My personal space is very important to me. I love it. I'd be so happy if I could live in my own little bubble which no one could burst, unless I let them because they were nice people that didn't say silly things or have body odour. (Me have only-child issues, much?)

Late last year I wrote an article about people invading it. I think the most commonly used word in my vocabulary is “I’vegotitI’vegotitI’vegotit” as I try to make people who want to "help" get their hands off my sodding wheelchair. But when I wrote that, I was thinking more about non-disabled people. But non-disabled people aren't the only people that think that me being disabled allows them a license to come up and chat to me. I never know how to react when someone in a wheelchair comes up to me the in street and says "is that a Quickie?" (At least I hope they're saying "is that a," rather than “fancy a.” The hazards of having Auditory Processing Disorder, though that would explain why some people look shocked when I say “yes.”)

Sometimes I don't mind, like the time the woman came up to me in Camden Town and asked if I knew the details of the local wheelchair service. Of course I didn't, it was before I moved to Camden, I was just on an “I'm a student therefore shopping at Camden Market is compulsory," excursion. But that was informational, I can see why she would ask me that. It would be a random question to ask someone non-disabled, or someone not using a wheelchair, unless it was your GP I guess.

But why do other disabled people assume that I'm going to be chatty, just because I'm ‘one of them’? I don't care where you bought your wheelchair, how much it cost, or how long it was before it first broke! All I care about is being left alone and getting home in peace. Thank you.

Lesbians don't do this. When someone passes me in the street and I register on their gaydar, they don't come up and ask me “how long have you been out?” Or “how old were you when you started shagging women?” The most I get is a knowing smile. So why do disabled people think it's OK?

Whinging aside, I would like to thank the disabled guy who tried chatting me up yesterday evening at a bus stop while I was on my way to a gig. I'm thankful because talking about him on stage provided me with the biggest laugh of my whole set.

I can guarantee absolutely anyone that if they chat me up at a bus stop, I will write them off as a weirdo and try anything in my power to make them go away (sadly my power is limited to refusing to make eye contact and praying the bus will come). Especially if they open with “You're gorgeous. You know, I've had a relationship with someone in a wheelchair before.” It's kinda gonna leave me thinking “you're not interested in my wit and intellect, are you? You only want me for my wheels."

It would appear that I was this man's dream woman (ha!) He informed me that not only does he like women in wheelchairs, he also has a thing for glasses. God I should've come out of him. If he knew I was a lesbian I bet I'd have been his wank fantasy for months. Actually, suddenly uncomfortable, don't want to think about it. Ewww.

I firmly believe that being chatted up by, well, the kind of people that would chat someone up at a bus stop is the kind of situation, where it is always morally right to lie your arse off. So that is precisely what I did. I told him that I was in a relationship. Anyone that has ever met me before would know that that is a blatant lie because I'm so unattractive. But he fell for it, clutched his baguette tighter to his chest and backed away. The power of my untruths. Didn't of course stop him from staring at me the whole time I was getting on the bus. But I'm used to that. Unusually though, I'm not sure if he was gawping out of “ooo, that's what the ramps do” curiosity, or if he just thought I was fit.

The moral of this story: Do not assume that I'm friendly and approachable. I am in fact evil through and through. Yes. Now it's late, and I'm going to snuggle with my teddies. Fear my wrath.

I got my revenge on bicycle boy, hooray!

For those not familiar with the back story, I live in a completely inaccessible bedsit, and the guy in the room next to me has a tendency to clog up the entire hallway with his bicycle.

For the last nine months, I've has to leave my wheelchair in the boot of my car, and hobble into my building, because I can't fit my chair through the obscenely narrow door into my "flat," (a side note: I should've gotten an almost equally inaccessible council flat today, but, of course, with Lisy Luck... I'm still here in the cupboard with the mice).

