♫...Come and take a swim with me...♫

During our recent spurt of summer, having spent 3 days splayed helplessly on the sofa, I decided I wanted to go for a swim in the open air to cool down a bit. Being probably the only lesbian in London to have never been for a swim in the ladies' pond on Hampstead Heath I decided that it would be the perfect place to cool off.

Obviously my next step was too Google "Kenwood ladies' pond disabled access". I got nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. The best result was a list of all the pools in Camden: It had details of the pond on the same page as the details for Holborn Oasis and the Oasis blurb mentioned the access at that pool.

So I was still none the wiser about access at Kenwood. Next I did a Google image search for the pond to see if I could see what the access was like. I could see it had a deck with ladders into/out of the water. I can't do ladders. I could see I'd be able to get in OK - you've got gravity on your side - but I didn't really fancy my chances of getting out again; the freeboard was just too great.

Still being hot and still wanting to cool down I decided to just go there and have a look at what the access was: Maybe the freeboard wasn't as big as it looked in the pictures and I could manage? What if the ladder was at an angle so I could shuffle up the steps rather than an unmanageable vertical ladder?

After looking at this map I decided the most sensible place to park my car would be on Millfield Lane in Highgate.

Foolishly I assumed there would be maps of the heath on signs around the place that I could use to then find the way from the car to the pond. Yes, I know I've lived in north London for 9 years, but I don't know the heath like the back of my hand. I never go there. Manual wheelchairs and steep hills aren't a fun combination. But I do drive past the heath all the time so I've noticed the signs at all the entrances and assumed most of them had maps on them. I assumed wrong.

"Never mind," I thought. "Google 'Hampstead Heath map' on your phone."

No signal up there. I'd recommend people go up there with the map pre-loaded on their phone for reference. If you're on Orange anyway.

So I went wandering. Despite the abysmal gravel paths and hills so step I genuinely didn't know if I could make it to the top: I actually enjoyed myself. It was beautiful wandering around in all the sunshine.

I did eventually find the ladies' pond after 2 hours of meandering. At 8:15pm. It closed at 8:30. By the time I'd pushed the last few metres over horrific paving and gotten changed I would've literally had no more than 60 seconds in the water. But instead of just going back to my car I did go all the way to the pond to scope out access for future reference so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.

Having spent about an hour scrutinising photos to try and work out whether or not I could manage to get out of the water I couldn't believe the first thing I saw when I rounded the corner to see the deck: A hoist.

Making things physically accessible is massively important. But something can never be truly accessible unless you provide information about access. I'd wager most disabled women have never considered going for a dip there because there's no access information published on the web so they assumed there were no adjustments.

That's why I'm writing this post. Not because it's an interesting topic that I think will engage readers, nor because I'm seeking catharsis through writing out the thoughts in my head. This post is simply about information for the next woman who Googles "Kenwood ladies' pond disabled access".

Of course, access isn't just about getting into and out of the water. You have to start with getting to the pond. As you can see on this map, there's only one path you can take to get to the ladies' pond (14). Whether you're coming from the north or south you have to take the path I've painted pink:

The quality of the paving is truly abysmal:

They're just two rather arbitrary shots taken along the path. I kept getting people coming up behind me asking if I needed help. The terrain is so uneven that you couldn't accept help if you wanted to because within seconds your front wheels would catch on something sticking up, the person would continue pushing forwards, and you would get tipped out of your chair and onto the floor; chin first. You just have to make your own way very slowly and carefully.

Should you make it to the pond without ending up in an ambulance the access improves greatly. As you can see in the photo of the hoist: The area around the pond itself is concrete which is perfectly easy to push across. There's an accessible toilet, but unfortunately there's nothing to sit on in there to get changed. There is seating outside for getting changed, but I would imagine that for people needing to remove catheter bags and so on while getting changed that that then poses the problem that there's also no toilet by the seating!

I went back the day after my exploratory mission and this time actually got to swim. Being an unheated pond it's not suitable for people whose conditions are exacerbated by coldness. You can check the water temperature before you leave the house on the City of London website. It was a boiling hot day and people with osteogenesis imperfecta are prone to overheating. So for me getting into a pond that was 18°C was lovely.

