London: Old and stubborn?

They say travelling changes you. It's expands your outlook.  It makes You more tolerant of things you can't control.

...but, London?

 It's my capital city. How can i not love it? Westminster bridge, whitehall, lost looking tourists walking in literal circles round Covent garden...then the other bits, the bits you discover after you come to realise you are no longer a tourist here. The bits like the feel of north London, strolling round camden, people daring to talk to each other in bars, running over German backpackers toes in hostels...no one really belongs here and especially not I.

Unlike most of my recent visits to London, this wasn't a flying "volunteer" one. This was little old me trying to show my Canadian friend round Great Britain (and believe me, she saw quite a lot in a few days!) allowing her to appreciate how diverse this country is. My friend happens to have cerebral palsy and does not use a wheelchair, however walking and standing for a long time is a challenge and so I really had to adapt and think not only about how to get around in a wheelchair but also how to get around London without walking too far, too often.

Buses are fine for me. Not so great for my friend who's travelling alone for the first time and struggles with direction. However, I pat the buses on the shoulder for doing a good job.

Cabs are fine for both of us, when they stop. (And no, it's not because I look northern!) I have heard off a few cabbies that people drive past when they see a wheelchair waiting because they can't be bothered having to get the ramp out...isn't that kind of their job?

The tube! Don't even go there! I've never been on it! Now, I do know a few spinal cord injured wheelchair users who do use it, but their level of injury is either incomplete or a lot lower than mine and so their wheelchair skills are far more superior. If I ever lived in London, I guess I'd attempt certain lines and stations and improve on my escalator and step skills. However, if someone, for example, a vancouverite wheelchair user who's used to the most accessible city in the world and skytrain, this may prove just a little frustrating...

The truth is. To anyone coming from anywhere west of the west coast of Ireland, London is a beautiful, old story telling grandma who feeds you cakes, stories and enchants your mind. However, once you break that enchantment, particularly looking from a "disabled access" point of view, it's an irritating old man who sits in his arm chair all day, refusing to move and gaining more and more pressure sores as the time goes by and the grandkids move on. All the while, grandma is left alone; bslowly but surely forgetting her stories and no ones here to make any new ones...

And sadly, as a disabled traveller that's what I'm worried London will start to become. Many things need to be done to make London a more accessible city. If you believe the rubbish reasoning that the tube cannot me made accessible because it's a very old transport system then well done you, go join the closed minded crew. But if you're like me, and acknowledge that yes, London and the tube and everything about the place is "old" but with the right thinking and innovation, can be adapted, then please don't just accept and hide behind the "we can't do this because of health and safety" excuse. Make a sacrifice, spend some (and I know it's a bloody lot!) money because you know, I might start spending some in your business, too!

The one thing I loved about Vancouver is I didn't have to spend my life in "mainstream" shops I could find anywhere...I could get into pretty much every shop. In London, in these huge grand buildings, there's always a tiny and yet high little step blocking my way into any place that isn't a Starbucks...yes, if im alone (which i often am, i could ask a member of the public to give me a hand, but why should I, when I know I want to just have a browse and that flattening a high step in a huge porch way would not ruin the history of the building, it'd just be a tiny, simple adaptation.

I always say it, but we must adapt in order to survive. Right now, London might still be a cuddly Grandma with lots of stories to tell, but give her and the gran kids a few years, let them grow up. If old grandad doesn't get off his back side and do something soon, then the grand kids will stop coming to visit.

I am a reflective being, so hang on!

No, I have not written much.
yes, I have been busy focussing on all of the usual paperwork/application process of getting into University.
I'm back home in the UK until August and I have lots of fun, crazy things planned...and already started some of them.

I lasted just two days under my own roof. As i was invited to a "mini festival" or "wed stock" to
celebrate a marriage, it was fantastic and I made some great new friends, as well as enjoying fantastic live music in a field somewhere between Preston and Clitheroe! >>>

<<< I've finally seen Green Day (my absolute heroes!) Live!...i think my face says it all! I hate to idolise people but in that face, right there, is an 11 year old girl finding an outlet...she just now happens to inhabit a 19 year old life and body!