Well, today I couldn't leave my chair in the boot of my car. It's snowing (fucking weather. I wanna live in LA. Except for the earthquakes. And everyone has fake boobs (even the lesbians)), and me walking into the house would almost certainly wind up with me riding in an ambulance what with the being rubbish at walking and having the bones that break easily and all. To remedy the problem of having to walk into my house, a pretty lady did offer to let me sleep in her bed. And for some reason I said "no"!?! Damn my love of laying in bed as late as possible in the mornings and not wanting to have to travel from South to Northwest to East London tomorrow morning.

I had no choice but to bring my wheelchair into the building. Well, I did have a choice, but I doubt the paramedics would've been that attractive. I've never pulled an ambulancewoman before (well, once, but we weren't in her ambulance at the time), but I didn't fancy the broken hip as a chance to change that.

Of course, once my chair was in the building, I couldn't get it through my door. Well, I could take it apart to fit it through the door. But then where would I put it? It's not like my habitat is exactly spacious. I know I've shared bedding with my wheelchair before (hey, 1 person and 1 wheelchair in a two-man tent - underneath is the *only* option), but I thought the tyre marks on my white sheets might take some explaining. Not that anyone ever views my bed other than me. But, Sod's Law and all... the one time you have skid marks on your sheets...

So, my chair is clogging up the hall. Ha Mr Bicycle Boy! He's got some logic problems to solve in the morning to work out how to get his bike past my chair. Knowing Lisy Luck, I'll exit my bedroom in the morning to find one giant tyre mark going straight over my seating. Or my wheelchair out in the snow.

In the meantime I'm going to gloat. Yes Bike Boy... I've gotten revenge. Put that in your bong and smoke it (yes, I do recognise that smell seeping out from under your door).

Well, my keyboard issues have been resolved. No, I didn't go out and buy myself a spangly new keyboard, no, that would be far too easy.

Instead I bought myself whole spanking new laptop (hey, it's not like it was unjustified. The last one was five years old and took half an hour to switch on). Of course, now I have access to a b button, I'm not using it anyway. I decided to also get myself Dragon NaturallySpeaking, to see if that will ease the pain of RSI.

I think I'm now at risk of Repetitive Vowel Sound Injury or something like that.

I'll have 60 billion vowels please, Carol.

Miss! It's not my fault! The dog ate my homework!

OK, not strictly true. Seeing as I don't have a dog. And it's not like I ever did homework anyway (ooo, the reellion).

You may e noticing something odd aout this post. I seem to e omitting one particular letter of the alphaet.

Not delierate. Trust me.

My computer no longer has a utton etween the "v" and "n" keys on the keyoard.

That'll do as an excuse for why I've not written anything for a while. OK, my keyoard only roke the other day. ut it'll do as an excuse. Yes.

Picture the scene: A lesbian club night somewhere in London (though, any straight boys reading, please don't picture too hard, you might stain your New Years Eve fancy outfit).

Q: There's a lesbian in a wheelchair, a bisexual and a trans lesbian dancing together in your usual clubby group dancing formation. What do you get?

A: 75% of the dancefloor.

Now, if I was cynical...

Happy New Year and all that.

I love my parents, I dearly do. Especially because I know they're reading this (Hello Mum!).

My favourite thing about spending time with my family is the things you learn. My father loves to tell stories of his exploits. Yesterday he began a story with "Ooo, you should have been shopping with us in Morrisons the other day. You could've got an article out of that..."

This statement was then followed by a moments silence, as if to mourn for the braincell I lost as I banged my head against the back of the chair and rolled my eyes skyward.

He eventually broke the silence with "And then your cousin turned on this woman and started shouting at her saying "What about people in wheelchairs!?!"

Knowing my cousin, so finding it slightly hard to believe she'd just attacked a random stranger without provocation, I was slightly at a loss.

"You know what I love Dad? They way you tell your stories with such clarity, and you always remember to leave in that vital sentence where all becomes clear."

He accepted this as a compliment and carried on washing up.

My Mother was fortunately present for the incident, and she enlightened me as to what happened. Apparently they all overheard someone making disparaging remarks about wheelchair users. My (non-disabled) cousin turned to the woman whom she thought had made the remark, only to discover that the woman she'd been about to shout at was in fact in the middle of pointing out to the real culprit "Wheelchair users have as much right to shop as anyone else!"