There's no water shallow enough to stand in so don't do what I foolishly did and wait until you're in the water before putting your hat and goggles on. I ended up jumping back onto the hoist seat for a sec to free up my hands for putting them on.

Something else I didn't consider with not being an open water swimmer was goggle fog. In a pool modern goggles don't fog too badly. But in a pond there's a difference of about 20°C between the temperature of your face and the temperature of the water. Not having any anti-fog stuff meant that I had to stop every few strokes to de-mist because I couldn't see where I was going. Lesson learned for next time.

Goggle fog did give me the impression that it's not an overly accessible experience for people with visual impairments. Leaves and other pondy scum stuff loiters around the edge so you want to avoid that. You need to dodge buoys and at one point I had to give way to a couple of ducks. I can imagine that finding yourself fighting with an angry duck you didn't see coming isn't fun. Obviously being a pond rather than a pool there are no high contrast markings on the bottom to guide. Apparently they do sometimes have a lane rope out that you can swim along, but the banks of the pond don't look that easy for a tapper to stand on. And as I said before: You probably don't want to be getting too close to the edge unless you want to be picking pond weeds out of your ears.

Being a pond rather than a pool; the water is full of stuff. You find yourself swimming with ducks and fish, which means that also in there is duck poop and fish poop. While you're treading water to de-fog your goggles you'll get weedy things wrapped around your ankle. So it's quite remarkable that upon getting out of the water you feel cleaner than you do when you get out of a swimming pool. And it's not just a matter of perception: Cleansing my face and then looking at the cotton wool I noticed that less dirt came away than when cleansing my face after a swim in a chlorinated pool.

As someone that reacts badly to chlorine being able to swim in a body of water that isn't full of bleach was a real plus. I can swim in a pool once a week at most or the chlorine is just too much for my knackered sinuses. It was lovely to be able to swim without having to suffer streaming eyes and nose afterwards.

Given how not gross I felt I decided to wait until I got home before having a shower rather than having to fuss with figuring out a plan for how to manage potentially inaccessible showers. Apparently they have both indoor and outdoor showers but there's a step up to the indoor ones. I didn't find out whether or not they have a shower chair to sit on to use the outdoor showers: Obviously you can't sit in your wheelchair in the shower.

Will I go back again? Almost certainly. Obviously I'm not batshit enough to be swimming in there in January (it's open 365 days a year) but it was an enjoyable way to cool down on a hot day. I just hope the Corporation of London tarmac that bloody path before I get tipped out of my wheelchair, land on my chin and break my face.

♫...I'm going underground, (going underground)...♫ #BADD2012

Ken Livingstone’s approach to public transport in London changed my life.
__________________

I was eleven when I went to Disneyworld: A compulsory right-of-passage for every disabled child in the developed world. It was the first time I’d ever left the UK, so to say I was excited would be an understatement.

On our first morning there we took a cab from the hotel to the theme park. In the pickup/drop off zone, before entering the gates of Disneyworld itself, I saw the most incredible thing I’d ever seen in my life thus far: A wheelchair accessible bus.

I had never travelled by bus. I’d never seen such a thing as an accessible bus. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might exist. The fact that mobility impaired people could use public transport in Orlando genuinely rocked my world. Of all the delights that Disney has to offer a child; nothing made me scream “Mum! Dad! Nan! Look at that!” quite as loudly as that bus. It was just a bus; such a mundane mode of transport to the majority of people. But to me it represented such freedom and inclusion that I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.

I lived in a miserable little Essex village at the time. About once a day you could get a bus to the nearest small town and I think you could occasionally get a bus to Cambridge. When I say “you could”; that obviously didn’t include me. The village did have a train station, but unsurprisingly that wasn’t wheelchair accessible.

I was trapped in a village where I had no friends. The local high school was (surprise surprise) not wheelchair accessible so I had to be taxied to a school near Cambridge. This meant all my friends lived about 20 miles from me. Like every 11 year old I wanted to go shopping on Saturdays with my peers; I never could. This was why catching sight of an accessible bus meant everything to me. It held the optimism of a world that I could be a part of.

It was 10 whole years later that I travelled by bus for the first time; and that was in America too. The summer before going to university I decided to spend a month backpacking around the US. My first port of call was Los Angeles and on my first day I caught the 156 from North Hollywood down to Santa Monica Boulevard where I changed onto the 4 down to the beachfront in Santa Monica. So momentous it was that I’ll probably remember the numbers of those buses well into old age; long after I’ve become unable to recall my own name.

