Things you notice

Yesterday morning we placed our Christmas turkey order with one of the local butcher on Sea Road.

Ever since we’ve had Christmas lunch at home we’ve just bought a frozen turkey from Morrisons.

However this year we’ve decided to go for a fresh one. There’s a wonderful old fashioned butchers on Sea Road which we often call in for his fabulous ‘old English’ sausages and peas pudding. So we thought he was the best place to go for our turkey.

There was only one problem with his shop and that it’s not very wheelchair friendly so sadly I had to wait outside while John placed the order. I did though get a wave from the window from Billy the butcher and he sent his regards.

There are several things you notice whilst being in a wheelchair:

Pedestrians/shoppers don’t see you so they walk into the wheelchair.

Because of cars who have parked part on the road and part on the pavement, it’s either extremely tight manoeuvring past or you have to take to the road because you can’t fit through the small gap. I’m thinking of getting a device fitted to the wheels, which when I press a button, metal spikes come out and scratch the side of the cars as I go past them…

Paths are in a terrible condition. The flagstone are so uneven so the ride is extremely bumpy.

Not all shops are accessible. There was one shop (it’s closed now – it was a chained local convenience store which went into administration recently) which had a huge step to get inside. Even I had a struggle to get up it when I was on two legs… However they did come up with a solution to this. Wheelchair uses simply had to press a bell – which was over six feet off the ground !!!!

Marie