The thing I love most about this story is that the two wheelchair users present remained silent. It reminds me of the time someone asked my Dad's PA "Is he OK there?" to which my mother replied "He can speak for himself, you know!"

Sniff that irony. And have a Happy Boxing Day.

The Christmas holiday's are here! Hooray!

Actually, I've been on my festive break since I finally left the office at 10pm on Tuesday.

My holidays didn't get off to a very holiday-esque feel. Considering that my entire plan of action from 10pm on Tuesday past to 10am on Jan 5th is to sleep, watch telly and, well, sleep... getting up at 6:40am on Wednesday felt a bit laborious.

LBC wanted to talk to me on their breakfast show about access around London. The usual. Unlike the last time I was on the radio at such a ridiculous hour of the morning (I find the am offensive, in case you hadn't already worked that out. Oh to live in California where everything is 9 hours later and therefore more in tune with my body clock) I didn't have to be in the studio, and I in fact talked from the comfort of my bed, warmly snuggled under the cover of my duvet.

Nick Ferrari's opening words to me were "So... you're confined to a wheelchair..."

Now, I'm sure I don't need to point out to anyone reading that they only need to look back two paragraphs to be reminded that I was at the time of listening to that not in my wheelchair, but, in fact, in my bed. I managed to feel simultaneously both annoyed and incredibly smug. Annoyed at the ignorance, but smug because it did give me a public platform on which to point out "well, actually, there's nothing confining about a wheelchair - it's a tool of mobility." May sound like an obvious statement, but I'm impressed I managed to talk that clearly at ungodly O'Clock and after just the one caffeinated drink.

But, ah. My one early morning of the whole holiday's was over. I could relax... yes. Sleeeeeeep. Until 5am today when the mouse in the house decided to make a racket. He's obviously getting quite desperate not being able to get out from the cupboard under my kitchen sink and, in his quest for food has decided that the bright pink plastic lid of a tub of Vanish Oxi Action is highly delicious. Well, I'm guessing it was tasty considering he managed to eat so much of the damn thing.

All I have to do now is hope that the plastic is toxic, and then maybe one day this holiday I'll be able to look forward to a Silent Night (while my Vanish Oxi Action gets to enjoy a series of holey nights).

Actually, I'm at my parents house at the moment to be fed full of fake meat and potatoes roasted in non-meaty fat for the seasonal festivities. Or something like that. Maybe I'll get that Silent Night here, as I suspect if my parents had rodents they'd have told me (you know what parents are like. I know the health problems of all my relatives, even the ones I only met the once at my Christening). I have it on good authority that the squeaking noise I could hear in the car all the way here was in fact my accelerator pedal and not a rodent trying to smuggle itself to Clacton On Sea (cos, lets face it, why would anything want to come to Clacton?)

My other holiday resolution - to watch telly is going all together more successfully. Though, I'm finding it more tiring than I thought I would. I was looking forward to being able to remain flopped, semi-conscious and to enjoy watching endless sitcoms. But no. I've bought a TV guide. That's right, I know what's on and when. So rather than just flopping in front of one channel and watching it constantly, I'm having to plan a schedule for each day as it comes. It's almost as tiring as devising an action plan for a days work. Instead of being relaxed, I'm finding myself stressing over the fact that there's a five minute overlap between the episode of Ellen on Paramount Comedy finishing at 1:55pm and the episode of Ellen starting on abc1 at 1:50pm. What is a girl to do? And what about the fact that there's another episode of Ellen on at 5:10pm on abc1 which overlaps with Charmed being on five from 5pm until 6! Still, being stressed over my TV planning schedule is perhaps better for the mental health than just sticking to the one channel.

After all, while that may be the easy option, it does also have it's occupational hazards. On Wednesday after the radio thang, I ended up sitting down to watch Friends on Channel 4 and fell asleep. Next thing I know, I'm having nightmares about having sex with Kitten because Channel 4 is still on, it's penetrated into my sleep (thank god that in reality that was the only kind of penetration going on) and they're showing that stupid Big Brother Panto.

