsleigh run is trying to recall his rugby days, which is like me trying to remember my rock-climbing days), Donal McIntyre, and Marcus Brigstocke. Well who were you expecting? It takes a certain level of desperation to volunteer to career down an icy track at a million miles an hour just to be on telly.

McIntyre is particularly inept. The investigative reporter can get into the inner sanctums of the most cloak and dagger organisations for his television shows, yet here he can't even get into a bobsleigh. He is duly disqualified and, unless more than one of the remaining contestants shows equal ineptitude, is resigned to taking part in the climactic 'jump' at the end of the show. They don't, and so joining him in the crunch showdown will be Hamilton, who it turns out is a television presenter according to commentator Barry Davies. The work must be drying up, is all I can think. She's taking pointless daredevilry to new heights as she explains to McCall that she recently gave birth. The pressure increases on McIntyre then. How humiliating will it be if he can't ski-jump further than a woman half his size who has only recently been discharged from the maternity ward?

And anyway what happened to Barry Davies to see him reduced to this? My childhood is peppered with memories of Davies commentating on some of the biggest sporting occasions on television. He retired from all of that after a moody flounce. He wanted to know why he wasn't getting as many big football games as John Motson. And well he might. I think we all have a case for being selected to commentate on Match Of The Day ahead of Motson, whose descent into senility is gathering pace. Davies' unfaithful dalliances with the likes of tennis, gymnastics and ice skating probably cost him dear on that score, but I'm sure he never saw it ending like this. Trying to describe a ski-jump performed by two inept celebrities just hoping for another night on the telly.

In the event it is McIntyre who edges the jump, with a winning distance of 13.5m. So unimpressive is this that I am reminded of Bob Mills' old joke about sliding down his driveway one snowy morning and finding out later that day that he was ranked second in Great Britain in downhill skiing. A lack of a reliable snow supply has rendered the British somewhat useless at winter sports, a fact that will no doubt be further proven when the real action starts in Russia. And so seven become six here in Celebrityville, and we are promised some speed skating tomorrow. Sir Steve's participation is in some doubt but that would not be as big a blow for him as it might be for some of the others involved. No matter how many crap reality shows you do you can expect to retain some modicum of respect after having achieved all that he has.

The stakes are palpably higher for the likes of McElderry.

Rugby Union Is Shit

The Six Nations starts this weekend. I tell you this not out of some rabid excitment and anticipation at the prospect, but simply because it seemed like a good time to describe to you just how much contempt I have for rugby union. And all who sail in it. In addition, I read recently that I should write what pleases me rather than trying to accommodate others. So this is today's offering, like it or lump it.

I have many problems with rugby union, but fundamentally the main reason I hate it is because it's shit. Since that is overly simplistic let me elaborate a little more. I hate it because it's elitist and boring, and I hate it because it has an unwarranted air of superiority over rugby league, which in case you hadn't noticed I love. I hate union because there's a southern-media led misconception that it is a national game while league confines itself to grimy northern outposts. In reality, only 3 out of the 12 teams in Yawnions Aviva Premiership can truly consider themselves northern. As much as league is a northern game, union is a southern game.

But isn't arguing about league versus union just splitting hairs? A colleague of mine genuinely did not know that there were two codes of rugby, and just thought that rugby league and rugby union were different competitions within the same sport. There are similarities, and it is apparently possible to enjoy both equally. I know avid fans of league who are very keen on union too. To them it's just rugby, but to me watching a game of union because it is 'rugby' is like eating a turd because it used to be food. Union has passed through real rugby's digestive system and been deposited with all the best bits sent to do more important things elsewhere. The differences between it and league are manyfold and completely massive.

Where shall we begin? Let's start with the basics. a rugby union team has two more players in it than a rugby league team. Fifteen versus league's entirely more sensible thirteen. With 15 players on each side it is little wonder that there is no space for any creativity. Conseqently terrified coaches urge their players to leather the ball down the field to within an inch of it's life, lest they risk losing posession within 30 miles of their own try-line. Not that the line itself is under any threat, because fear dictates that nobody runs or passes in union. But get them within 30 or 40 metres or so of their opponents goal-line and the kicking contest can begin. Essentially, rugby union is just that. A kicking contest. It's golden moment in the national consciousness came when Johnny Wilkinson dropped a goal to win the World Cup for England in 2003. Drop-goals are booed in rugby league. Whenever you see a drop-goal landed you will see a shot of a rugby league coach thrashing around in his seat, incandescent with rage at the player who settled for a poxy, useless meaningless point. And ruined the spectacle into the bargain. The only exception to this is if the clock is imminently due to expire and said drop-goal has decided the outcome of a game by a single point. In rugby league drop-goals are taboo and place-kicks (penalties and conversions) are the boring bits in between the real action. If I was in charge at Sky Sports I'd go to a commercial while the conversions are taking place.

More commercials could be thrown in if we had line-outs in league too. Whenever the ball is aimlessly booted into the stands in union (which is often) there then follows a procedure whereby three or four players line up opposite each other, facing the touchline at around about the point where the ball previously crossed it. Then a small, squat balding man with a number 2 on his back is charged with the task of throwing the ball back into play in a straight line directly between the two queues. They look like a bunch of women waiting for a bouquet to be thrown at them at a wedding so they can be next. It's an embarrassing, irksome non spectacle and, more often than not, precedes more kicking in any case. Scrums are hardly essential to the entertainment either. In league they are an almost ceremonial method of restarting play and of getting five or six bigger, slower blokes out of the way. In union they are a cherished art form as one group of fat-arsed toffs tries to bully the other group of fat-arsed toffs into back-tracking far enough so that someone can eventually fall on the ball and claim a rare try.

