Columnist: Di Wade - Busy week

Di wade fills us in on her week
Di WadeDi Wade
Di Wade

This month, besides recognising three Strictly “stars”, I’ve enjoyed afternoon tea in Great Eccleston, world championship fireworks on the prom – and joined in so lustily with the Last Night of the Proms that half my neighbours put their houses up for sale.

I am now counting down to the Ryder Cup, and wishing this week might have been less bogey-filled:

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Monday: by the time I reached my desk, I’d dodged three inattentive people, painfully negotiated two oblivious impromptu conferences in the middle of corridors, and narrowly avoided being mown down by a cleaning cart: Which, since I am hardly thin and sylphlike, and am moreover preceded everywhere by a four-foot-long white stick, DID make me wonder what more I needed, a high vis jacket and a megaphone?

And further, how it fell to a woman who’d addressed entire conversations to plants, empty chairs and cocktail cabinets to do all the seeing. These musings largely hailing from my having got out of bed on the wrong side, nearly concussing myself on a low-hanging light fitting, a strong coffee sufficed to remind me that blending in was my life’s chief aim: Most people clearly NOT being blind, deaf or doolally, as may be, self-respect and independence have always dictated that if I can’t beat, I certainly join ‘em, and on no account make like a whingeing wet hen.

Still, you DO see life when you CAN’T actually see it, the best, worst and barmiest of it.

Tuesday: Arrived late for a dental appointment as the assistant refused to credit my stair-climbing abilities, and instead steered me to a lift which moved only after repeated applications of a crowbar by a guy in overalls. It was altogether shades of being met at Stanstead some years ago by an assistant who couldn’t accept that I didn’t need a wheelchair,though I’d never said I did as I definitely didn’t, despite my assurances of miles walked in the Lakes; it being my eyes not my legs that were the problem, and my ultimately

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surviving our current “ever so long” trek with rather more breath than he boasted.

He even appealed to my waiting sister and brother-in-law, despite this last evidence, to know that he had done right in heeding me and allowing the ditching of the wheelchair.

They alas could neither confirm nor deny being simply helpless with laughter at the imagination of my outrage.

Wednesday: Apologetically hoped my waiting taxi-driver hadn’t caught hypothermia while I crawled round the hall in search of my dropped keys.

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He deadpanned no, though his car WAS now due its MOT, and we laughed all the way to work.

Thursday: Was congratulating myself on having got my bin out, laboriously but minus crunching collisions or suspicious cackles of laughter from next door this week, when a friend showed up with a sample of her latest star-baking.

Her opening words: “Your bin was out – so I put it back”.

Friday: Have forgiven friend, but am emphatically opening wine.

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