The other hazard about too much TV is all those adverts for that fucking Crazy Frog. My plan is to tape a succession of them, stick the recording of it in the cupboard which the mice are accessing and hope that it'll make the mice want to kill themselves, just like it does me.

Merry Christmas everyone. May it be Crazy Frog and rodent free.

She lives! She lives!

And she now has a fully working computer too (well, apart from the dead broadband bit. This dial-up is making her want to bang her head against the desk). Which she is very grateful for because she had been going slightly insane. Especially as she has sort of become a proper grown-up writer and she had a deadline and a computer that crashed every ten minutes. She didn't enjoy that combination. She also appears to have begun referring to herself in the third person. She is slightly confused by this and doesn't know where it came from. So now she will stop.

The other day I got asked for the first time this year that question I dread every December, though of course, some years it comes around as early as September. That question that's on a par with elderly relatives saying "So, when are you going to settle down and get married then?", yes, I was asked:

"What are you doing for New Years Eve then?"

"Um, nothing." Was of course my answer. Because, contrary to popular belief; I don't actually have a life.

New Years Eve has to be the most depressing night of the year. And the months of anxiety leading up to it. I've given up on the whole "I must have someone to kiss at midnight" idea, because, like me spending Valentine's Day with anyone's company other than my own - it's never going to happen. But, still, the pressure of having to find something to do and not be sitting alone in front of the TV is unbearable.

Of course, New Years Eve isn't without it's joys. I'd especially like to congratulate those who were driving along Golders Green Road on December 31st last year at about 10pm as they got to see one of my best friends jumping up and down on a traffic island wearing just her underwear. Those congratulation aren't particularly because they got to see her in her underwear, no. They were just lucky that I'd simply not had enough wine by that point to go and join her. In fact, last year I managed to keep my clothes on for the whole of the New Years Celebrations which I was very proud of (I still don't know what I'd been up to that year I woke up on a friends kitchen floor on Jan 1st without my attire).

It's been a month of social pressure. Not only do I have to dread spending New Years Eve with just Jaffa Cakes and my rodent roomie (yes, he's still here. He did get caught in a trap, but unlike Elvis, he could walk out. Apparently using his own faeces as lubrication to free himself) for company; I went to An Engagment Party. It was a lovely evening and I saw loads of amazing people that I don't see that often (either because they live somewhere random like Singapore, or they live in Kentish Town and I'm just rubbish at keeping in touch with people). I couldn't help but feel like the least grown-up and least accomplished person there though. Champagne soon brightened my mood though. God bless alcohol for removing my social inadequacy.

The evening did also provide me with an opportunity for momentary smugness, before I'd even entered the pub (and crashed straight into a chair in front of me courtesy of immediate steaming up of the specs). I popped into Paperchase in Waterloo station to pick up an engagement card for the newly promised couple. I tried to enter via both available doors, but from neither could I spot a route via which I could access the card section at the back of the store.

"Excuse me. Which way is your wheelchair accessible route to the cards at the back?" I said to the girl behind the counter.

"What?" She replied, looking at me as if I'd just asked 'On which platform is the train to Mars?'

"Which way is your wheelchair accessible route to the cards at the back of the shop? I've tried coming in through both doors and can't see a gangway wide enough to get through." I said.

"Erm..." She answered, making herself seem less attractive by the second.

"There isn't one..." interupted the man standing behind me. A look of relief flooded over the girl at the counter as she realised she was no longer going to have to deal with the lady in the wheelchair who had the audacity to assume she should be able to shop there - because her colleague had taken over.

"... but I'll help you with anything you need," he continued.

"Are you going to bring me your entire engagement card selection?"

"OK, sure." I probably looked a bit disappointed by how unflustered he was at my request. He brought me cards, and I chose my preferred one.

"Do you need any stamps?"