I mention toffs because that is yet another failing of the dismal, anti-sport that is rugby union. Though all rugby is professional now union is traditionally the perserve of the middle to upper classes, who didn't need money for playing and so rained down great turds of patronising ire on those who did when the sport split in the late 19th century. This sense of Corinthian spirit gave them some measure of kudos right up until the mid 80's when union stars like Jonathan Davies, Scott Gibbs, Scott Quinnell and others queued up to turn to the professional code. We're all slumming it now then, except we're not because union players still manage to somehow date princesses. What kind of a sport allows it's protagonists to mix with royalty? What kind of a sport would have protagonists that would attract royalty? Socially, union is one-stop short of fox-hunting, croquet and fucking polo. I'd rather be the hunted fox than watch a single minute of the dreary kick-athon that will be the Six Fucking Nations.

If union offers a better class of socialite, it also offers a better class of cheating. It's crowning glory in the field of skullduggery came when then Leicester coach Dean Richards persuaded one of his players to use a blood capsule to flagrantly flout the blood-bin rule in a big match some years ago. Leicester wanted to get another kicker (who else?) on to the field to give themselves the opportunity to land the winning points but had used all of their permitted substitutions. Fortunately for them blood injuries (or so called bloodbin substsitutions, more on which in a moment) allow a team to make changes in addition to the agreed limit as long as they patch up the injured player and bring him back on to the field within an agreed amount of time. There were mass bannings and general outrage on the level of match-fixing in cricket and snooker, yet still the southern tabloids love this pile of shite. In addition to bloodbin-gate union also offers a good line in eye-gouging, biting and its own time-honoured personal favourite, stamping.

Mention of the blood-bin brings me around to another gripe, that of union stealing all of league's ideas. Good or bad, they'll have them and present them as their own. So now union has not only bloodbinning, but video replays to decide on contentious decisions, and a play-off system culminating in a championship final. First past the post is old news in union, but has been so in the far more forward-thinking and admittedly innovative-for-the-sake-of-it rugby league since 1998. Incidentally, one of the more ill-advised of those innovations has been the cross-code challenge. This pits a leading side in union against a leading side in league, with one game played under union rules and one game under league rules. The pointlessness of this is staggering, like pitting a vaccuum cleaner against a dalek, with the first game won by the team that cleans the lounge the quickest, and the second game going to the team which exterminates Doctor Who and Amy Pond before tea-time.

So how can we fix rugby union, short of turning into rugby league? That's the only sure-fire solution but in the absence of that I propose that me and my soon to be assembled band of rugby league fundamentalists tear up the union rule book and make some drastic changes. Kicking the ball out on the full should be punishable by death, or at least a penalty try, while dating a princess should forfeit your side an entire match, or maybe see your side relegated to a division small enough that even the Daily Mail won't bother to report on it. Any points scored for your team by an ex-rugby league player should be disallowed on the basis that you have cheated. Bringing in obviously superior athletes from a much better sport is just not cricket. It's like letting Romelu Lukaku play in an under 10's football league.

So anyway you go ahead and pretend you like Guinness for the next month or two, cheering on the dentists and lawyers as they give the French a damn good thrashing or whatever. I'm going to wait another week for the Super League to get under way, then we might live in hope of seeing a game of rugby featuring more than one try.

Don't even get me started on bonus points for tries.......

Too Much Telly

Forgive my rampant and shameless populism but today I am going to talk to you about telly.

Basically, I'm watching far too much of it. Far more than is conducive to the sanity of any one individual. Conservatively, I have counted no fewer than 19 television series of which I have watched at least one episode in the couple of years since I succumbed further to Rupert's evil plan and bought Sky+. Nineteen. Paul Hardcastle would have a field day with that figure.

I can't be the only one trawling through either the On Demand listings or endlessly looking for new shows to download to while away the hours between the end of work and the start of sleep. Everyone's at it aren't they? Other people have it really bad because they are also addicted to spirit-choking reality shows and soaps which endlessly loop for 50-odd years, disguising their cynical sensationalism as 'addressing taboos'.

Where shall we start? Revolution? Have you ever seen Revolution? If not you really must. It would bill itself as a futuristic science fiction thriller. I would bill it as seriously glorious silliness but quality entertainment for all of that. It is set in a United States of America which has basically become war-torn by the loss of all electricity. Except in one scene they managed to play a bit of Lionel Richie, but explaining how that came to pass would take up the whole of this piece. Let's stick to the plot in which post-loss-of-power, the Matheson family suffer the abduction of teenage son Danny by one of the tearaway, looting militia groups which now hold sway. Charged with getting him back are Danny's sister Charlie and her friends Aaron and Maggie. Aaron is a former Google executive, and so you can imagine how far out of his comfort zone he has become. Meanwhile Charlie has that Fergie from Black Eyed Peas quality of being rather funny looking but undeniably sexy. Her father Ben is shot at some point in all of this, leaving the group to seek out the help of his brother Miles.

