I have honestly rarely if ever been more furious than I was for a few moments earlier this afternoon. Out on my trundle up in Stratford, I went to use the lift up to the bridge which leads from the station into Westfield, only to find it full of ambulant people perfectly capable of using the nearby stairs. As I’ve mentioned here before, very little enrages me more than being prevented from getting into a lift by people too lazy to use their legs. Today though, my fury was like nothing I have ever felt before: it was white hot, and my ears sort of cracked and felt like they were bleeding. It had already happened three or four times, so I had been waiting for about twenty minutes by then, just to go up a single flight of stairs. In that moment, if I had any way of doing so, I honestly think I would have massacred every single person in that lift: it seemed so arrogant, so selfish; and the way they always refused to move when I told them to get out, as if they had as much right to use the lift as I do, made it even worse.

In the end, of course, I had to give up and use the next lift. I felt my heart beating in my chest more violently than it ever had before. How is it right that people like me should have to put up with such arrogance and laziness. Given that this happens so frequently these days, I’m now seriously considering starting a campaign to make all lifts, at least on the transport network, strictly wheelchair user only. After today I will not tolerate such arrogance anymore. Naturally, half an hour and a short trundle around the Olympic park later, I’d had chance to calm down. To loose your temper, much less hurt anyone, over something so insignificant, is foolish. Even so, it frustrates me how lazy, arrogant and shortsighted people can sometimes be.