Now I travel by bus all the time I’d recognise that journey for what it is: Slow, boring, hot, and full of people that smell terrible. But at the time in August 2000 I felt so free and included. I think you probably need to have been excluded from bus travel for 21 years to realise how liberating it is to be able to catch one for the first time.

A month later I moved to London (well, Uxbridge, but it’s within Greater London) to go to university. The U3 and U4 routes going from the Brunel campus to Uxbridge town centre were accessible, but that was it. I couldn’t get the 207 to Ealing or the 607 to Shepherd’s Bush. Of course, being able to travel by bus was still so new to me that I was bloomin’ grateful for the couple of routes I could use.

The picture was far worse in Central London. When I first moved to inside the M25 there were no accessible buses in the centre of town, the majority of routes around the West End were those nightmare Routemasters. During the day, anyway: Most companies put accessible buses on their night bus routes and it always struck me as slightly bizarre that London transport was only properly accessible between midnight and 5am; like disabled people are the new vampires.

Thanks to the Mayor at the time - Livingstone - inaccessible buses were gradually phased out over the next 5 years. London waved farewell to its last inaccessible buses, the Routemasters running on route 159, in December 2005. In 2012 inaccessible buses still make up the majority of bus company stock around the country. Every time I venture out of the confines of London I find myself grateful to Ken for London’s 100% accessible bus network.

Sadly since he was replaced by BoJo in 2008 we’ve seen London’s most accessible vehicles – the Bendy Buses – taken off the road. Many prefer double deckers for taking up less road space, but London’s wheelchair users miss those Mercedes Citaros dearly. Even with the fact that on the early models the wheelchair ramp would jam if the driver tried retracting it while the bus was still ‘kneeling’. I was once the reason for the breaking-down of three consecutive 453s outside Old Kent Road Tesco’s…

I was also 21 the first time I travelled on The Tube. Most non-disabled people probably think it sounds bizarre to be having all these public transport-related firsts in your twenties. Just like the buses; I also got my first taste of travelling on underground trains in Los Angeles. Unlike our Tube the Red Line there is fully accessible. Even if a little scary because I’d seen Volcano and I kept expecting the train to fill with lava.

Ken may have abolished the inaccessible bus, but despite his good work the majority of tube stations remain inaccessible. Oh to live in LA. And not just for the weather.

In 2006 Livingstone’s administration promised that one third of London’s tube stations would be accessible by 2013. You can’t begin to imagine how much this thrilled me. At the time my nearest accessible tube stations were Westminster, Waterloo or Caledonian Road. All a bus ride from where I’d set up home in Camden. So I never used the tube. The prospect of being able to use one in every 3 tube stations meant I could get to most places in London by getting the tube to a station or two away from my destination and pushing in my wheelchair the rest of the way. I could make it across London in almost the same time frame as someone without a mobility impairment whereas it takes 2 to 3 times as long to make a parallel journey by bus.

Livingstone didn’t retain his seat in 2008 though. Johnson quietly cancelled access upgrades throwing away £20 million of taxpayer's money in the process. What you can’t really put a figure on is all the disabled people who can’t move freely around the city: How many people can’t go for jobs because the return journey to work would be in excess of 4 hours by bus when it’s a 1.5 hour return journey for a non-disabled person by tube? How much tourism revenue does London lose out on because there are no accessible stations in the West End? What about the emotional and social costs for people who are isolated in the suburbs?

If anyone's thinking of commenting with "but he had to cancel the upgrades! We ran out of money!" You can save your little fingers the trouble: Johnson managed to find the cash to fund his pet projects. He spent £1.4m per vehicle on the new Routemasters. A standard double decker is £190,000. It wasn't that he couldn't afford the upgrades on the Tube; he just doesn't care about access.

I am completely opposed to the cuts to benefits and public services. Most people of a similar inclination to me are also opposed to the Olympics and feel it’s unacceptable for the taxpayer to be spending billions on a fortnight long party when disabled people are being told that they’re no longer allowed to use the toilet in the night.