Miles, along with his former friend and now adversary Sebastian Monroe (self appointed leader of the Monroe Republic and all around evil genius) is virtually indestructable in any form of combat. Which is handy when you are trying to complete a daring rescue in the company of two brave but limited women and a bearded nerd. Incidentally, Sebastian is more commonly known as Bass. Only Sebastians in a lecky-less future call themselves Bass. You can only get away with that sort of shit in a world gone mad. Miles' thing is that he can't really be arsed to get involved in Danny's rescue, but he feels a responsibility to do so for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he is the abducted boy's uncle, and secondly he is a reformed baddie starting to feel guilty about all of the terrible atrocities he committed at Bass' side owing to their thirst for power. Via a series of flashbacks the Miles-Bass back-story begins to unfold, as does the rest of your life as you become consumed by this limited but unmissable drama.

Equally unmissable is the The Following. I have just finished watching episode 2 of series 2 as I write. It's real edge-of-the-wheelchair stuff. The first series centres around a cult led by a creepy teacher and wannabe novelist turned serial killer. He's English of course, as any baddie worth his salt is. In series one he went on a lot about Edgar Allen Poe, kidnapped his son, then his wife, and somehow managed to persuade around 50 lost and lonely souls to do his murderous bidding. Some of this was achieved during a stint in prison. It's impressive stuff. Trying to stop the bad guy is EE advertising former Footloose star Kevin Bacon as Ryan Hardy. Hardy's a one-time FBI man who has been lashed out of the bureau for doing things his own way once too often. It gets personal between Hardy and the killer, Joe Carroll, for no less predictable a reason as they are both in love with Carroll's wife Claire. That's what Bacon might refer to as a no-brainer.

From then on the phrase cat and mouse doesn't really do it justice until now, after the latest instalment previously referred to, Carroll's cover as trailer park trash hiding out in the sticks is blown when he fails miserably to resist the temptation to murder a priest. A priest to whom he is pimping out his new girlfriend. So skilfully done is The Following that it can even make you feel a level of empathy with Carroll. I can't sit here with my hand on my heart and tell you that I have never wanted, on some level, to kill the local priest.

There's religious goings on in my newest distraction, a mysterious drama starring former ER geek Anthony Edwards called Zero Hour. Attempts to describe to you what is going on here are entirely superfluous but let me have a stab at the outline. Edwards' wife has been kidnapped by a man with strangely colour-less eyes and if he wants to get her back he has to figure out a clock-related puzzle that is so complex it makes your average 3-2-1 clue look like child's play. There's welve clocks involved, twelve apostles but disappointingly no dead priests. Complicating things further is the fact that the colour-less eye kidnapper is also responsible for the death of an FBI agent's husband. And she just wants to put a bullet in his head and bugger what happens to Edwards' wife. Now that's what I call conflict. To top it all off, a clock purchased by Edwards' wife on the day of her abduction leads Edwards and his employees to a snow-bound location where he runs into a frozen version of himself and some abandoned Nazi machinery. Somehow he was around in 1938 when all of this clock business is said to have begun. No, I don't understand it either but that won't stop me watching the next episode.

Want something that you don't have to concentrate on to understand? How about Friday Night Lights, a high school drama about the fortunes of the Dillon Panthers High School football team? It's like Grange Hill with helmets and pom-poms. Brilliantly, it takes a stab at addressing disability early in the first series when the Panthers starting quarterback Jason Street is practically sawn in half by a rampaging, burger-fuelled opposing linebacker. He never walks again. Naturally, Street's ludicrously beautiful cheerleader girlfriend has second thoughts about this going-out-with-a-crip lark, and promptly hops into the sack with his best friend, talented but lazy drunkard and ne'er-do-well Tim Riggins. In her defence, Riggins is played by Taylor Kitsch who can now be found causing hearts to throb in such cinematic gobshitery as Battleship and John Carter. Happily, Street soon forgets about his ludicrously beautiful girlfriend and gets to the brink of the USA's Paralympic wheelchair rugby team before miraculously getting laid, impregnating the girl in question and sodding off out of it before it gets really unwatchable. By the end of the fifth series the only thing holding your attention is Kitsch and the spellbinding Aimee Teegarden. That and trying to figure out how and why they found such an ugly baby to play her little sister.

So far, so silly, but the television show that everyone is talking about at the moment is the wonderful if slightly belief-sapping Breaking Bad. This is the story of a 50-year-old chemistry teacher who, upon learning that he has potentially terminal cancer, decides to raise money for his treatment and for the long-term betterment of his family by cooking and dealing crystal meth. The fact that his brother-in-law is high up in the New Mexico drug squad is no deterrent to our hero, Walter White. There's another disability angle in the form of Walter's son, Walter Junior, who has cerebral palsy. For reasons best known to himself Walter Junior decides at some point during series two or three that he would rather be known as Flynn. Then he drops that name, and picks it up again by the end. But what Flynn mostly excels at is wandering around aimlessly not having even half a clue what is going on with his own family. Even his baby sister seems to have a more enlightened grasp on proceedings than Flynn, but at least his baby sister is not as gruesome as Amy Teegarden's. I can't say too much else about Breaking Bad for fear of a hate mail response to spoilers. All I can say is that you must watch it, if only for the acting brilliance of Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a stupefying leap from Malcolm In The Middle's Dad, and Aaron Paul as Walter's former pupil and meth-using accomplice Jesse Pinkman. Watch out too for spectacular turns by Bob Odenkirk as bent comedy lawyer Saul, and Revolution's very own Giancarlo Esposito as a man who sells chicken for a living. And more besides.

