Ra ra skirts, Hitler and the blinkered Malaysian politician's wife

Hi. Well thank-you Mr Web Editor for disclosing my age to the city.

I suppose it had to be done. It’s a recent event, my coming to a false sense of maturity and I’m still adjusting. My slightly panicked reaction to hearing about a friend’s imminent joining of the same club was, ‘That’s it then. It’s officially the year when loads of us will be dressing like lamb and making inappropriate moves on the dance floor at parties, dedicated to desperately clinging on to the last shreds of our youth and buying into the advertising world’s assurance that 40 is the new 30’.

Friends’ sons are looking quite attractive and all grown-up and we’re kidding ourselves that they're slightly in awe and a little bit in love with mum’s friend - that attractive, sexy, experienced older woman who always seems to pop round when they're mowing the lawn with their shirt off.

In reality of course our friends sons are baffled and perhaps slightly scared of the leery lady who says she could, ‘Help him with his essay’ and thinks she can get away with ‘80s fashion the second time around (never was or ever will be a good look), whose wrinkly knees sticking out from under her ra ra/puffball skirt are putting him off his tea.

Having just read that back with growing concern, I would like to reassure any friends of mine with offspring of the male kind that I will never look at them in anything other than a maternal manner or that of a doting aunt - and hope that in the event I, at some point, acquire a son of my own, they will return the favour.

Phew, right onto less controversial matters – or not. The Paralympics.

As I watched the closing ceremony the other day I couldn’t help wondering as I have throughout the Games in Beijing of how much you can truly separate sport from politics. At least on the international stage, I, as many people across the world were, was sickened by the treatment of the Tibetan monks and angry with, as I saw it, China getting away with not reforming or accounting for their human rights policies before the Games as promised.

Not least with their policies towards people with disabilities. The contradictions that came to light between what was being said and shown on TV and what was happening beneath the surface made it impossible for me to only focus on what was the best coverage and celebration of the Paralympics to date.

Having gleaned facts from various news reports such as the clean-up of the disabled presence on the streets of Beijing prior to the Games and the widely enforced abortion of foetuses discovered to have disabilities – or, as one doctor interviewed calmly, stated, ‘Serious deformities such as a missing limb that would, if allowed to be born would constitute a burden on the family, society and country – given that healthy babies make happy families and societies, thereby improving the quality of the population’.

An attitude that would sit happily with Hitler given his record on the little publicised disabled Holocaust.

I then went on to discover, among other things, that in an official handbook available for download on the Beijing 08 website the guide told volunteers to the Games that people with disabilities were a ‘special group with unique personalities and ways of thinking’.

It read: ‘Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial and introspective, they can be stubborn, controlling… defensive and have a strong sense of inferiority. Sometimes they are overprotective of themselves especially when they are called crippled or paralysed’.

These facts belie the image portrayed by the media, and although I believe and am glad that the experience of Paralympians was a good one, the response of Lu Shimming from China’s Paralympic committee was alarming.

When asked if he was offended by the tone of the handbook comments he expressed surprise saying, ‘Speaking with the disabled people I know here - and I am one myself being in a wheelchair for life – I don’t feel anyone has been offended, but if we could say it in a more polite and considerate way it would be better’. No kidding!

Knowing this coloured my reading of the whole event. Where I wonder did the largest ever team of Chinese Paralympians come from? Given that 80 per cent of people with disabilities live in rural villages and have no access to education, services or jobs.

It bothered me that the 100 strong performers in wheelchairs in the opening ceremony were able bodied, that China refused entry of visitors with ‘mental disease’ - and call me cynical that the ceremonies for the Paralympics featured child-like cartoon characters with disabilities.

As an artist I have travelled, and am continually brought back to the reality that however much I wish for better rights, better access and that disability was represented more realistically in the media, I am grateful that I live in this country.

I was in Kuala Lumpur and at an opening dinner of an event was sitting next to the wife of a Malaysian politician renowned for her charity work.

