Quite a weird thing happened yesterday. I was walking over to Jim’s place last night. We had arranged to go out with Jim driving, so I didn’t need my chair – it would just have complicated matters. Jim lives in the houses along daisybank, at the back of campus, away from the hurly-burly of life in halls proper. From my little flat, its about 350 metres, but given that I’d arranged to meet Jim after he got out of a lecture at 8, and he’d not shown up, I’d decided to pop over to the theatres first. Earlier, I’d taken the lightwriter and bumbag off, for obvious reasons, expecting Jim to pick me up outside my flat.

He didn’t show, so, basically, there was I, walking along daisybank, trying not to drop my lightwriter or bumbag. Not easy. Then, four or five youths on bikes appeared in the distance.

I could hear them talking about me. Its odd they seemed scared. I was slightly scared myself.

Then: clunk. I dropped my stuff. Not hard, but the lightwriter fell out of it’s case. Now I was in trouble – I couldn’t put it back. I started to panic slightly.

Then suddenly, a kid started to approach. Now I was scared – he could easily have pushed me over. But then:

”Need a hand mate?’

”Y..yes please.”

”Here”

he helped me. I suppose he was both curious and scared of me – I’d heard them talking: ”whets wrong with him? Does he need help?” etc. of course, I hasten to add that if these kids had gone to school with kids with SEN, they might have been less apprehensive. We crips don’t bite. As it was, this ended well enough; I just wish I didn’t appear so much of a monster coming over the hill to them.