So you can imagine that watching all of these added to the sacks full of football, rugby league, cricket and NFL that I gorge on every week would leave me with barely enough time to hold down my job. Quite how I find the time to write this column is a conundrum that even Anthony Edwards and his clock couldn't find the answer to. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. Slow burning non-event Boardwalk Empire is somehow compelling, as is Game Of Thrones in which every man and his proverbial mutt vies for the chance to be king of somewhere but nobody ever seems to actually achieve it. But any series in which Alfie Allen gets his knob chopped off has to be worth a look. Gratuitous sex and violence is also the chief motivator for watching Banshee, a bizarre crime drama in which a random ex-con unbelievably steals the identity of the local sheriff and nobody notices. Not even his police colleague, last seen by this writer being even less observant as a bumbling FBI man in The Sopranos. Marrone.....

Honourable mentions here should also go to The Blacklist (with James Spader as an annoyingly smart-arsed super-criminal who may or may not be helping the good guys), Elementary in which Johnny Lee Miller portrays a Sherlock Holmes devoid of social skills and featuring female incarnations of both Watson and Moriarty, Homeland which boasts the most annoying on-off romantic story-line in the history of television but yet remains frustratingly watchable, Hannibal which relies on blood, gore and shock tactics to re-tell stories told much more palatably by the Anthony Hopkins films and Wentworth which takes on the unenviable task of recreating a series famed and loved for it's awfulness and turning it into a drama to be taken seriously. It doesn't always succeed.

But somehow I'll always find time to watch.

Godfrey's Bloomers

There wasn't much going on this Sunday morning. Ordinarily there is barely time to fart in between a glut of sport-related shows, starting with the Orford-esque pontificating of tabloid journalists on Sunday Supplement, to Sky's incessant beating us over the head with unmissable Super Sunday clashes between the likes of Hull and West Brom. It all culminates in a seven-hour marathon of NFL action as we hit the hours small enough to have you worrying about how goggle-eyed you're going to be at work the next day.

There was none of this today. NFL is taking a break for the Pro Bowl (basically a meaningless all-star game which is not on until midnight but which I will nevertheless record and watch at hyper-speed some time tomorrow), while the FA Cup fourth round has rudely interrupted Sky's march to world domination. I deliberately go out and miss the one game on ITV, while the other game is on BT Sport. I have not yet reached the point where BT sport is a necessity in my house. Come to think of it, I can't imagine what circumstances could possibly arise to make Jake Humphrey a necessity in my house.

So anyway I tell you all of this because, with nothing to watch this Sunday morning but a Saturday Kitchen compilation, I was reading up on the latest media mishap from celebrity UKIP gaffemeister Godfrey Bloom. As Lailla Rouass and Trevor Nelson struggled to prevent themselves from physically balking at the sloppy muck being served by some 80's-barneted non-entity, I was learning of Bloom's latest public spat. Incidentally after the sloppy muck serving there was a feature with the Two Fat Ladies, which surprised me because I thought one of them died years ago. Back to Bloom. He's got form as I say. This is the man who called UKIP party activists 'sluts' and then defended it by saying that a) it was a joke and b) people don't even know what the word 'sluts' means these days because there aren't enough grammar schools. It could be that, Godfrey, or it could be that words change meaning over time if they are used often enough in a particular context. Bloom is fully aware of what the word means now, despite the fact that it might have meant something else the last time he was allowed out on his own in the 17th century. Bloom is also the man who told Radio 4's Today programme that British aid should not be sent to 'Bongobongoland', and who accused Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick of being a 'racist' when he asked Bloom why there were no black faces on the cover of UKIP's conference brochure. Bloom then proceeded to slap Crick on the head with said brochure, branding him 'a disgrace'. Oh sweet irony.

And so, of you're still with me at this point, to Bloom's latest faux pas. At a debate about immigration at the Oxford Union he interrupted a disabled student to ask...... 'are you Richard III?'. First of all it goes without saying that Bloom was arguing that there has been too much immigration in the UK since the second world war. Secondly the student in question, David Browne, was disagreeing with this point of view and, for his troubles, was wildly likened to a 15th century king with scoliosis and a reputation (according to Shakespeare and the BBC's The White Queen in any event) as a bit of a shit. The crassness here lies in the fact that Browne does not have scoliosis or anything like it but that rather, according to the seemingly equally irksome Spectator columnist Douglas Murray, is 'lame in one leg'. So where is the similarity between Browne and Richard III then? Is a disability just a disability and it actually doesn't matter therefore about the specifics? Would it have been fair game then if Browne had responded to the immigration-fearing, sexist bigot Bloom with an enquiry as to whether he might be Adolf Hitler? Well, he doesn't like foreigners so he may as well be a Nazi then, right?

