Monthly Archives: June 2014

Special Assistance

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assistance1I have never really given much thought to special assistance provided at airports until now other than wondering if I could feign a broken foot to get upgraded to business (which never works anyway). However, this week I had to fly to Rome with a genuine injury. I’d sprained my ankle a few days before and it was still very painful to walk on. I went to check in my suitcase, so as at least to make it easier to walk through the airport, but was told at the check-in desk that I couldn’t as I had one of those cheapo tickets that allow hand luggage only. It would cost me an extra £40 each way to do so now. I explained my predicament. The BA assistant took pity on me, saying she could provide me with special assistance through Gatwick and also on the other side when we reached Rome airport. Within a few minutes, another smiling assistant arrived with a wheelchair and I hopped into it with my bags on top of me. Then off we went through the back doors, secret lifts and side passages that only staff and special people normally pass through.

It did feel strange, more like being a VIP rather than an invalid. At security I didn’t even have to get out of the wheelchair but got body checked whilst still sat in the chair. This involved delicate touching including being patted on my underside legs and bottom through the underneath of the seat! I looked over to my smiley helper whilst this was all happening and noticed her struggling to put her winter boots back on. I thought it most odd that she was wearing knee length suede boots in the height of summer and so asked her. She replied that they were the most comfortable shoes she had and that she had even cut the metal decorative bits out of them so that she could get through the x-ray machines without triggering the alarm. I looked at them more closely and noticed the hand made holes on the front and back. But it did not always work and this time her holey but comfy boots had failed her. I understood her point given how many hundreds of times she has to go through the machines each week.

Then off we went again, this time planeside, wending our way through the throngs of unsure passengers, headed for the special assistance hub. I felt really vulnerable all sat down and small, made worse by not being in control of which way to turn or when to slow down. When in a wheelchair you are not at the same level as your helper. They are always pushing behind you and so you have to crane your neck if you want to try to make any eye contact. Even then they are looking ahead in order to avoid all the people and obstacles coming their way.

assistance4The special assistance area was full of people sitting and waiting. I often wondered why they needed a special pen since they are essentially sitting and waiting, just like everyone else. Why do they need to be segregated? Then it dawned on me – it is where all the scheduling takes place for who needs to be taken to which gate and at what time. A team of jolly ladies were huddled together behind a desk when we arrived, writing the passengers’ information down by hand onto paper sheets that looked a bit like the paper strips they used to use in air traffic control. I marvelled at an old fashioned technology that seems to work wonderfully to manage the constant flow of passengers needing special assistance. When it was my turn to be dispatched my helper came to collect me and off we whizzed on another seemingly perilous journey.

Most passengers are oblivious to everyone else – just concerned, and often nervous, about getting to their destination in unfamiliar territory. They simply don’t see people sat in wheelchairs. Several times our wheelchair got bumped unwittingly by trailing suitcases. I was terrified someone might accidentally barge into my ankle and kept bracing myself.
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When we landed at Rome airport, a row of helpers were all waiting standing next to a line of wheelchairs. My name was on their list and I was pushed up the ramp to the top of the gate by a sweet italian girl. But instead of being whizzed through I was promptly left as she returned to pick up more specials from the plane. I sat there, all by myself waiting, not knowing what was to happen next. I was reminded of the scene from Ricky Gervais’s “The Office” where wheelchair bound Brenda is left by herself in the emergency stairwell after David and Gareth abandon her during a fire drill. But thankfully, in my case, within five minutes my helper came back with a big smile and got me through to a taxi in no time at all.

Everyone should have to sit in a wheelchair for a day to experience what it is like to be at the mercy of not-seeing others. It certainly opened my eyes to what they have to go through and I hope when I am mobile again that I will step aside, smile and be über patient with those who are in wheelchairs.

But it is not just at airports. Wheelchair-bound people are also overlooked by others all over the place. For 20 years, up until the late 1990s, the UK’s Radio 4 ran a weekly series called “Does He Take Sugar?” that presented an in-depth treatment of disability. The title of the program refers to when the carer is asked about sugar instead of directly asking the person who is being offered a hot drink. It captures the sentiment of talking about someone who is disabled in the third person, while in their presence, regardless of whether that person can speak for him or herself. The programme brought attention to this kind of “overlooking” and gave disabled people a voice (it also had a disabled presenter). It did wonders for helping “abled” people realize how to listen, talk to, and engage with disabled people just like anyone else.

