I freely admit that choosing a friend to be PA a is very unorthodox. I rather suspect that some of my friends from the disabled community would probably frown upon my asking Charlie and Steve – two of my best friends – to PA for me. There are dangers inherent in such a choice; however, if handled properly, I feel it can work wonderfully, and I am really glad I did it.

I better explain the reasoning behind my decision. Charlotte was, and remains, a good friend of mine. She also lived, this year, on campus, just the other side of the sports hall. The obvious advantages to this were that A) having seen Bill PA for me, Charlie knew exactly what I needed, and B) if need be, I could very easily ask for her help by knocking on her window. Often, this worked better than e-mail. C knows me very well, and can thus meet my needs. Moreover, given that we fitted into the same large social group, our activities matched almost exactly: wherever she wanted to go, I usually wanted to. Also, although she is not a ‘professional’ PA, she was open to helping me shower etc, so she met my needs in that area.

However, one must be careful with this strategy. You must trust each other completely, as well as keeping a level head. The split between social time and PA time must be clear: for example, on Wednesday nights – disco nights – I usually put charlotte down as having worked three hours for me: one hour tea time, another getting me ready, one hour putting me to bed, approximately. Note, too, that I allowed for her to get me drinks too, which an ordinary PA would have to do. The rest of the time we were together in a capacity of friends. We both understood this, and it is why you must show your PA a timesheet to sign. You must therefore be completely open, and, of course, it is a supreme credit to charlotte that she didn’t once try to take advantage of this. Another case in point is newquay: we were both going, so asking charlotte to feed me my meals etc seemed more expedient than taking another person. The rest of the time we were simply together as friends.

It has been suggested by some that this strategy may cause an imbalance in power: one friend wants to do this, another wants to do that. However, I found that, as long as one is open and reasonable, this did not occur. Sometimes, I was happy to go along with Charlie, and visa versa. Campus is so small that options are limited and our intentions often coincided. if they did not, a way to accomodatee my needs was usually found.

Of course, there were occasions when we wanted to be together purely as friends. On such occasions, like Monster Monster, I took another PA. in that way, we could simply have fun together, and it turned out to be a great night. I think this is why I feel so affectionately towards her: we spent a lot of time together, at dinner time etc, and the more time I spent with her, naturally, the more I grew to like her. I do feel that she became almost more than a friend; it’s fair to say we became very close. Thus, I think we became closer this way. In a way, I’m glad she’ no longer officially my employee, as now we can just enjoy each others company whenever we meet. (mind you, I think it is in charlotte’s nature to care for people, so odds on she’ll still help me out however she can)

As I say, you must be careful. Charlotte is an exceptional person; I think this can only work with people like her, who are open, honest, and trusting. It would not work in places other than a campus, which fosters such openness, friendship and trust: we students have a strong sense of comradeship. This is why I need an ordinary PA over summer, but next year I intend to ask Jen, a 2nd year friend, to PA for me. Unorthodox, maybe, but I found it works very well indeed.