Disappointingly, although he acknowledged that he did not like the comment Browne did not take half as much offence to Bloom's jibe as I would have liked him to. In fact, he later went on to describe how he and Bloom had a drink together afterwards and how he is an 'interesting man'. He certainly is that, but then again, so was Enoch Powell. If such a lazy, catch-all remark about disability had been made in my direction I'm not sure I could have been so forgiving. Particularly if it had been made in such a public environment in front of my peers and by a senior if slightly berserk politician. He would have had to have heard about how I felt about it, or at least read about it in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. As we all know, verbally I make about 5% as much sense as I do on the written page. This is probably another disability in itself but it doesn't matter because they're all the same anyway according to Godfrey. One more isn't going to trouble me. Compounding my disappointment in Browne, he quoted miserable fuck-witch Margaret Thatcher's line about people responding with insults only when they have lost the political argument. This may well be an apt and appropriate response in this case, certainly more mature than my recommended approach which would have been to start flinging crockery, but you never, ever quote Thatcher if you want to retain any credibility in this writer's eyes.

I realise that I just have but it was an essential part of the narrative and besides, I never had much credibility in my own eyes in any case.

The Purple Pound

You know how things are labelled? Always categorised and put in a box and any inconvenient differences ignored? Well now even the money we disabled people spend has a label or, more specifically, a colour. Following on from the equally puke-inspring stereotype of the 'pink pound' apparenty spent by gay people and the wholly unflattering 'grey pound' spent by the elderly comes the 'purple pound' spent by disabled people in the UK. Essentially, this refers to the economic spending power of disabled people in the UK and moves are afoot to help businesses maximise their potential to get their grubby mits on our hard-earned crust. Well, they would be if we weren't all a bunch of loafing scrounging work-dodgers on benefits. If they are serious they could start by moving the steps away from the front of 50% of bars and restaurants in some cities. And 100% of booby bars. Regardless, it would seem that we are willing to take on this extra stereotype and even had some hand in deciding which colour to go with, as we will see later, but I would still like to know whether there is a colour for the pound spent by people called 'Dave' or those who have dandruff.

So why purple? The BBC tried not very hard to get to the bottom of this thorny issue in an article published earlier this week. They stated that purple was the favourite colour of two people in particular, the founder of a public spending cuts protest blog whose name is Kaliya Franklin, and multiple Paralympic champion and celebrity disability poster girl Dame Tanni Grey Thompson. If only those elderly buggers hadn't got in on the act first we could have taken Tanni's surname and had the grey pound all to ourselves. Still, the Dame herself likes purple, so purple it is. Purple has also apparently been associated with power, with kings and queens (and now Dames) although tellingly, Franklin gave away far more than she probably intended when she was quoted in the BBC's article as saying 'Purple seemed to be the only colour left so it was a good job we all liked it'.

Incidentally I met Tanni once. Well, I say I met her, I was in the vicinity of her for an hour or so on one occasion. I hate it when people assume that you know everyone with a disbility just because you have a disability yourself. You don't know every able bodied person on the planet, or even in your town, so why should I know Tanni Grey Thompson, Frank Williams or that lass with one arm off Blue Peter of whom it was once ludicrously suggested that she frightened children? I don't. But the fact is that mine and Tanni's paths have crossed once or twice. Once specifically I remember outside the dorms at Stoke Mandeville around a million years ago when she was just Tanni and I was still pretending to be an athlete. And another time when she was at a basketball game I was playing in, because her husband was on the other team. But that's it. On neither occasion do I recall her wearing anything purple or expressing a preference for purple and we're not an item so stop asking.

So what does all this mean in any case. What is the purple pound, I mean really? Basically it is the collective income of disabled people, standing (pun intended) at £80billion according to the Beeb's meanderings. They also claim that 19% of the UK population has a disability. I want a recount on this one. That is almost one in five people and it cannot possibly be that high, although it is alleged that one in five Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim so anything is possible. But really, if one in five people were genuinely disabled then discrimination would fly out of the window faster than a Phil Jones spot-kick. There are clearly a lot of porkies being told by people filling in job applications, or more likely benefit applications and censuses. If I may be so bold as to clumsily pluralise it thus. Unless you have trouble walking, talking, hearing, seeing or maybe even thinking then frankly my friend I am not having you as a disabled person. If you have a disability which stops you from being able to spell or to accurately judge distances or some shit, then can you please vacate the disabled toilet now because I need to go. You're making me feel a bit sick with your bogus claims. I'm not at home to disability when it suits and not when it doesn't, when there's nothing to gain and everything to lose like the respect of society. You fucking Undateable cretin.

Anyway about this £80billion. Since it covers people with pretend disabilities it follows that it must also cover those people who were unfortunate enough to suffer a life changing accident at some point in their lives. Here's another of my favourite bug-bears that I can now bore you with. If you are born with a completely fucked spine and the natural problems that will develop thereafter (CKD is not an aftershave or a pair of pants, it stands for Chronic Kidney Disease) then you just have to lump it. However, if you have a terrible fall or are in a road accident or some other such tragedy then you are likely to come into a large sum of money. It can be argued to be someone's fault, and if so then you are rightly compensated. However, birth cannot reasonably considered to be anyone's fault, so people who are born with a disability get what Jim Bowen used to call BFH. In some ways this is a positive as it means that you have the drive to go out and earn yourself a living and be a slightly less accepted, dissaproved of part of society, but I wouldn't be human if I didn't look out of the office window some days and think 'how come nobody has given me a couple of hundred grand for my predicament?'.

