Something happened yesterday which I’m not very happy about, and which I probably ought to confess. I’ve written here before about how irritated I get when able-bodied people use lifts, particularly on public transport. They’re perfectly able to use escalators or stairs, so why don’t they? Over using lifts wears them out, leaving people who have no choice but to use them, like me, stuck. I get really, really irritated when I come across a lift so full of able-bodied people that I can’t get into it: I usually start shouting my head off at them.

That’s exactly what happened yesterday. I was up at Stratford, once again heading for the olympic park. To leave the tube station there, you have to use a lift which is always busy – I almost always have to wait, despite there being a perfectly good flight of stairs nearby. Yesterday as usual, both lifts were crammed: I rolled up to them and had to wait a few minutes for one to arrive. Then, when one did, it was chock full of people – mostly, it appeared, able-bodied women who would have no problem using the stairs. Of course I immediately lost it and started to shout my head off, telling them to get out. One or two of the ladies replied, telling me to wait for the next lift. Of course that pissed me off even more, and I started to try to roll forward and force my way into the lift.

Things naturally then erupted into a full-blown argument. The women in that small space were all looking at me with such seething contempt. One of them, a black lady, seemed particularly angry with me, shouting at me to get out and wait for the next lift. Of course this pissed me off even more, and I started to mouth my head off at her, calling her all kinds of foul things and ordering her out of the lift. She was standing, so I assumed that, like everyone else in that space, she was perfectly able to climb stairs and was just being lazy in using the lift. I called her all sorts of foul things, although I don’t think she understood most of what I was saying.

When the lift got to the right floor, however, everyone started to move, and it was then that I saw that the lady I was so angry with was using a crutch. She wasn’t able-bodied at all and had every reason to use the lift. Needless to say I shut up immediately; I felt about ten centimetres tall and couldn’t look the lady in her face. I shouldn’t have started to shout like that, and I shouldn’t have made the assumptions I did. This episode has taught me that perhaps I ought to chill out when it comes to other people using lifts.