It has been another of those lazy sundays. Lyn had a bath, and, having gone out every day this week, I decided a day at home was in order. Yet that decision now seems ironic: while L was doing her ebullitions, I decided to watch A Test of love. I have been intending to watch it ever since I read Annie’s Coming Out, upon which the film is based, at uni. It is a gut-wrenchingly harrowing story of discrimination against a young lady with cerebral palsy, and th woman who fought so hard to free her from her prison. To think that Annie spent fourteen years in an institution, nobody believing she had normal cognitive abilities, turns my stomach and fills me with rage. Yet her story also inspires me: annie never gave up, and cared too about her fellow long stay patients.

I keep thinking ‘that could have been me’; fuck, Lyn grew up somewhere similar. I find that thought chilling. Yet there’s irony in the fact that a bloke with athetoid cp would chose to spend a Sunday afternoon watching such a film: that, while his fiancee – who also has cp – was in the shower, he used an ipad to go onto youtube to access such a film. There is a scene where these children were taken off the ward into the hospital garden for the first time in fourteen years, and there was I, choosing to stay in. Times have changed, but I can’t help thinking that it is only because of people like Annie that Lyn and I can live here, now, in this splendid little house of ours like any other couple. The generation of crips before mine went through hell, but then set themselves free; and in doing so they freed us all. I now feel humble and grateful – even slightly guilty. I don’t think I can explain why I am so taken by this story, but I think I have a new favourite film. Above all, it inspires me to keep fighting.