I don’t want anything to do with the games. I’m planning on spending a fortnight barricaded in my flat with a stockpile of food and DVD box sets. But I will never begrudge the games coming to town because the only tube access upgrades Johnson didn’t cancel were the ones essential to the Olympic strategy. The games leave behind a legacy of improved access to the tube and I will forever be grateful for that.

Transport for All published this table assessing the accessible transport plans of the 4 leading Mayoral candidates. Great progress towards a fully inclusive transport network was made under Livingstone; we then saw regression under Johnson. If we want to start progressing again, we need Johnson out of office. He doesn’t propose to meet a single one of Transport for All’s targets.

This isn’t just an issue for those who are currently disabled. Around one in 5 people have some kind of impairment. The figures are skewed by age as the majority of older people have some kind of age-related condition. If you want the tube to be fully accessible by the time your mobility begins declining then you need to vote for improved access to the tube now. Even if you’re convinced that you’re so healthy that you will still be running marathons when you’re 101; there’s a good chance that at some point in your life you’ll break your ankle playing football and be on crutches for 6 weeks. Just bear that probability in mind if you're thinking of voting Johnson because "he's a right laugh!"

I can’t stand the Labour party in its current state. They’re the ones who kick-started the horrific welfare reform by introducing Employment and Support Allowance in 2008. I have no confidence in the current Labour party leadership: I wouldn't trust Ed Miliband to run a proverbial in a brewery, never mind a country. Labour have moved too far to the right for my liking, though sadly I have to concede that out of all the main parties; they are the lesser of three evils. If a General Election were called tomorrow I’d vote Green without hesitation.

It saddens me that Ken rejoined Labour after serving his first term as London Mayor as an independent candidate. I would feel much happier putting my mark next to his name if he weren’t affiliated with a party I have no love for.

But put my mark next to his name I shall. Like I said at the start: His transport policies changed my life. At least now my second nearest tube station is accessible, even if the closest one to my home isn’t.

The post is something of a "two birds with one stone" job. Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day and London goes to the polls on Thursday. I think the word "disablism" does what it says on the tin and clearly a transport system which has wheelchair access at less than one in three stations is a transport system that discriminates against disabled people. So combining the 2 I'm blogging to appeal to Londoners to vote for a candidate that'll make the public transport system a little less disablist.

A couple of weeks ago I got a "Back Boris" taxi receipt. If he hadn't cancelled tube access upgrades I wouldn't have needed a cab.

♫...London calling? Yes, I was there too...♫

Life, the universe and everything tried to stop me from making it yesterday. From nose bleeds to parking nightmares, I had it all go wrong. I was tempted to just declare "fuck it" and go back to bed (having only managed 3 hours sleep. Not cos I was doing anything fun; I just laid there staring at the ceiling all night). And once I arrived at Congress House I spent most of the day on the verge of a temper tantrum and wishing I had spent the day sleeping.

The first time I heard anyone mention the word "disability" was during the "does the left lead online?" session at 3:30pm. I could've kissed Laurie Penny for bringing up the fact that Labour abolished Incapacity Benefit and talking about the online grassroots disability movement.

This was after I'd spent hours listening to members of other discriminated-against groups tell me that their group was the hardest hit of all.

Now, some of those groups are groups that I also belong to (women, LGBT, working class) so I absolutely understand that they/we are disproportionately hit when you compare us to straight, white, middle class men. But to claim that those groups are the hardest hit group is just not true.

For example; I listened to Dianne Abbott talk about how women and people from a minority ethnic background will be the hardest hit by the cuts. She talked about how people from those groups are more likely to be made redundant because they're more likely to work in the public and voluntary sectors. The same is true of disabled people and for the same reasons; employers in the public and third sectors are slightly less likely to be discriminatory.

But in addition to being likely to lose their jobs due to redundancies in the public sector and funding cuts to the voluntary sector, disabled employees in those sectors are likely to have to quit work due to Access to Work cut backs. Disabled people are also facing cuts to their care packages (which may result in having to give up work due to not having someone to get you out of bed of a morning!) and loss of their DLA.

Abbott also talked about how women and black and minority ethnic folks are more likely to live below the poverty line. This is also true for disabled people. But on top of the current levels of poverty disabled people are facing the prospect of having to pay even more towards their care, losing their incapacity benefit due to the brutal new assessment measures and losing their DLA. People already have to pay more on being disabled than they get back in the form of DLA.

