03_nov02

Different Scenery

03 Nov, 2003

We've just arrived back from a holiday on the mainland and it was just wonderful. Emotionally, physically and spiritually I feel re-charged - a side effect of holidays taken without spectres lurking in the shadows that I had all but forgotten.

Tess' university term doesn't allow for the usual October half term break so we decided to just go and visit her, grabbing what time we could to all get together. The location of her uni was unknown territory to us so it was a chance to see somewhere different. Couple that with the whole new experience of my travelling as a disabled person and that added up to quite a little adventure. I must say this aspect of our break was causing me some trepidation beforehand. Our home has but one adaptation to my current disabilities - a temporary ramp to allow wheelchair access to and from the front of the house. I like it this way. To be honest too much more would start to make me feel permanently trapped in this state. Right now I feel I remain more part of the rest of the world and the lack of things like grab rails here there and everywhere only serves to encourage me further back to mobility and independence. I was bothered by the fact that as I cannot as yet manage steps I would need the big lift to get me on and off the plane. That seems a bit ignominious but I figured that if I want a holiday away then it's worth swallowing a bit of pride. When it came down to it, both the British Airways staff and the general ground crew were absolutely smashing and did everything they could to make the whole experience trouble free and cheerful. Sadly, I wasn't quite so impressed with the efforts of our pre-arranged hotel (Holiday Inn - hang your head in shame).

The difficult people

I was a little dubious about booking a disabled room just because of all the gubbins associated with the disabled being part of the package.

As I've said, home here remains virtually unchanged and so I didn't want to go away supposedly to relax and find that I was being made to feel awkward and therefore ending up in a stressie. We had booked a disabled room for two simple reasons - partly that we simply didn't know how I would cope generally in a different environment but predominantly because we needed a room on the ground floor or accessible by lift. Well, what a fiasco simply getting to the disabled room at our hotel turned out to be. First of all Alain booked in to find that we had been given a regular 'executive' room on a floor with no lift. Then when we were allotted the one remaining disabled room we were confronted by a steep staircase fitted with the kind of industrial style wheelchair lift as used only by the hospital. My heart sank deep into the soles of my snazzy red trainers when I saw it because it brought back the unhappiest memories of my time just post stroke. I have just quickly looked on the web to find a picture of the thing I'm talking about but without luck. Suffice it to say that it's a truly hideous thing - not something you would want to be using when coming and going from the bedroom whilst on holiday. To make matters substantially worse in our case we couldn't get the ruddy thing to work.

For starters, it turned out that we had not been given the vital key - of which there appeared to be only one, in the possession of hotel staff.

This of course meant that we of the social pariah category (disabled) would have to effectively ask the man nicely every time we wished to come and go from the room. The more we were delayed there at the top of the stairwell, the more my spirits plummeted into the depths. As it happens, the lift wouldn't work at all, with or without the magic key, the hotel had no idea how to fix it and no repair man could be called out until Monday (this was Saturday). Quite a dilemma then. In the absence of the hotel manager who was apparently 'somewhere else' the young man with us suggested an alternative route involving no stairs but going through the staff's behind-the-scenes access. That was unpleasant - grubby floors, scuffed paintwork and weaving our way outside passed the many hotel bins. Understandably I think at that point I just really no longer wanted to stay there. Well - our room. Was it worth the wait and the circuitous journey to get there? Not on your nellie! The brainiacs at the hotel had given away our pre-booked 'family' room so we were left with an ordinary small double with a fetching view (NOT) out the window of a wall and access road.

To add insult to injury Charlotte's bed was not a zed-bed (the most we had expected for our 15 year old daughter) but something more like a child's cot and measuring about 4 foot in length - Lotti is nearly 5'7".

After all the preceding shenanigans Alain was at this point hyped up like a Benzedrine puff adder and he immediately got on the hotel phone to complain. Minutes later there was a knock at the door and there stood a girl in a suit who may, or may not have been a/the hotel manager. She had clearly been told of the situation and in her flustered state said:

'Are you the problem?'

'Yes, we're the problem people' said Alain in a steely tone.

Oh dear, what a faux pas. I must say that at that point I did feel rather sorry for her. Well, the long and the short of this tale is that we were given a complimentary lunch of tea and sandwiches and booked into two pleasant rooms on the ground floor of another Holiday Inn in another town 10 miles away and at preferential rates. In other words in the end it probably all worked in our favour - thank goodness.

Bright lights, big city

I haven't readily been able to go shopping for six months now so the chance to have a look around the shops of a big city was too good an opportunity to miss.

I chickened out of going up to London, despite its close proximity, because I didn't fancy trying out the trains. For non-UK readers there are three reasons for this:

(a) our trains have a poor safety record

(b) intermittent and delayed services

(c) I had no knowledge of whether our particular routed trains catered for disabled access, so I would have had to do some phoning around.