Just a final word on the figure of £80billion. At the end of the BBC's article they revealed that the figure was 10 years old, and that there were no plans for it to be updated. So the purple pound could be an even greater wad of cash than we thought, but we may never know. There's no point updating it anyway. It's only the fucking disabled.

Only a fifth of the population. Or something.

Inspiration Porn

A few days ago a couple of friends of mine brought my attention to an interesting article about disability. Being a glass half empty kind of man my initial reaction was one of irritation at the realisation that someone else is writing about disability in a wry, dry, hopefully insightful and witty manner. Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard is not unique. Were it to exist in any form outside of cyberspace I would take it outside to the back garden and set it on fire. At which point both it and its author would be of serious concern to the emergency services. It's let me down. Badly.

My new rival is someone calling herself That Crazy Crippled Chick. She'll have to change that name if she wants to get anything published in the mainstream. For now though she is concerning herself with explaining the rather grubby term 'inspiration porn'. This is not something you find on the top shelf at your newsagents, but rather the objectification of disabled people for doing very little other than getting up in the morning and living. For me the link between this and real porn is tenuous at best. Ok, so you could argue that real porn objectifies women, but the similarity stops there. Disabled people are sometimes objectified, but it has nothing to do with titillation, relieving stress or the fact that you haven't got a partner and haven't had since the first series of Fawlty Towers.

Whatever you want to call it, objectification of the disabled is very real. We've all seen it. You're sat there minding your own business when some helplessly inspired dickhead comes over and blurts out something like 'I think it's brilliant what you do'. In my experience what I am usually doing at times like this is drinking beer in public with other members of the human race doing likewise around me. This is where the Crazy Crippled Chick has it spot on. There is nothing heroic about this. It's easy, you just have a shit and a shave and you go, same as anyone else. Actually the Crazy Crippled Chick probably doesn't need to shave. But she probably has to apply a shit-load of make-up. Either way it's not that difficult.

Where she and I start to differ is on her next point, about how most disabled people consider their disability to be a fundamental part of their identity and cannot imagine their lives without it. I fucking can. I can imagine being six foot six, able to run like Usain Bolt and never ever having a taxi driver drive past me because he can't do wheelchairs. I can imagine having never been told 'it's not you, it's the wheelchair'. I can imagine being able to urinate without reference to a clock or the insertion of a narrow tube which exposes me to the risk of infection and the subsequent erosion of my kidney function. Oh yes, I can imagine my life without disability alright, and I often do. I'm doing it right now. I might spend large parts of my time arguing for equality and better attitudes, but I'd stop short of considering my disability to be some kind of badge of honour that I desperately want to hang on to. If I could sell it to you for 50p and a bag of grapes I would. In fact you may even be able to barter with me and get it for even less. It is most definitely not A Good Thing.

Still, as long as I am disabled I would agree with the Crazy Crippled Chick in as far as you should not be using me as some kind of inspirational self-help guide. There are many things (other than boozing) that I can do just as easily as anyone else and for which I do not need your gasps of awe and admiration. Getting up in the morning, dressing, driving, singing in the right tune but the wrong key, working and not killing myself are all things that some disability objectifiers suppose that I might find terribly difficult but which are actually routine. Even our Paralympic athletes seem to be regarded as people who have beaten the odds to achieve great things, when in fact they are just people who have worked very hard to achieve great things. The notion that it is more difficult to win a gold medal if you have a disability than if you don't is somewhat pooped upon when you consider that everyone they are competing against has a disability. Somebody has to win and beating adversity or 'the odds' doesn't come in to it.

On that note, there is a perception that the London 2012 Paralympics has had a monumental effect on the way people see disability and disabled people. I have to say I haven't noticed any difference in the last 18 months. I think it works if your name is David Weir, Richard Whitehead or Ellie Simmonds, but for the rest of us there may even have been a slightly negative effect at times. During the Paralympics I was convinced that society wanted to know why I hadn't won the London Marathon six times and that, since I hadn't, I wasn't doing enough to overcome my circumstances. We haven't really made any significant progress until we get to the point where people sit down to watch a Paralympic sporting event and view it as just that, sport, and not as an episode of Channel 4's 'Superhumans'.

See, even Channel 4 objectify us.

Not Going Out

I had a night out last weekend. In St.Helens. I can't see you right now, but I know you're sneering at that. Who goes out drinking any more? At the age of 38? And in St.Helens? Perceived wisdom has it that the only types of people who go out in St.Helens are drunkards, sex pests and their inappropriately dressed victims. No, you're well over that, you desperately mature, upstanding member of the community, you.....

As it happens it was an unquantifiable disaster from start to finish. This was not aided by the regular appearance of my hiatus hernia. I haven't a clue what this actually is, I was just informed of its existence by a specialist in bowel activity some years ago. I can't define it, but when it makes an appearance I know about it instantly. I had started with a few pleasant beers in The Wheatsheaf with Mark, a friend of mine from university days in Barnsley. He is now the sports editor of a barely credible THREE local newspapers in the Derbyshire area and was covering Ilkeston FC's trip to Skelmersdale. No doubt after a few hours in Skem he would have arrived in St.Helens under the impression that he was on some idyllic paradise island. It's all relative.