"No. But I do need a pen." I suddenly remembered that someone had borrowed the one I used to carry in my bag, and they'd never returned it. I didn't really want to fill in a card with a pink, barely working, highlighter.

"What kind? Black? Blue?"

"Gel ink. Purple preferably..."

Again, to my disappointment, he bought me a choice of three. And even a note pad to try them out on.

Inaccessible shops just aren't the fun they used to be. And, I've still got nothing to do on New Years Eve. Talk about disappointing.

To all those pessimists who said that the implementation of the final phase of Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act was too little too late: I say "pah!"

Ramps are suddenly springing up all over the place...

OK, by "all over the place" I mean, outside the Costa Coffee in West Hampstead... but, hey... that wasn't there last week (OK, so, technically they were in breach of the law for almost 2 months, but, I'm in "optimist mode", we'll just gloss over the so called "facts").

I like Costa Coffee. They sell coffee with a Flake stuck in it, thus combining two of my passions; chocolate and caffeine. I've never bothered attempting to get in to the one in West Hampstead - there's a Starbucks without a step right next door. Not that I've ever gone in there either; Starbucks are evil, nasty and corporate. And when I lived in Cambridge I used to drink in Starbucks all the time. The staff in the one in Waterstones (which is now no longer a Waterstones but a clothes store) obviously never cleaned the espresso machine. Unclean water boiling device + the hardness of Cambridge's water = actual lumps of limescale in the bottom of your coffee. Kinda puts you off for life. But West Hampstead has plenty of other cafes to choose from. Even if I haven't found one which serves coffee with chocolate in it.

I wonder who complained? For a change, it wasn't me.

It was about 10 minutes after I last updated my blog that I saw it. I was so terrified that I ended up sitting frozen at my desk for about an hour and three quarters.

What was it I saw? Saw? No. Though I want to, but I think it's vanished from all the cinemas near me now. When posters started springing up all over West Hampstead advertising the film simply saying "Dare you see saw?" I thought that it was some kind of juvenile challenge and that the playground had gotten nasty. Of course, having bones that tended to break when I did things like eating my dinner, I never did dare see-saw as a child. The challenge offered by these posters made me wonder what I may have been missing out on. Until I realised they were talking about a film.

So, what was it I saw on Sunday then that had me incapacitated with fear?

A mouse sitting on top of my fridge.

Apparently, not only is there a hole at the back of my kitchen cupboard giving them access up from beneath the floorboards... they can also get out of the cupboard via a hole in the side of the cupboard, leading them to a nice landing perch - the fridge.

Maybe it could smell the fact that my fridge currently contains 7 different types of cheese (hey - I'm a vegetarian. I need to get my protein from somewhere), and was on a mission to break in?

A couple of weeks ago, I reported the mice to my housing caseworker at the council. He reported it to the landlord's agent who accordingly sent their handyman round (who had been round before the call from the council but just did bugger all and left). He laid a "glue trap" by the hole at the back of my kitchen cupboard.

If you've never seen one of these 'traps' before - they look like oversized self-adhesive surgical dressings, and I guess work on the hypothetical prinicpal that they're fly paper for mice. I just had visions of a mouse running round underneath the floorboards looking like he'd just gotten in from A&E (or the ER for any American-English speaking readers). I however couldn't for a second envisage it actually "trapping" anything.

On Monday I called the landlord's agents again saying "There's still mice! I saw one yesterday!", so this morning I was again woken by a tattooed man clutching more of these dressings. He opened my cupboard to see if anything was trapped in the, well, 'trap', and...

"The trap's gone!" He exclaimed with a certain amount of surprise.

"Oh?" I said far more calmly, knowing immediately that my vision had come true, and a mouse was somewhere under my floor alive and running round, but with a sheet of sticky stuff covering his back and thus mildly impairing his movement.

The handyman laid another trap. If that one goes too, then it shall be certain that one of my rodent room-mates has an entrepreneurial flair, and has decided to launch his own rodent back-waxing business. I can understand it, I mean, would you want to shag someone with a back *that* hairy?