Then by some crazy, "only me" way I ended up in some sort of caribbean fashion show at the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury!






And this weekend I'll be catching up with my Back Up buddies and going Water Skiing...so watch out!

But in the meantime there will be posts, helpful, non-ranty posts...i promise!

London...it was supposed to be the last time this year...

London 6-9th December
For the final part of my self-planned birthday celebrations I dragged Mum down to see Viva Forever! (the spice girls musical) and American Idiot the musical (for the final time...honest!) In London.

My attempt at wheelchair hip photography!

We had a good few days, wandering around a place i spend far too much time in, enjoying the Christmas lights and decorations...and of course, we had to go to the imperial war museum.

We met up with my cousin who i've probably not seen in around 7 years and walked "The Laura May tour of London". yes, it exists...I did my usual spiel around parliament square and Portcullis house, over  Westminster Bridge and then to the museum itself! There was a really cool/inspirational exhibition on bravery with individual stories of how some people, have had moments where they've gone with their guts, against orders/the norm and done what's right that in the long run has saved thousands of people's lives. Then there was a not so happy, but important and informative exhibition on the holocaust. That feeling that you first feel properly when you're about 15, sat in a history classroom, crept back again...frustrated anger. It just kills you inside to think how powerful human beings are, how we have the amazing ability to use what's inside us for good but also for evil. It makes you want to punch yourself in the face and say "do good, not bad!" As, we're also naive, believers of "them", society, scary, big and extreme ideas that can easily flip and cause mass destruction.

So...the following day we met up with our friend Katie and went to the  Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. While waiting to go in, we wandered around the main gallery and i couldn't help but chuckle slightly at the mentality of a lot of humanity. There was a  "fashion design" area where you use the renaissance section as inspiration to design your own costume...which, is pretty cool. I'm rubbish at drawing but i'm a history geek and i like clothes. The woman, who i believe i a top designer/lecturer said to me, "are you a textiles student?" I giggled, "no." "ohh...an art student? design?" I could't help but smile. "Na, i'm going to do a degree in outdoor education." she actually burst out laughing, probably at how daft she felt. apparently my blue hair suggests "art student"...i thought it suggested..."yep, that's Laura!" Now, she meant no offence by this, and i take none by it. But it just shows how the world loves putting people in boxes, does't it? You can't like politics but want to work outdoors, you can't be a massive Green Day fan and appreciate shakespeare. You can't be totally inspired by historical leaders and movements of the past and not want to do a degree in History...Well I can, and you'll find a lot of my friends and a lot of the world like lots of things. It's school, though i experienced it as college...that pass on the mindset, "if you like this, then you must therefore do this!" I like a lot of things, i do a lt of things but i have specific sections and things that i allow to take over my life...i.e. adaptive adventure/disability stuff. I sometimes worry, that it's wrong for this to b my life now, but...it's what i care about so...
Anyway, my interesting italian-inspired by old steps jumper picture got hung up, i found the costume exhibition really interesting (if not  a bit of a squeeze) from a drama perspective in how much colours and certain items of closing are paramount into fitting into the context of the film...
We then headed over to the science museum where i got over excited by the agricultural section, and the "who am i?" area, in which i tried and failed to become a man...and then got  a little lost on a straight road, attempting to walk 3 miles to American Idiot the musical.
We ended up just getting the bus.

Debating Matters competition: Just a tiny bit of what I learnt this weekend

I always end with a bang.
But I don’t necessarily set off the right firework.

I’m on the train coming back from London, slowly rolling/train-tracking through Northampton. There’s two kids eying up Jenny’s ipad, Andy is engrossed by The Sims and I, for the first time since (without too much exaggeration) this time last year, have technically “nothing to do”.
So I’ve decided to write, free from the distraction of the social media, as there’s no free wi-fi.

I’ve spent my weekend in London at the Wellcome Trust, taking part in The institute of Ideas’ “Debating Matters” competition.
I’ve certainly discovered a lot about myself.

(Other than the fact that anger, free bars and Laura May should not mix!)

Nothing scares me, and I mean that. But certain things that should scare me, anger me and I’ve experienced that this weekend.
 