Instead we opted for our old and familiar haunt of Southampton, which was easily accessible by car from where we were staying. I find this a great little city - I love the fact that it has just about everything you could want in a remarkably small area so it feels familiar and friendly. Also appealing to me is the fact that it's a major port and departure point for luxury cruise ships. This gives it the connection to the sea (as an islander, an innate part of what makes me feel happy in a place) and the romantic promise of travel to faraway places. Better still is the opening of a new and very nice shopping mall with more than enough retail outlets to keep us 'small town people' well amused for days on end.

With my current levels of mobility West Quay is a dream come true for shopping. At home here we have no shopping malls so whether it's sunshine, hail, rain, snow or blow you have to deal with the weather outside and then the inevitable stifling heat in shops. Regardless of the season there is no air conditioning in the vast majority shops in the summer and heaters are up at full tilt in the winter. This no doubt keeps shirt and shift wearing staff feeling nice and snug but ultimately wilts all poor souls who venture in from the cold outdoors, sensibly wearing several layers of coats, jumpers, shirts and perhaps thermal underwear. The beauty of a mall of course is consistent temperatures and, for the disabled, blissfully easy access everywhere. We all found it a relaxing pleasure to just wander slowly about selecting bits that were needed, bits that were wanted and even totally unexpected bits. For me the totally unexpected was a complete change of wardrobe style encompassing trousers and some Sketchers casual shoes. You may find this hard to fathom but I have simply never worn trousers - I've never much liked them on me and so up until about a week ago I didn't possess any. With my two personal shoppers accompanying me (Alain and Charlotte) I was persuaded to take this radical new step. Now I love this new direction my wardrobe has taken, especially because of its advantages in the chills at this time of year. (And -yes- I do feel daft for not realising this sooner).

Highway to hell

I'd like to say that we spent time on intellectual pursuits like going to a stately home, a museum or art exhibitions. The truth of the matter is that between visits to Tess, some reccies of local property to purchase and a thoroughly enjoyable trip to the cinema to watch 'Finding Nemo', shopping turned into the main pursuit of our few days away - not always down in Southampton however. We did vary the scenery just a little bit one day by visiting 'Blue Water' in Kent - the biggest shopping mall in Europe. Therein lies another story.

I discovered on this trip that my stroke may well have had another interesting side effect on my brain. When irritated I may well say out loud what I am thinking without even realising it. (Well now isn't that a good excuse for offensive behaviour!).

We stopped at hotel reception one morning and I asked the woman at the desk if she could tell me where the Blue Water shopping centre was located. (I knew that it was somewhere south of London, possibly in Kent, but wasn't sure if it was within driving distance). Her instant response was to throw some unwelcome 'attitude' at me, lazily responding without even looking at me that she'd never heard of it before. In the universe I inhabit hotel receptionists are supposed to be polite and helpful. My hackles instantly rose and this is where I suffered a Tourette's type outburst because according to Lotti I immediately bit back with a highly irritated 'Oh dear God!' and went on to explain that it was the biggest in Europe and had recently been featured on TV. She was quick to inform me that she doesn't watch TV - well bully for her, perhaps if she did she might learn something occasionally. My response must have had some effect however because she deigned to phone her contacts in a local taxi firm who informed her that it was next to the Dartford Tunnel in Kent. Clearly the Dartford Tunnel is to be regarded as the other side of the inter-gallactic wormhole because she emphasised that it was in another county and (wait for it) about an hour's drive away. Mmm yes, many leagues away from Surrey's safe and leafy valleys.

Being the intrepid explorers that we are we set out on the M25 and got there in 45 minutes. It was indeed a shopping complex of impressive proportions and visiting felt like entering a special Disneyland for grown-ups. We had a great afternoon but by the end of it had only visited a small portion of the vast area. Rather stupidly we left at 6.30, thinking that the rush hour would, by that time, be starting to ease. Not so. We sat for 2 hours in bumper to bumper virtually static traffic -I'd guess that in the whole of that time we only progressed about 2 miles. As we sat there Alain got talking to 'white van man' in the queue next to us who asked if we were heading onto the A23 or M25. He tut-tutted at our response - no hope on the M25 he said, the lights were out and as a result traffic was backed up for miles.

It was only then that I remembered hearing of motorists' dire warnings about the dreaded M25 and the many hours that could be lost on there in a virtual time warp.

Rather than just sit and sit, we reasoned that it would be better to take a longer route but at least be moving in the right general direction. The plan we hatched was to head further into London and then take the main south circular route across the capital. It took just for ever to cross London, then, rather disturbingly, all informative road signs suddenly seemed to entirely vanish. We were forced to use our instincts to try and track our way and ended up driving up and down the same stretch of road in Crawley three times over and hopelessly lost. We got back - eventually. The journey that had taken us 45 minutes on the way there took us an astonishing and totally unbelievable 6 hours on the way back and we fell into our beds that night at well past midnight. The moral of this story is to in future take heed of the words of the Wicked Witch of the Reception Desk and never venture beyond the realms of Surrey ever again, for there indeed be demons out there on the M25.

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