Before we left we had a bit of food. I knew I was meeting a couple of mates later and if you are going to insist on being so immature and desperately uncool as to socialise at night then you should never do it on an empty stomach. Unfortunately that is where my problems began. I was ok drinking as long as we were inside the pub, but as soon as we decided to move on and the fresh air hit me I began wretching and rolfing like a demented Monty Python character. Having had this for years it is not unusual for it to happen once, usually the first time we leave a pub to find another. The fresh air again. But by the third or fourth time I had to endure this barfing paralysis I was starting to think that maybe something was more seriously amiss. I remember rather tipsily speculating that I might not be long for this world. You can only go on so long puking up odourless bile in the street before you finally meet your end. Probably.

But I managed to soldier on, and we ended up in the Running Horses. For those that don't know the Running Horses is a glorified Whetherspoons which, on a Saturday night, turns into a less than glorious dance venue. We bought a round and trundled off to find a clear space to sit. We came to a halt just outside the disabled toilets. There's possibly something about disabled people, or at least some of those that I know, that makes them feel more comfortable in a public place if they are within sight of the disabled toilet. For some it is not quite enough to know that there are adequate facilities, they have to have it proved to them for every minute of their visit. If they can't see the preposterous man-with-a-stick-up-his-arse disability logo on a door somewhere nearby, they start to get tetchy. Anyway, there was an added feature outside the door, with two young ladies apparently offering free testing for sexually transmitted diseases. What a delicious irony. Offering sexual health care outside the territory of the sexless, the fucking Undateables. Incidentally, as we approached the Running Horses earlier we brushed past the girl who I deleted from my Facebook for her Undateables-related nonsense only that week. She wanted to get across to her friends how wonderful Channel 4's voyeuristic pleb-fest is which is bad enough in itself, but when you start your gushing praise of such a programme with the word 'awww' your time is up. You have to go. She went.

Back to the inside of the Running Horses then, where by now we are somewhat stuck for entertainment. It is so loud in there that conversation is not an option. It's not that I'm not normally a good conversationalist, honest. The lack of chatter here is in stark contrast to my Christmas night out with work. Although we were in a dark, depressing gothic bar playing ranting, noisy non-songs by the likes of Slipknot about killing your dog, we still managed to have a good time of it. Apart from the 20 minute hiatus (I never thought I would get that word into a column twice) in which I had to go scouring the city of Liverpool for a disabled toilet. See how important they are? It's no wonder some folk get obsessed.

So anyway when nobody is talking you just find yourself idly looking around at everyone else being ridiculous. Nobody in St.Helens can dance, that is a fact. Not that this stops them trying. To be fair they are not helped by some very questionable musical accompaniment. If anyone can find anything moving about fucking Robin Thicke or John Newman then they are a better man than me. Actually it is mostly women doing the dancing, with their absurdly short dresses which wouldn't qualify as belts in some countries. Most of them are probably not out of their teens which only serves to make you feel older and more out of place, as if a wheelchair doesn't do that for you in any case. It's not long before we move on, having not had a test for a sexually transmitted disease. The girls probably would have laughed at us if we had asked. Nobody has sex with the disabled. And anyway how were we going to pee into a bottle if we didn't have a penis between us?

As we moved on to another dark, sparsely populated bar one of my two accomplices had to go home before he died of boredom. I lasted for half of another beer before making my apologies and leaving. My other cohort had found female company by then so I wasn't leaving him in the lurch. I was feeling decidedly peaky and questioning the wisdom of this having a social life lark. I was seriously considering Not Going Out. Ever.

But then when you think about it what is the alternative? You people who consider yourself above binge drinking in piss-pot outposts like St.Helens do not have the intellectual high ground. What have you replaced it with? Staying in glued to your big fat diet of Celebrity Shit. I'd sit around slurping silently in the dark on a Budweiser that is going to make me ill for a thousand years before I would subject myself to Celebrity Big Fucking Brother. Lionel Blair has been an embarrassment for many years. I don't need Channel 5 to point it out to me any more than Andy Murray needs to be told that it's a bit warm in Melbourne at the moment. Celebrity Shit is on the rise too, unfortunately. Only this morning I read a distressing article about plans for a Winter Olympic themed snore-fest featuring such z-listers as Richie Neville and Celebrity Celebrity Amy Childs. They're all going to go Ski-jumping with Eddie Edwards. It's vomit-worthy, and makes Splash look like a sophisticated expression of sporting aesthetics, when what it actually is is a chance to see some beautiful people in a swimsuit. That's fucking dishonest too. If you want to look at naked people buy yourself a jazz-mag or watch Babestation. Don't pretend you're interested in what Tom Daley has to say.

So in the end my cure for Not Going Out is probably going to be more angry material like this. It may not be the happiest thing you have ever read, but at least it isn't trying to dance to every single dance tune known to man with the same manouvre, over and over until it dies.

Taxi For Orford

Just when you thought I'd exhausted every avenue of moaning about discrimination along comes Boro Taxis of Teesside to prove you wrong.