No one has intended to make me feel this way but what I saw, experienced and realised, did.
Left leaning in my political values and activism, yet real, I have often shrugged my shoulders to comments and opinions, though acknowledging that they’re true, about how there is a section of elite people totally in their own bubble of knowledge that are privileged and born into wealth. These people are perceived to be “naturally better” than me.

I know that everyone I know will say “ye, but we know and you know they aren’t.”
But they think they are.
 

And without openly stating it, those “that matter” in wider society think it too.
To be honest, I should delete that final paragraph...It’s not that they even “think” they are, it’s as though it’s naturally built into them to talk, act, dress and laugh a certain way that immediately alienates a lot of people.
And it’s naturally built into “us” to call them snobs and only associate ourselves with them “to get places” and in turn alienate ourselves from them. This weekend, I’ve really had to challenge them literally, in debate.
And I failed to do so.
 

My passion was there and so was my knowledge. But they way in which I conveyed it and the level as to which I thought the debate was going to take place, wasn’t. The people I was against, along with judges think and act on a totally different level to me. They always have done.

Nothing I’m saying here is ground breaking, I knew this all along, but I only ever really felt it for the first time, properly yesterday.

I acknowledge I’m the most intellectual person in the world, but I don’t necessarily think that’s because I don’t have the ability to be. I think it’s because I’ve grown up in a house where my family have talked, worked and concentrated on real life and didn’t discuss deep, high level intellectual philosophy at the tea table. Instead, they’ve taught me how to argue and reason about the world around me. I’m not calling my parents thick either, what my Mum can’t do with her creative imagination is no one’s business and her talent has been wasted through these exact words on the very day she left school;
“I suppose you better get a job then.”
 

My Dad too, he’s an engineer by trade. Though he’s rubbish at fixing wheelchairs, he can create, build and has had a successful career managing something...(He doesn’t do that now, and when I was a kid I just had the line, “My Dad is a bit of  a boss at Leyland Trucks in the Stores Department”.)

My parents are real and they’ve brought me up to “be real” and a bit clever too. I’ve never been forced to think or do anything. My passion and interest in politics emerged through being intrigued at the age of 3 by the men sat on green benches on the tele, and Mum, Dad and Nanna having to stand in a funny booth that day the man with big glasses lost his job...

Everything else I love, do and want to be is because of me and my parents encouraging me to be me.
Maybe some of the people I experienced at the weekend’s parents’ had the same idea and view but there’s something fundamentally different about them that makes them think and act on a different level. It’s very impressive and scary to witness and these people are the people who have power. Their ideas and ability to argue them are fundamentally important and matter in this world and have made us all who we are...but.

And here’s the but.

I feel a bit like the “middle-woman” I can see and feel the edges of both “types” of mind.
I love people, all people; rich, poor, young, old, clever, dumb and I can see and now feel the separation.
I also don’t belong to “either-type”.
 

I understand and feel the need to work and control mundane, everyday situations and how they matter to us all and make us, “us”. I can also understand and acknowledge the challenging and fundamentally high level discussions about philosophy, history and science that matter to us all and make us, “us”.
But the top seems to forget, though tries to convince itself that it means something to the I dunno, “lower realm”, while the lower seem to know and accept that “them posh lot just don’t get reality.”

Well I’m sat here in the middle, screaming!
Because neither “lot” are prepared to challenge or work with each other and then the barrier, the social class barrier of snobbery and wealth builds up.

The way I am and the way I learn is through applying everything to reality and I now know, from this weekend that I need to find a way of getting my own brain, which I think is capable, of tapping into this high level of intellectual discussion. This is so that I can challenge and work against or with people who think on this level and use it to improve the “real world”, a skill that people who are born into this “high world” might not have.

Take this as a bitter rant because I lost a debate if you will.
But if you’re willing to engage and think like I am, I think you’ll see that though the institute of ideas may not like it, this weekend I was thrown into the deep end of a world I have now twice failed to attempt to become a part of. Though, now I know why. It’s not their fault, it’s not my fault; it’s the way of the world and it’s just given me another tool in my box that will enable me to change it, even if it’s only in a tiny way.