para las turistas (disabled)
This is for the people who pick up this blog after searching for crippledness.
I am not truly crippled any more but do walk with a stick at times, so here´s my take.
Spain is pretty easy. The streets (in the three cities I visited) are easy to walk and the people helpful. Almost every museum has a lift but the one in the Casa Battilo is truly beautiful and reserved only for those of us with sticks and chairs. The metro is a bit problematic due to stairs, but in Madrid very very easy to use.
The worst is the hotels with showers over the bath….aaargh. The most expensive hotel I stayed in was the worst in regard to safety and had I shouted for help I doubt I would have been heard. Hotel LLar had a bar over the bath for security and it was more central.
Hotel Valesco in Madrid is good – at last a walk-in shower, a balcony and a charming lift with attentive service. Noisy, however and I was forced to get the earplugs out last night. Good bars and breakfast bars nearby with friendly people.
Getting onto the Ave trains is great and easy part from the dratted escalators onto which you need to fit your bag and self. Spanish grandmothers, fortunately encourage their grandsons to help the senora. The worst part about the trains is that they didn´t accept my credit card in NZ, nor on my friend´s computer in Valencia and that you cannot buy a ticket for a train that leaves from a different station in Valencia but you can in Madrid and the ticket machines also don’t accept NZ credit cards so you need to be prepared to queue for hours. Such an efficient train system but such a tricky booking system. Buy all your tickets in Madrid – it´s easier!
Otherwise – it´s pretty easy for someone with a stick and a shonky foot.
Gaudi's sloping chair
stepping up, if not out
The top shoes are part of the list I had when I started on the journey to improve the foot. Not these exactly, but the idea. They are perfect wear for women with shonkey feet. Note the support over the shonkeyist part of the foot and the secure heel part. They are from Overland shoes and I love them, even if I still totter a bit.
It’s two years since I threw away the crutch and the fabulous items (lower pictures) that I wore for two years. I wore these in Italy, Amsterdam and England as well as Rarotonga. It was a relief to rid myself of them, but then I would not have been without them either.
Last month I threw them out and bought the new, higher, and well, just a bit sexier, version.
beat it
Angels. Used via cc attribution licence from Hermione Presents. http://www.hermione-presents.com
You and I travel to the beat of a different drum….
So sang Linda Ronstad in the 1970s.
And so, perhaps, might my tango teacher.
It’s caused me to reflect on how people listen to music.
So, I’ve loaded up my car and home stereos with wall to wall tango. And I notice how much happier I am when something with lyrics comes along, although I am fond of tango waltzes.
When there are no words I feel myself drift away to several other things, but words, even Spanish or Greek, make me alert. In tango of course words like corazon, suenos, recuerdo, solidad enable guesswork and the songs tend to be about my heart recalling the dreams of yesteryear and the memories of lost love.
It’s why, I realise, I prefer opera to instrumental music and can usually catch a word or two about passion, living for love or art and so on.
So, I’m back trying to listen to the music. But with a singer I am imagining the dance to the voice not the beat underneath.
It’s not that I don’t hear the rhythm, and thought (clearly erroneously) that I was getting much better at hearing it and at waiting (even attempting a small adorno) for my partner to pick up the beat and move me along (or backwards usually).
So – leave aside the melody and listen to the beat. OK I will.
oh, crap
For some of my dearest readers this post may be inevitable.
About 2 weeks ago, while playing an intense but slightly complex marble game with the two great nieces, I received a frantic call from a friend who uses a flat in my house. The bottom floor was flooded with sewage. While I did go home reasonably quickly I was relieved (pun in case you didn’t get it) to find that the mess had been pretty much cleared up by the time I got there. It was up to me to deal with the cleaners (wonderful people at Jae’s) the carpet layers and the busy people at State who ended up dealing with the latest in a series of earthquakes in Christchurch rather than my flat.
However, it has been raining pretty much for the last 2 weeks, and the combination of cars and trucks up my drive meant that last night my car slid back instead of UP the drive. The very nice man from Porirua Towing with his big truck and eftpos machine helped me out. It was a situation not unlike the one reported here but more vertical in nature. No pix, I was too busy pouring the whisky.
Also the tv has broken again (it did this last time I went away) and believe me there’s a whole heap of other stuff going on too, just in case you think I over-share.
Must be time for that new beginning! Meanwhile friend in Auckland deals with even more rain.
crippleness in Buenos Aires
Since this blog started out as away to record my varying degrees of crippleness and the associated frustrations, I’d best attempt a reflection on being (semi) crippled in BA.
In fact most of my crippledness centred on the way I often viewed my travelling companions. Like thoroughbreds pawing at the gates and eager to explore they strode ahead of me, kindly waiting for me to catch up, however. (Poetic license is applied here. Mostly they walked a few paces ahead and also beside). One day I did venture out with my stick. It’s useful that in BA the blocks are regularly spaced, so that if you know you are walking 10 blocks that’s a kilometre. The most notable things about being in BA with a stick is that (unlike Milan, for example) the people offer respect to you and your stick. So it was easy being a cripple.
