This has happened two or three times now: I have waited absolutely ages for a bus, but when it eventually arrives, the wheelchair space is occupied,  not by another wheelchair or even a pram, but by a person sitting on a walking frame. I’m sure we all know the type of frame I mean: the kind increasingly being used by podgy people, pushed forward but which you can sit on. Such devices are clearly not wheelchairs, but at least twice now have prevented me getting onto a bus, the driver having judged that the person with the walker takes priority.

 Frankly, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed about this. Not only has it meant that I have been unable to get where I needed, but I frankly also suspect that it is symptomatic of something more concerning. I might be overreacting once again, but in letting such people take up the bus wheelchair space, they are effectively being told that they are just as disabled as actual wheelchair users. Or rather, it allows them to be seen as disabled by those around them. In other words, it plays into the cultural intrusion trend that I am so concerned about. It would be no problem for them to get up and sit on an ordinary bus seat, but allowing them to stay in the wheelchair space and take priority over an actual wheelchair user plays directly into their probably unconscious desire to be perceived as disabled.

I am convinced that this is a real and growing issue, and one I feel increasingly insulted by. The fact that it has started to mean that I have been unable to get onto buses perhaps means I should try to do something about it. If anything irritates me, it is people claiming to be something that they demonstrably aren’t, especially if it’s for any form of sociocultural collateral. Usurping cultural identities seems to be a perverse, growing trend; and the way that these women on their walking frames seemed to grin at me when the bus driver allowed them to stay where they were, suggests to me that this is a clear manifestation of it.