The people whose job it is to provide special assistance or care for those with reduced mobility – as it is called now – are unquestionably guardian angels. It is the rest of us who cant see them for what they are who need to spend a day in a wheelchair to appreciate a little bit more what they have to go through every day.

“Does he take sugar in his tea?”
Hello, why not ask me?
I might have a disability,
But to answer for myself I still have the ability.
Just ’cos I’m not stood up like you:
Does not mean there is very little for myself that I can do…

—Michael W. Williams, “Connah’s Quay”

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Tube Encounters

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undergroundIn a round table monthly meeting this morning, one of our researchers started talking about a new new app he was building that would enable passengers on the London Underground to meet each other digitally and then perhaps physically, by playing games with each other on their smartphones. The idea was to make more of the idle time sat on a tube train by enhancing the wi-fi connections through using data given out from passenger’s smartphones. This could be combined with personal information about a passenger they had signed up for to signal availability to play. The app would ask some questions first that when answered allow it to match with someone else in the same carriage.

Before the researcher could explain the technical details of how this system would work (that he was most interested in), arms were raised throughout the room – troubled by the very idea of using phones to connect with strangers on the tube. While the idea of hooking up with strangers using phones is not new, e.g. “toothing” (a great hoax when Bluetooth first came out that claimed people were connecting with the opposite sex using it on the tube) it hit a raw nerve amongst fellow researchers. One student shot her hand up and said while the researcher’s motive was well intentioned his assumptions were wrong. Most people want to be mindless, i.e. not talking or playing with strangers, when sardined together on a tube – choosing to spend the time playing games by themselves on their phone; reading a book or the free daily Metro newspaper; daydreaming or simply just in thought. The last thing they want to discover is some creepy guy sitting opposite them, digitally signaling to them that they want to connect and play a game.

Tubes are horrible spaces that most of us are only too glad to escape from as quickly as possible. And as it can turn out, can become a melting pot that can quickly turn very unpleasant.

Later that afternoon, on my way home, I got on the Victoria Line at Warren Street heading to Victoria. At Oxford Street there appeared to be a bit of a disturbance as the doors closed and I switched my gaze to its source. A woman in her 30s had stood up to offer a seat to a man in his 50s, who was wearing dark glasses and walking with a stick. A waft of alcohol breathe permeated the carriage. He was clearly worse for wear. He raised his arm and told her to “sit down, women should not have to stand up.” A young man opposite her quickly stood up and offered his seat instead to the man. She sat down again. The man lurched forward and nearly toppled over. Several other passengers came to his aid and helped him into the vacated seat.

Two seats from him on the opposite side of the carriage sat a priest in his 70s minding his own business. He was easily recognizable by his purple shirt and dog collar. The man looked at him and started shouting abuse and ridiculing him, “hey you going to Westminster to do your penance? You need to do your penance. Ha ha.” The priest leant forward and replied gently “what for?” The man was affronted by his gentleness and started swearing even more profusely, f-ing this, f-ing that. On he went. “You don’t believe in that Jesus shit?”. The priest withdrew and looked the other way. Then another man sitting opposite me entered the fray and shouted at him, “hey stop swearing, there are other people on this train.” We all looked at him in amazement, only too aware of the regularly reported horror stories of passers-by being knifed, shot, hit or abused when daring to intervene. The drunken man glared at him and retorted, “mind your own fucking business! Who the fuck do you think are you?” The other man replied, “I am a police officer! Look, here is my badge.” He took out his police badge from his pocket and showed it to him. The other geyser went ballistic, “so fucking what?” He wasn’t a f-ing fighter like himself and he couldn’t care whether he had a f-ing badge or not. At which point the atmosphere in the carriage became electrified. In between abusing the off duty cop he kept repeating that a woman should not have to stand up for a man.

Victoria station arrived and most of us got off except the geyser who sat muttering, head shaking and continuing his tirade. I was struck by his old fashioned respect for women but lack of respect for others in cloth, amplified by booze. Here was a veteran, probably from the Gulf War, two days after D-day ceremonies, oblivious to accepted social protocol.

There is no way a mobile app is ever going to bring strangers together on the tube to chat or pass the time away being more mindful of each other. Only yesterday, I was in a carriage where some guy asked a smartly dressed guy in suit and tie to turn his beeper off on his smart phone. It was annoyingly loud and every key he pressed on the screen resulted in a loud beep. The man did not even look up and shamelessly said “I don’t know how to.” There was no answer to that.