I think it’s fair to say that I had a very lucky escape yesterday. To be honest I was in two minds about recording what happened yesterday afternoon here as it’s just too depressing, but I suppose a blog entry is a blog entry. I was out and about once again, this time on quite a long trundle through Bexleyheath heading up towards the river. Spring is coming, so I’m becoming eager to go out and explore a bit more.

The thing is, I have gone on quite a few long trundles recently , and it has probably had an impact on my powerchair battery. I was heading for Abbey Wood in order to get the Elizabeth line back to Woolwich and then a bus home, when I noticed my battery dropping quite rapidly. Of course I knew I needed to get back as swiftly as possible, but to be honest I felt a tingle of panic.

It took me ages to find the Elizabeth Line station, but luckily I managed to get onto a train. I traveled the single stop to Woolwich and got off the train. I was heading along the platform towards the lift, when suddenly my powerchair cut out completely: it turned off and wouldn’t turn on again.

I was obviously in deep shit. Luckily there was a member of TfL staff nearby so I got her attention and explained the problem. The staff took my chair out of drive and pushed me up to the station entrance hall. The staff were very, very kind, doing what they could to help. First they tried calling a taxi to take me home, but rather ridiculously my powerchair wouldn’t fit.

What followed was a very long, stressful evening spent in the Woolwich Elizabeth Line station. The staff did what they could to help me, giving me drinks of water and offering to get me things to eat. As hungry as I was by then however, I didn’t want to risk getting myself too messy, and as there wasn’t a table nearby to put any food on I thought I better not try to eat anything. I tried contacting people like Dom on my iPad without luck. Eventually they dialled 111 for an ambulance to take me back to Eltham.

By the time it came I had spent about two hours at the station, unable to go anywhere. To be honest watching the evening commuters go in and out was fairly interesting, and I think it’s fair to say that London’s newest tube line is being well used. Even so, it was a highly stressful, unpleasant couple of hours waiting for the ambulance.

Thank fuck it eventually arrived. By then it was half past eight and I had spent about three hours at the station. I felt tired and irritable. Luckily the trip home was swift, but when I got back here the zarking chair refused to charge. Who knows what is up with it, but I have emailed my usual wheelchair maintenance guy.

In short yesterday was a horrible day; the kind of day I would rather just forget. At the same time I was incredibly lucky: if my chair had conked out anywhere else things would have been a thousand times worse. At the station there were people around who could help. If I had been, say, in a park or going along the path by the river, I would have been in serious, serious trouble. In all, then, I had a bloody lucky escape, and so it is worth recording. Even so, some days rule and some days suck: yesterday was emphatically the latter.