The Middlesbrough based company has taken the morally repugnant treatment of disabled people into a new stratosphere by refusing to transport any of us anywhere whatsoever. Apparently, we're not economically viable. If they have to send us a mini-bus to accommodate our wheelchairs then they have to charge us the full price for the hire of a mini-bus, even if it is only for one person. They feel guilty about this, bless them, and so they have decided not to bother at all. Now you may be thinking that what they could do is send the mini-bus if they have to, and just treat us like human beings and charge us a normal taxi fare. They say they cannot afford to do this, and so that's our lot. If you happen to find yourself half-cut at some unholy hour of a Middlesbrough morning and you are dependent on a wheelchair to get around (and I have, astonishingly, found myself in exactly that position despite living some three hours away by car but that's a long story) you are royally fucked.

The notion that we are not economically viable is nothing new to most disabled people. You'll recall the time we were told by some craggy old Tory that those of us who have achieved the miracle that is finding a job should be paid less than able bodied workers. The rationale behind this is that we can't possibly be contributing as much as our able bodied colleagues. That would be fair comment if I were a window cleaner, but the idea that I can't satisfactorily complete administrative tasks because my legs don't work and my kidneys are declining faster than Lee Ryan's popularity is just about as offensive as it gets. More offensive than Lee Ryan, perhaps. It's also highly ironic coming as it does from a craggy old Tory, whose contribution to society is yet to be determined. As far as I can see craggy old Tories serve only to waste oxygen and blurt out prejudices straight out of the 14th century.

So although being economically burdensome is not exactly a new phenomenon, Boro Taxis' stance is still quite shocking. Just because we know that some people hate us and consider us a drain on the country's resources doesn't make this latest twist any more palatable. Using a taxi to get from A to B doesn't seem like too much to ask. It's something that the rest of you can take for granted. If you want to go out somewhere with a group of friends to a place where the drinks may be flowing and driving not recommended, you can chip in with your mates and get a relatively cheap service. You can't do that if you have the brass balls to firstly use a wheelchair and secondly try to travel with other people who use wheelchairs. The largest number of disabled people I have been in a taxi with is three including myself, and that was a standard car rather than a black cab. Certainly not a mini-bus. The people involved were able to transfer from their wheelchairs to a car seat, which is clearly not the case for all disabled people.

Why would anybody send you a mini-bus to help you with disability access anyway? It's not bloody helpful. This has happened to me on several occasions. Perhaps they thought they were being accommodating in sending a larger vehicle, but they hadn't factored in the prospect of me having to climb up on to the awkwardly placed seat like a deranged monkey. We've seen before how easy it is to make me look like Mini-Me climbing up Beyonce's leg. It's not a good look. Perhaps Boro Taxis' mini-buses have lifts and if they do it is to their credit, but it's not a lot of use if the company aren't willing to do the job. Three is your limit in a taxi if you are disabled, and that depends on the driver being one of the rarer kind, in other words someone who is prepared to help you put the chairs in the car, and not shake his head and mutter moodily about scuffing his seats. More likely you will be restricted to two at a push, and it is not uncommon for a driver to refuse to take more than one, causing you to have to pay for a separate taxi each to go to the same fecking place at the same fecking time. Predictably, this is also an experience with which I am incredibly familiar.

All of this is bad enough, but the real villains are the late night drivers who see you waiting at some ice cold taxi rank and just drive by. In my earlier, more naive days I sometimes thought that maybe they didn't know I was trying to get a taxi home. You would think sitting at the front of a queue at a rank would be a good enough indicator, but I still gave them the benefit of what little doubt there was at one time. So I took to sticking an arm out as you might do at a bus stop. Just to make sure, to send out a clear message of 'oi mate, I'm smashed off my head and very possibly incapable of getting myself home so how about it?'. I still have to do this sometimes. Some of them just look at me without slowing down as they drive by, one or two I can remember actually shrugging as if to say 'what can I do mate, you're the one who turned up in a fecking wheelchair'.

Of course now that St.Helens town is pretty ghostly on a weekend evening and everyone goes home at different times, there are always cabs waiting on the rank. Gone are the days when people would actually punch each other over a ride home and good riddance to them. But this extra availability of taxis hasn't always helped me. There are still a large number of drivers who, if you approach a stationary cab at a rank late at night, will shake their head at you and say;

'Sorry mate, I can't do wheelchairs'.

I don't even know where to begin with the phrase 'I can't do wheelchairs'. It's offensive in the extreme. First of all you are not doing me, my taxi-driving friend, and secondly I am not a wheelchair. Like that bloke out of that crap sci-fi show all those years ago was not a number. Like John Fecking Merrick was a human being! And do you know why they can't 'do wheelchairs'? Because of their backs. Of course, they have got bad backs. Or at least they have got someone with vague medical qualifications to certify that they have bad backs. But such an excuse is highly unlikely to wash with a drunk man whose spine resembles an M25 pile-up. Fucking man up! All you have to do is open the boot of the car and get the fucking ramps out! Fair enough if you are driving one of those archaic black cabs with a mile high step, a narrow door way and no ramps. But I get this shit from drivers of the newer style cabs, which even have a fecking disabled access symbol in the window.

You're probably as breathless as me by now so we will finish by pointing out that most nights I find a way to get home. Thankfully there are enough taxi drivers around who are doing their jobs without discriminating against the disabled, and who prove to be very helpful and good at their jobs. It's certainly a case of the few tarnishing the reputation of the many.

Just don't be depending on Boro Taxis to take you and your fecking wheelchair anywhere any time soon.