The promise of a night out on the town gives Brad Francis pause for thought…
We all have good days fused with the bad – it’s how you deal with them that counts. Personally, I’ve always seen myself as a glass half-full kinda guy, preferring to gloss over the bad bits and focus instead on the positives. At the moment, that means finding
the good side of having to live with a lack of mobility and chronic pain after a recent fall.
When problems become more acute, I can’t help craving a quick fix of some kind – something that will usually involve a night out on the lash with a bevvy of beauties, my mobility scooter pimped out with disco lights – indicators at full beam – and an array of fine, fruity beverages…
A moment of clarity
The upshot of this one night recently was that I wanted to dance. I wanted to drink. I wanted to listen to live music. I wanted the DJ to spin some magic and crank up the bombastic plastic. I wanted to be ‘normal’ again and forget about being disabled, if only for a few hours.
Donning my tightest of black disco trousers and adding a palm-full of gravity-defying hair gel to the ‘fro, I instructed my Uber driver to head for the bright lights of the metropolis. Not once did he moan about dismantling my trusty Luggie scooter and lifting the beast into the back of his Nissan. Unfortunately, however, I hadn’t factored in the possibility of this particular Friday afternoon being an especially wet
and windy one in ‘cool’ Shoreditch. Cool? It was almost glacial, with menacing dark skies overhead that made this day in the height of summer feel more like late October.
Weaving through the chaotic traffic, past some of the Capital’s most famous landmarks en route to Old Street’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ I experienced something similar to the Jules Winnfield character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction: “I had what alcoholics refer to as a ‘moment of clarity’.”
Being disabled isn’t just about the physical, mental or the neurological. It’s about living with dignity and enjoying life to the full. Sure, we might not be happy with the way we’re wired, but we’re loud and proud, and we want to party regardless of whatever obstacles are chucked our way. Some of us may be less ‘able’ than others.
Some of us while have obvious outward signs of our conditions, others less so. The notion some people don’t recognise this scares me. As we pulled up outside Shoreditch’s Cargo bar I gingerly moved out of the car’s seat and into my Luggie – whereupon three things occurred to me. That some disabled people can’t hear; that some can’t see; and that others still are in persistent, protracted pain.
Under one flag
I was there to meet my new ‘bestie’, Lizzie, who lives with auditory neuropathy – a form of hearing loss where sounds will enter the person’s inner ear as usual, but where the onward transmission of signals from the inner ear to the brain is impaired. We were due to be joined by the sassy Sienna, who has retinitis pigmentosa – a genetic disorder that breaks down the eyes’ light-detecting photoreceptor cells over time – but she was running late. Perhaps because of a bad hair day? Though that would have been somewhat ironic, seeing as she owns a ourishing hair studio…
And so, the scene is set and the vibe is rocking. Look out for next month’s thrilling ‘Shooting from the Lip’, where I’ll reveal all about our wild night among the coolest party people on the planet – disabled access and all!
I’ve been banging on about being physically disabled due to brain-stem stroke syndrome for nearly two years now – and yet I’ve never discussed the plight of people with visual or hearing impairments. And quite frankly, I find that disturbing. After all, we disabled people are all united under one
flag, surely?…