Occasionally I wish someone saw me naked.

The reason I'm thinking this today isn't anything sexual. I just have this overwhelming urge to show off the most unbelievable collection of bruises that I'm currently sporting.

Most of the bruises on my legs turned two weeks old yesterday. I almost felt compelled to get them a celebratory cake. The combination of having an impairment which makes me bruise easily and having a propensity to drunkenly fall over perhaps isn't the greatest combination, unless you like that rainbow coloured complexion look that is.

The cluster of bruises running most of the length of my inner right thigh happened on Wednesday evening. I was standing up in a desperate attempt to get noticed by the staff behind the bar, with one foot on either side of the footrest-bar-thingy on the front of my wheelchair. Suddenly I felt this sharp pain between my legs (not *there* between my legs, lower down, about halfway between my hips and my knees). I looked around and a wasted wankstain had tried to sit on the backrest of my wheelchair. He of course had immediately been flung to the floor (ha ha) but where my chair flipped backwards, the hard metal footbar neatly ran itself along my inner thigh, with the force of someone's bodyweight behind it. The wasted wankstain in question picked himself up off the floor, and then had the audacity to tell me to "Chill the fuck out, man".

On Thursday my inner thigh was an aesthetically pleasing shade of bluey purple. Sadly it's now turned yellow, and combined with the rest of the bruises on my legs, I look quite jaundiced. Add to all this the really deep greeny/browny bruise on my left upper arm (if anyone knows where I got that one, answers on a postcard would be much appreciated) I think I could take my clothes off in public and look like I was wearing a military camouflage uniform.

Returning to the tale of my inner thigh... Let's not forget that I have Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The angle at which, and the force with which my wheelchair hit me on Wednesday, I was very lucky not to break my femur. The BBC is currently loving telling us that we're a Fat Nation and that we need to lose weight. To be honest, I'm pleased to be sporting a layer of padding as right now I'm sitting at home, in my pyjama's in front of a computer - had I not had a layer of lard on my thighs, protecting my bones from projectile wheelchairs I'd be laying in a hospital bed right now with a collection of weights dangled from my foot.

You know what, I think my bruises do deserve that celebratory cake after all.

"Hehe, you didn't indicate then!" Said a twat to me in the pub the other night, as I moved aside to let someone pass me.

I didn't even turn my head. I was determined to not start screaming at him for being a disablist cunt. Mainly because he was a skinhead and about twice my size.

"OK, well, fuck you then!" He felt the need to follow up with.

I dared to turn and give him evils.

"Yeah, you heard that, didn't you!"

I didn't feel it was appropriate to explain my personal policy on dealing with rude people. I felt it might get me a black eye. I could perhaps have explained my auditory processing difficulties, but that might have made the cogs in his brain turn, which also may have proved dangerous.

I considered my revenge. I was about to find myself on a stage, with a microphone in front of about 100 people. Why don't I tell them all to go downstairs and kick the skinhead with the light blue polo shirt. Put him in a wheelchair and see if he still finds himself hilarious. Yeah.

No. My "You have 15 seconds left" vibrating watch alarm went off when I was halfway through the last part of my Big Brother stuff (and seeing as how I was in front of a crowd, I didn't think it polite to place my wrist between my thighs). Shit. No time for picking on the disablist bloke.

It's a shame. I had a suprising number of allies. Particularly the non-disabled woman who, when I suggested they should put a disabled person in the Big Brother house, gasped, threw her arms up in the air and said "Oh, yes!" But, I suspect that rather than liking my joke, she had a vibrating watch too.

This post was going to be dedicated to praising the Brixton Academy, talking about how unlike most venues of its size, you can actually see the stage from the dedicated cripple enclosure (though I do think shaven heads in music venues should be compulsory for anyone over 5'7", or at the very least anyone wearing hair gel should be refused entry). But...

OK, so last night I went to see the Scissor Sisters. Kiki & Herb opened for them, and they were fantastically hilarious. Though my friend didn't look too impressed, I thought they were hilarious and darn nearly wet myself when they performed their cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity. With hindsight it's perhaps a shame that I didn't.

