This is not a happy story for me to retell. But having had a a few years to think about the implications, I'm fairly sure there is a silver lining to be gleaned from a tale which, at the time, was most definitely a cloud in my particular sky.
A a few years ago, I tried to have a meal in a restaurant with a friend, and get guide dog. The restaurant, was an Indian of good repute. At least when it came to its food. It's repute when it came to serving a customer with a guide dog, was far from being squeaky clean. Instead of being greeted by a friendly waiter, who then seated us and served us a meal of dazzling, intricate, spicy flavours, me and my friend, she was being with the guide dog, was told on no uncertain terms that we were not welcome, due to her being in possession of said guide dog. Bugger off go away, don't trouble us with your hairy, biting mutt. we were told. This "welcome", unfortunately is a more common experience than it ever ought to be. Having found myself in this kind of situation several times before, I tried it on with the old shtick. You're breaking the law, I cried.
So? They replied.
Do you not care that you're denying service, and in fact blatantly discriminating against two upstanding members of the great blind British public?
No. We don't. And anyhow, our customers might object .
This is in effect, where campaign procedure number 2, comes in. And it usually works, as in involves destroying this "customer might object" nonsense. It involves asking customers around and about what they think of two blind people being kicked out of a restaurant due to there being a canine companion. And let's face it, this appeal to public decency generally works for twotwo basis reasons:
1. Because in most cases, the great British public dislikes unfairness, and this obvious dog apartheid is what many DO see as unfair.
2. Most people like dogs. Especially cute, friendly Labradors.
On this evening though we came upon well I'm not sure how to put it is, but I'll be generous and call him British dickhead. On attempting to appeal to his better nature , I smashed my reeling bonce kapow into a brick wall , for he hadn't one. Instead of the usual response of "don't be silly, of course we wouldn't mind you eating in the same restaurant as us with your lovely, golden hound", he said that we ought to leave, that we were cramping he his and his friend's style, and that really, as black people, should go and dig rubbish from the local landfill site and play in the sewage lake. Actually, he didn't refer to our colour or junkyards or anything other to do with effluent , I just made that up. It just felt like he could have. What he did say to me was that I should get off my fat arse and get a job. I replied, with my mouth at this stage touching my feet , that I owned, in fact, not one, but two jobs.
It cut no ice.
His heart was cold.
And he was still wrong about my employment situation. I was averaging about 40 hours per week.
Failing utterly to elicit the help of a fellow customer was too soul destroying for words, and we left. We managed to eat a delicious meal at the place next door. This is the first time, and definitely the only time being booted out of a place has ever happened to me. And it will be the last
I stewed for months. I ranted and raged and became rather upset by the injustice and stupidity of such an individual.
And then , something happened.
I began to feel liberated. I felt free of a burden I didn't even know I carried . And I bet many disabled people, and other minorities come to think of it, share a similar burden. That of trying to live up to someone else's expectations. Someone who is worth the grand sum of jack.
You see, now I don't feel this need.
Most people I've come across all kind, decent, fair-minded individuals, who will try to offer, however completely hilariously misguided, ways, to compensate for someone's disability – to try and actually help in many cases. To succeed fairly regularly. But however kind, fair-minded, and altruistic members of the public can be , there is, and it's getting worse by the day, a general assumption amongst many people that disabled people are scroungers, in it for the money, lazy and generally second-class. That's being generous, third class.
Everyone needs a whipping boy, and like black people in the 60s, Irish people in the 70s and so called chavs of the noughties, disabled people are the whipping boys and girls de jour.
And so it came to pass that I stopped caring what people thought about me. Scrounge as much as I like. Work 50 hours a week. Work as a professional 50 hours a week. It doesn't matter you see, we're all scroungers. We're all blind. We're all "others". We're all worthless. And to those are aren't cocks, we're still equal humans. Or at least NEARLY equal.
I'm not saying I believe any of this horseshit. I'm a proud, arrogant, bastard in many areas. I have a very strong opinion of my strengths and weaknesses. I know I'm never going to assemble an IKEA wardrobe or drive a lorry, or make a soufflé that doesn't bellyflop. But I know, but that with a combination of humour, forcefulness, and evidence , I can crack a job interview I'm remotely qualified for. I know that I'm nobody's fool. I know that amongst those who care about me, and who I care for, I'm an equal. But in the mind of a certain section of the great British public, I'm a no-one. And these, ironically, are EXACTLY the kind of individual who would turn me down for an interview even with peerless qualifications behind me. Because they are cocks. And it is near nigh impossible to change the point of view of a cock.
And that is fine. Mostly. Because now I don't have to live up to their expectations of me, which I'm certain were laughable and unrealistic in the first place.
I just hope that someone like Mr Cock Isn't in my next interview panel. He might be. And he'll not employ me. But would I wish to work with him?
Probably not.
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