I, and my shopping, were walking home after getting off the bus today and one of the neighbourhood dogs started barking at me. The dog wasn’t a problem as he was on a lead, and wasn’t a massively mean brute either! His owner said “he is only barking at you because you are different, but you do OK…”
At that current moment in time, I definitely WAS different, forging purposefully up hill with a huge bag of shopping on my left shoulder and my walking stick, aiding my ascent, in my right hand. Much though I love Swansea, it does have an awful lot of hills 
Hey, ho, climb every mountain and all that jazz….
I agree with the comments made last year in the Ouch Podcast that disabled people are treated very well on the street in Wales. Certainly, just because I walk funnily, I don’t get the abuse I used to when in England. This has definitely improved my confidence and it means I feel able to go out and about more than I ever did before. I wonder if its a cultural thing – the Welsh siding with the underdog – perhaps because they too have not been treated well throughout history! Strange fact that it is still perfectly legal to kill a Welshman in Shrewsbury with an arrow on the first Wednesday of every month. Not sure that I’ve got that completely right with timescales and things, but the principle still exists!
When I finally passed my car on the way to my gate I thought that these trips to the supermarket on the bus won’t be for long. My driving test, though delayed through my compromised immune system (by the way, it wasn’t a cold but a roaring chest infection) will happen soon. I hope to be driving before the end of the year, so won’t be having so many of these interesting shopping excursions… HURRAH and sadness… I wonder why that is…. and perhaps I should help the dog out with some disability awareness training to relieve his anxiety!