Scissor Sisters know how to put on a fantastic show. Well, almost. At one point they did 5 unknown/non-album songs in a row. They shouldn't have done more than two without breaking it up with something familiar in my opinion - but, it's hardly the end of the world, and other than that, the gig was fantastic. They even made the audience pray for Kerry to win the US Election. If there is a god he wasn't listening and the world has to be terrorised for another four years. If you're American you have my condolences, especially if you belong to a minority group.

I think for a significant proportion of last nights audience however, the main show came once the band had finished, at around 10:45pm when everyone departing got to see my fanny. Yes, you did read that correctly. And, yes, I mean the British English version of the word fanny.

For those of you not familiar with the layout of most disabled toilets, I'll explain. If you were to use the ladies toilets, you would be protected by one door separating the toilet areas off from a main area, and then a cubicle door, keeping you in utmost privacy (well, except for your ankles, or should you be unfortunate enough to have someone stand on the top of the toilet next door and peer over). Disabled toilets are never afforded that double door protection, and a door straight into the toilet cubicle usually leads off a main area. In the case of Brixton Academy, this is a bar/entrance&exit concourse.

Also, many disabled toilets around the country are locked with a "Radar Lock". The lock works on two levels, obviously. If the toilet is not engaged, you can turn your key and the door will open. If the toilet is engaged, you can't. On the inside of the door it usually says "Lift handle to lock". Which last night was exactly what I did.

However, what I didn't realise was - the lock was broken.

I was mid-stream when the door opened.

As soon as the door opened just a crack, I actually screamed. I was impressed I could do this as my voice had given up sometime during Take Your Mama and I'd returned to being in a state where coughing was the only noise I could make.

Despite the fact that the toilet was obviously engaged, the member of venue staff could see with her own eyes someone sitting on the toilet, and she was standing in a crowd of people trying to exit the venue, she still proceeded to open the door, and continue gawping. What a decent woman.

She did eventually shut the door. Funnily enough, that toilet suddenly became the last place I wanted to be.

What concerned me most of course was the queue of wheelchair users waiting for the toilet that didn't seem at all bothered by the fact the whilst they weed there would be outside the door a crazy cow with a fetish for watching women pee.

I suppose I should be grateful that at least someone wanted to see my genitals.

Brakes on? Brakes off?

"You should talk about disabled lesbian sex, you know, how you do it." Said someone to me yesterday after hearing my stand-up set.

I'm not surprised that someone would think the idea of crippled lezza sex would be hilarious - when non-disabled people can envisage disabled people "doing it", it usually has hilarious connotations. I saw Billy Connolly live on Thursday, and he brought the whole of the Hammersmith Apollo into a hysterical state simply using the sentence "I shagged a dwarf!" He didn't even need to elaborate and build a joke of any kind, just the simple thought of sleeping with someone disabled will make 3719 people howl.

Surely, if this is the case, why bother writing comedy? Surely I can just go on stage and say "I'm not a virgin" and the rumbles of laughter from that one sentence should fill a whole spot. Especially of course as the audience tries to imagine just "how".

But the rest of this evening is not to be spent writing stand-up/sit-down comedy/porn. No. I'm going to return to my sickbed where I've been most of the week and resume coughing. Goodnight.

Last week I was poorly. Hence the no updates thing. I wasn't on deaths door, but I did feel vaguely flu-ey and like I needed to be taken care of (and for a change I don't mean I needed taking care of in a sexual manner).

Unfortunately, I live alone, am single, and have no friends living close by. All I needed was someone to fetch me soup, and put more blankets over my poorly, cold feet. The only company I got of course was my rodent room-mate, who I thought had been banished, but it appears it was only temporary. He's now found his way into the cupboard beneath my kitchen sink. My kitchen sink is made of metal. On Saturday morning, my rodent roomie woke me up by trying to gnaw his way through it. It was one of the loudest things I have ever heard, and as a result, I'm now developing a slight phobia of my kitchen sink. Or, at least, that's my excuse for not washing up, and I'm sticking to it.