At one point she asked me why there were so many disabled people in Britain, while at the same time complaining about the fact that when she once got a job in Kuala Lumpur for someone with a disability who lived outside the city, they didn’t turn up.

Now, having addressed a disabled organisation with one of my hats, disability consultancy to arts organisations, it was clear that most of the disabled population live in very poor rural villages with no education or access to facilities, let alone job opportunies.

Even in the capital there is no access to public transport, no schemes for adaptations to cars, and not even new buildings have to conform to regulations for disabled access.

I was put up in the only hotel with disabled access in the city and the only reason it was accessible was because one, it was a very expensive hotel and had lifts and two, because they had ripped out the existing bathroom in one of the rooms and redesigned it with wheelchairs in mind – mine specifically, since I had to send them the dimensions and instructions of what was needed in advance of my arrival!

I attempted to explain to the politician's wife that it was perhaps the fact that she didn’t see many disabled people in Kuala Lumpur that gave her the impression there were more in Britain. Perhaps it was a matter of visability than a drastic difference in statistics.

In addition the fact that she didn’t use public transport meant she didn’t see the many people with disabilities begging on the underground, one of the few places they were tolerated.

I also suggested that while it was a noble gesture to find a job for someone with a disability, the fact that there was no way for him to travel to that job may have contributed to him not turning up. I’m not sure anything registered.

We can only hope and think, ‘There for the grace of God go I’ - and by God I mean whoever’s grace you want go by.

I could go on, but I’ll save it for next time.

Fishermen, the Plymouth gay scene and undisabled dwarves

Hi to you all out there, since this the first blog I guess I should introduce myself.

Juliet. Jules or Mrs B to those who know me well.

Why am I in Plymouth? Well it’s down to my husband. He got a job here and since by that time I had an engagement ring on my finger I didn’t feel it was right to stay behind!

I’m a home counties girl at heart and had spent ten years in Nottingham after Uni. Doing what I do which is being an artist and sometime curator and all the malarkey that goes with that of which you’ll hear more about in due course.

I’d moved back to Kingwood – a little village outside Henley-on-Thames to do an MA in Fine Art at Reading University and to hear birds when I woke up instead of traffic. Ideally placed for commuting into London where quite a bit of my work happens. I was planning to stay put for the foreseeable future.

Then I met Glenn.

I was dubious at first, not about Glenn, about moving to Plymouth, all I’d heard was some dodgy tales about Union Street and it didn’t sound as if it was a contemporary art Mecca. I said I’d give it a year and see. I’ve been here four and a half now and were looking for somewhere to buy (not easy finding a bungalow with wheelchair access that’s not on a hill round here!) so obviously some if not all my doubts were unfounded. You’re a friendly lot and the surrounding area is stunning so let’s just say I’m warming.

Okay - what am I going to be blog about? Life in general, art will make an appearance and being a wheelchair user always provides material for musing, ranting and philosophising not necessarily in that order.



Let’s start off with a little gem that happened last week.

I had a friend and colleague from London staying to help with some research for the PhD I’m doing at Dartington College of Arts (another reason for staying here for the foreseeable.)

He been eyeing up the fishermen on the barbican and one night decided to hit the highly cultural cosmopolitan gay scene of Plymouth.

Having found a bar and begun chatting with the owner, thoughtful chap that he is enquired about access for me – always good to know which watering holes are user-friendly.

So as I understand it the conversation went something like.

‘Do you have wheelchair access?’

‘Err, well you can get in through the car park’

‘What about a drop down /lower bit of the bar?’

‘They’re disabled not dwarves!’

Now there must be some kind of outlandish logic going on in his head but for the life of me I can’t imagine what it is. Having found myself initially laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement I find it’s been playing on my mind. I wonder if I should go and have a quiet word before he finds himself offending his paying punters, but I’m not sure I can be bothered. In fact me and Glenn spent a while counting the ways in which it was wrong on so many levels. We’ve got to five so far.

Any advance on that I’d be interested in hearing about.