Tag: Southampton

If Anyone Asks

…Embrace were great. Or they would have been, anyway.

I’d had tickets to see them in Southampton on Monday 25 November for about six months, but a few unfortunate circumstances meant it wasn’t to be. To start with, I ventured out to Southampton far too early in the day. I went at lunchtime, thinking I’d make an afternoon of it (and to be fair, I did squeeze in a visit to Pizza Hut), but I also underestimated the mileage my wheelchair was capable of in doing so. The whole thing was ultimately killed stone dead by my insistence on doing a recce of the route to the venue once I was off the train – what I thought was only a few minutes in a straight line turned out to be a bit more than that. I’d seen the directions on Google Maps, of course, but they doesn’t account for how a wheelchair user might get to a destination, only a pedestrian on two legs. You can never tell where the next dropped kerb is – or how long a detour to find one might be – so the only option was to do a test run and get everything straight in my head.

Who would have thought that Southampton was so bumpy and rugged? Not me, that’s for sure. By the time I actually had to get to the gig, I was down to my last few bars of power. In the end, I got as far as hearing the band soundcheck from the pavement outside. The drums were pounding away within those four walls, muffled but tantalisingly close as I admitted defeat. I went home and felt like an idiot for the rest of the evening. Apart from everything else, £30 had gone down the drain because of my own poor planning! I didn’t really get over it until I’d slept it off. I could see things much more clearly the next day. I thought so, at least. I still felt silly, don’t get me wrong, and frustrated too – but not just for the reason you might expect.

As I’ve said, I only wanted to make sure I knew where I was going and minimise any mishaps in the process. I couldn’t have known I’d be creating them instead when I was leaving my flat, chair fully charged. I have to consider accessibility nearly every day of my life, to some extent, and as far as I was concerned neglecting the recce would have been irresponsible. Simultaneously, though, turned out to be the right and wrong thing to do. Moral of the story, able-bodied folks? Don’t take any of your trouble-free adventures for granted, because some of us can’t win. Being able to move from A to B without getting stuck or making a scene is something we really value, and we learn the hard way that it’s never guaranteed, even when we think every eventuality has been covered.

Mason

The Westquay Epiphany

Last Monday, I was in Southampton, and with the pull of the Westquay shopping centre impossible to ignore, I found myself “just browsing” in nearly every store it had to offer (much to the disappointment of several sales assistants). When we tell someone that we’re just having a look around, I think a lot of us are saying it just to politely get them off our backs. In my case, though, I’m telling the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. I might see plenty of items I like and am tempted by, but very rarely do I feel a burning desire to part with any cash – or anything that strong at all.

In these tough times, you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m just being somewhat frugal. Subconsciously, perhaps I am, but I don’t think that explains everything. Of course, my reaction to something can vary depending on what it is. If it’s a meal or a new book, for example, then that’s something I could share with others, something to be fully consumed and savoured (in drastically contrasting ways, obviously). If it’s an item of clothing, on the other hand, my response – or lack thereof – couldn’t be more different. It’s closer to indifference.

I think it’s at its worst with clothes, as a matter of fact. You can point something out to me and I might agree that it looks nice, but that’ll be the end of the discussion. Either that or I’ll just tell you what I think you’re expecting to hear. I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching to try to find out exactly why that is – why I feel so little towards what I wear – and that’s what led me to force myself to make some purchases in Westquay. When I’d managed to prise myself away, I had a new T-shirt, as well as a short-sleeved, smart casual summer shirt covered in mountains, yachts and palm trees. I’ve got a Spanish holiday coming up at the end of June, so the latter seemed particularly appropriate, I think you’ll agree. But my God, was it difficult to choose! Not because there was a wide range of options, but because I didn’t actually know what I wanted to look like. After so much deep thought, there it was – the grand revelation, hitting me in real time.

You see, for the first 26 years of my life, I haven’t really had much input into my own image. It might sound like I’m complaining about that, but I’m not. Mum, Dad and numerous other friends and relatives have meant well – I’ve just found it all too easy to accept everything I was given on birthdays or at Christmas. Maybe I was equally grateful and relieved, because each gift meant one less wardrobe dilemma, and we all know how people can struggle with those – especially in adolescence. In my twenties, however, I don’t honestly feel that things have gotten any easier. I can’t tell you how many laps I did around the M&S racks before settling on what to buy. With each one, another question would go round and round in my head, and all of them related to what other people would think of what I went for. Whether I liked it or not was the last thing on my mind, because what do I like? It looks like I ought to find out. Trusting myself, backing myself and liking myself a little bit more surely can’t do any harm – my life as a whole will be better for it.

Mason

Bearing Up

This week has been one marked by contrasts. I entered it on a high, having taken full advantage of the isolation imposed by Storm Dennis to shut myself in the library and get as much work done as I possibly could. At the time of writing, on Saturday evening, I feel I’m leaving it on a slightly lower note – a low-pitched squeaking, rubbing and rattling note, to be precise. That’s the noise currently making my eardrums bleed from an unspecified location. Despite my valiant efforts to trace the source by getting on my hands and knees and shining my iPhone torch into the chair’s inner workings, I am so far at a loss to explain it (although I do think something connected to the wheel could be loose), and since everything is packed into it so tightly, I can’t reach any of the parts. That means I have to leave it to the professionals and wait until an engineer turns up at some stage next week. By that time, I may well have scratched my own ears off. Oh well, at least I’ve got a quiz at the noodle bar where Lara works to look forward to tomorrow night. Let’s just hope I don’t manage to deafen the entire restaurant on my way in!

In the meantime, I’ve returned to the library, and I have a nice quiet booth all to myself. I’ve started listening to music as I work now – I never really did that before as I always felt slightly conspicuous wearing headphones in public – but it’s so much easier to get settled in a little cocoon of sound. I’m trying to use it as an opportunity to discover new music, as I find it too easy to slip into the habit of listening to the same artists, songs and playlists over and over again. Since Spotify offers such a wide-ranging array of lists, I’ve simply taken to reading their names, deciding whether I’ll like them based on that alone, and then pressing play and seeing what happens. It’s been quite exciting so far – maybe I’ll list some of my better discoveries in a future post (leaving out the more embarrassing ones)?

Mason