It hasn’t been the best of days to be honest. In fact when it first happened a few hours ago, I just wanted to forget the whole idiotic episode. But I suppose as a blogger I have a duty to record the crap as well as the cool stuff.

I thought I would pop up to Stratford again today. The weather was fairly good, and I’m still rather fond of the Olympic park. Not being in the mood for anything more circuitous, I thought I would just take the Jubilee line up to Stratford station. The thing is, that station only has one very overused pair of lifts, elevating people between Stratford town centre, the station and the wide walkway towards Westfield and the Olympic Park.

I have always had trouble with that lift ever since I started going up there: it is always full of people who are perfectly capable of using the nearby stairs. Today, however, really took the biscuit: I must have had to wait for ten or fifteen minutes, unable to get on to lift after lift, crammed with people for whom the stairs would not have been an issue. In the end I just lost a it, drove forward to prevent the lift doors shutting and and started demanding people made room for me.

What followed was simply repugnant, and in fact I’m still extremely pissed off about it five or six hours later. The people in the lift refused to move, and a couple of fairly young women took umbrage at me. Things became very heated very quickly. I began to shout and the bitches shouted back. They were highly patronising and insulting, but I knew I needed to stand my ground because otherwise I’d never get anywhere. It became a furious stand-off. I was using my mouth to shout, so I unfortunately bit my tongue and blood started to mix with my saliva; at that point someone summoned Westfield security.

I’m still extremely embarrassed about the whole fucked up episode. The two women who had been so obnoxious and arrogant towards me were apparently free to go, but I was escorted into a side corridor by three security men. They said they wanted to check I wasn’t hurt. I had heard one of the women tell them I had been racist, which was utter bullshit. They kept me there for about an hour, asking questions, by which time my patience had grown non existent. I was clearly not hurt, so it seemed very unfair that I was being detained while the women who had caused this row had been free to go. No matter how hard I tried to explain the situation to them, now using my Ipad rather than natural voice to communicate, they would not let me leave the corridor, making me feel like a naughty five year old.

Time wore on a bit, and I was eventually allowed to continue my day, by which time my temper had eased off significantly. Yet it had seemed so unjust to have been treated like that: I have a right to use the lift and as a wheelchair user I should take priority. I felt I needed to stand up for myself, and the abuse and patronisation I received in return was unacceptable. To have then been detained like I was by security, spoken down to even further, just put a cherry on the whole frustrating, grotesque episode.