It'd be nice for a change to have a phobia which stopped me from doing something I hate doing anyway. I've now twice had therapy to get me over a phobia. When I was a child, I wouldn't go to bed until my mum had strip searched my room incase there were any spiders in there. Of course, they'd be in hiding until after I'd gone to bed, when they'd come out to show off. Because they're evil little fuckers. In the end my mother decided she'd had enough of this and dragged me kicking and screaming into the therapists office. And kicking and screaming is literally what I did, as she kept holding jars with spiders in in front of my face.

My other phobia was lifts. Yes, you are allowed to laugh, many people have. Of course, being a wheelchair user who couldn't go in a lift at all made my life very difficult. At 16 I decided it was just ridiculous, so I went to see my GP who referred me to the psychotherapy dept at the hospital. I was feeling like a very big girl that day - I also asked if she'd refer me to the hospital so I could get my BCG vaccination - I'd never had it done in school because I was so scared of the needle that I couldn't stop flinching. In the end I had the vaccination done at the chest clinic at Addenbrookes. A friend of mine was a nurse in that clinic at the time. She was rather a large lady - as the needle came in my direction, she just sat on me. Funnily enough, no flinching - but then I couldn't move so that might've had something to do with it. All those requests in one day - and did I did a sweetie for my bravery? Did I fuck...

Of course, with NHS waiting lists being what they are, it was two years before I saw anyone, so in total I spent about 5 years of my life stuck on the ground floor. Last Tuesday I had a reminder of why I was so scared of lifts when I used the one in The Plaza Shopping Centre on Oxford Street. For some reason they'd decided to deck the walls with padded lining (that could make an interesting Christmas carol) making the lift resemble Renfield's cell in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Yes, um, er, phobia of kitchen sink. Did I mention I was ill last week?

Well, I think whatever virus had me convinced on Friday morning that my limbs weighed 7 stone each has had some kind of long-term effect on me, as I've started behaving quite out of character.

I'm terrified of confrontation. When aggressive people start yelling and screaming at me, I just let them abuse me rather than yelling back and letting it turn into a fight. I just can't deal with it. So, imagine my surprise at myself yesterday when I found myself going up to a man in the car park of Brent Cross Shopping Centre and calling him a "cunt".

I admit it. I'd fallen victim to car park rage. The crip car park at Brent Cross is probably the most competitive environment I've ever been in - remember I've swum for my country. I was the first in the car park. I'd positioned myself in a suitable position to start a queue should anyone feel like pulling up behind me. Some elderly twat in a Honda was not playing by those rules. He was having the next car parking space which became available, no matter how many little old ladies he had to rev his engine at. Of course, he managed to block me from getting into the first empty space, negated to acknowledge my horn blowing and stole a space from right in front of my face.

Another bay became available about a minute later (I'd only been queueing for about 20. That's fine. I wasn't in a hurry to shop anyway). So I got out of my car and put my wheelchair together. He was still sitting in his car, and he had his window rolled down. I'd never done anything like it before, but wheeling up to his car, stopping at his window and swearing at him was incredibly theraputic.

Isn't that odd? But my out of character behaviour continued...

I hate Christmas. I've never had a happy one. I'm always ill, there was that year when both my parents were in hospital over Christmas and New Year (though pity for the poor child in that situation got me my first CD player), my Nana died just before Christmas a few years ago - it's just always a nightmare. I want stripey sweets that make noises like sheep.

I'm also a horrifically disorganised person. Most people get their Crimbo pressies from me in January. Or even February if I decide that January sales are too traumatic for my low tolerance with Bargain Hunters (it's the colour of David Dickinson, he reminds me of my A'level theatre studies teacher). But, yesterday I started buying my Christmas presents. WE'RE IN FUCKING OCTOBER! What is wrong with me? This is not right. This virus must've caused some kind of brain damage.

Deck the lifts with padded lining
Tra la la la la, la la la la.