I am not, at all, suggesting that I think that other minorities will not be hit hard. I'm just starting to get annoyed with non-disabled people claiming their group will be hit "hardest" when that is not the case because disabled people experience the same issues but with some extra crap on top.

The complete absence of disability issues from the panels infuriated me too. Why weren't Transport for All represented on the panel talking about transport? Why weren't DPAC, The Broken of Britain or Where's the Benefit represented on the panel about how we're not all in this together? That disabled people are not only being cruelly hit by the cuts but also excluded from discussions about the cuts reminds me of a post I wrote last year about us being the lowest of the low, and something I wrote more recently about how anti-cuts campaigners prefer books and trees to us.

As I said, the session about the left online improved my mood massively. Not only was there an acknowledgement that disabled people exist, I also had a good conversation afterwards with some UKUncutters (apparently my reputation is starting to precede me).

Then there was the final plenary session. I may be utterly furious with the Labour party for not only the recent history in which they scrapped IB and gave us ESA, but also their ongoing support for the coalition cuts to DLA; but I still intend to vote for Livingstone because the improvements he made to the accessibility of London's transport had such a positive impact on my life. However even he managed to piss me off more than somewhat with his closing speech: He talked about how equal London is in term of race, religion and sexual orientation, but how unequal London is in terms of class and wealth. I think it says something about the inequality of disabled people that we didn't even get a namecheck.

I would love to live in a progressive London. Somehow I don't see that happening any time soon when London's so-called progressives turn up to Progressive London denying the existence of around 18% of the population.

Earlier this evening I was pushing from Holloway to Finsbury Park. You see, I was on my way to my nearest Lidl, which is in Finsbury Park, following a tip off from my Mum that in her local store they currently had cat food that my cat can actually eat.

Me and my pussy are very well matched when it comes to food sensitivities.

What I was unaware of before I set off on my journey was that Arsenal were playing at home. And I was trying to get to Lidl at the same time as the crowds were trying to get out of the stadium. Bad timing.

The number 29 bus was going nowhere, so I decided it'd be quicker to get off and push the rest of the way.

This guy walking in the opposite direction to me stopped and pressed himself up against the railing fencing the pedestrians in. I'm used to this reaction from crip-phobes who can't bear the thought of having to share a pavement with a wheelchair user. Like most people who do this, he watched me as I approached.

Usually though, people resume walking once I (the dangerous, terrifying wheelchair user) have passed. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he didn't. So I looked over my shoulder and he was still staring at me. Obviously at this point I shot him an evil glare. Most gawpers usually take that as their cue to stare at the floor. Not him.

"You're beautiful!" He cried after me.

Which makes the second nutter this week.

First there was the odd, drunk, smelly bloke I met on a number 29 bus coming home from dinner at a couple of friend's house on Wednesday night.

He was asking the usual, boring old "how long have you been in a wheelchair?" crap that all random strangers want to know. Then he said:

"Well, at least you've got a pretty face. If you were single, I'd go out with you."

Obviously, I didn't mention that I am single. I just nodded.

What is it with people thinking that having a pretty face will melt away all access barriers? (He's not the first). Come to think of it - why do only odd ones who think pretty faces remove access barriers think I have a pretty face anyway? Why can't any hot women ever think that?

I'm starting to think the being single is like being unemployed.

You know how the longer you've been unemployed, the lower your chances of finding a job?

I think people look at prospective partners in the same way as employers look at prospective employees.

"Well, they've been on the shelf for a while. Are they up to date with modern techniques and practices?"

Being 28 and having never had a "proper, grown up" relationship I'm starting to feel how I imagine I'd feel if I was still looking for my first job.

"Well, she's never been in this situation before. How can we guarantee she's got the skills to cope? She's never had to use them. Does she even know how to respond to certain situations? Does she know the rules and etiquette?!"

I've had a couple of conversations about this. One person pointed out that "It's also easier to find a new job when you've got one already." A sentiment echoed by another friend when we were having a conversation about polyamory.

"I think polyamory is just unfair... why should some people get hundreds of partners when I can't even find one?"

My friend went on to point out that I'm the only non-poly wheelchair user that she knows. I was pushing over cobblestones at the time, which is about as close as I come these days to intimacy.