Since I was there to dance (yep this cripple can dance after a fashion) there were alas some problems. I am not as fleet of foot or elegant as my two companions and did have to resort to saying to someone that the foot “no funciona”. As the cabaceo is a direct negotiation to dance, it’s also acceptable to admit defeat gracefully. On one occasion a fellow and I agreed that it wasn’t going to work out and he politely led me back to my seat with a “Vamos a descansar.” On another occasion I politely thanked my dance companion after the first dance of the four-dance tanda. I add hastily that both these fellows were considerably shorter than me.
The hip did become troublesome and it was deeply inelegant to have to stand for a moment or two to unravel it, but once I got going I was fine. The local acupuncturist also took me in hand and after a week the hip was moving along freely.
I was also lucky to meet Luis Canaan, a gifted tango teacher who eased me through some of the difficulties and with whom I had my final dance in BA. He murmured, “muy bien’ as he returned me to my seat. He didn’t need to and he is a darling.
It was a joy to dance with the tall men, who once they realised I was not proficient, clasped me tightly and took charge. There’s a surety and strength of character and dance ability that makes you feel certain, happy and relaxed. That was the gift of BA for this (semi) cripple.
The others? Too many, but contemplating and indeed dancing in shoes like this made me feel as if an emotional and physical leap had been made.
David is just alright with me
Some people have Jesus in their lives. I have a chiropractor called David. And a nephew who brings his aunt Greek coffee.
Cripple is creaking
About 3 years ago I had a double hip replacement, during which the sciatic nerve in my right leg was damaged, resulting in a condition known as drop foot.
For a long time this was my comfort:
My former support
The drama is that the pain the the left hip has returned and I can hardly walk without pain. This has been getting worse over the last year but now has reached a severe phase. Waddling sideways out of the milonga hanging onto every ledge is an inelegant way to leave and sitting outside smoking and drinking wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
I can deal with the shonky foot but the crappy hip makes me frustrated.
I guess, however that listening to people talk about Christchurch and their hip injuries from being thrown across the room and now the people in Japan does create a kind of perspective. Well I’ll survive, but I do feel short changed about all this.
Sigh.
another indulgence
When I was first crippled there were some minor joys in my life. One of them was being able to get to the gym (people and exercise). Another was being able to walk from the gym to the mall where I was able to indulge myself with little presents from both Lush and Bendon.
Sadly, Bendon closed about 2 weeks ago and Lush will close this weekend. So I wandered along to buy some stock at half price.
I guess these two closures are a sign of the times-the recession which seems to have hit a little more than last year when we were told it was over. So, how come I know more unemployed people this year? Including the nice young women at Lush. Hope they find work. And when my stocks run out I’ll have to order online or go into the city for my shampoo, soap and presents. I guess the people I stayed with who received Lush thank-you gifts will now receive something from the $2.00 shops which seem to thrive out here.
Sigh.
how did that happen?
While recent online experiences have been grand, face to face is proving unpleasant.
Two weeks ago I chipped a filling while eating a bit fat peppermint. Felt uneven but no pain.
On Monday morning after a sleepless night I visited not-my-usual dentist. It started off badly with a misunderstanding about where I was supposed to go, strayed into his being dissmissive of my peridontist, quibbling about when I had had my last check-up and shoving the xray slides into my mouth without telling me he was doing a check-up or asking if that was what I wanted. When I demurred in the nicest possible way (try it with xray slides in your mouth) he said “what’s your problem.”
I snapped that he should have at least asked me. He told me that the filling was a cheap one and that the cost of the check-up was less since I was already in a consulation. Perhaps he could have told me that before shoving the xray things in my mouth?
We continued on in silence, clearly both realising that any more conversation would just become increasingly antagonistic.
He fixed my chipped tooth and sent me on my way.
The trouble is, that like a doctor I had 30 years ago (and boy is THAT a story) it wasn’t his communciation skills that was the worst of it all. The filling has fallen out. I suspect I have an infected tooth. And the pain? Excrutiating.
Yes, I rang to complain. I have an appointment tomorrow, not with him.
Trouble is I was pain free before he started playing with my mouth.
Bastard.
Three days later: met with lovely female dentist who was soothing and nice. Antibiotics. Pain killers and wine.
birds on wires
Ahh Aaron.
While I’d like to write about the elections in the UK, the news about the online serial rapist in Auckland (constructed identities there) the new Sri Hvsetd book I am reading or the newly apprised tango tikanga the thing that’s in my mind is the odd behaviour of men. This excludes all nephews, 50 % of former lovers, close friends, husbands of friends and gay men.
Yes ok it’s the internet again. I remember when I was a teenager I used to think that men in NZ were damaged because of the war years. Then I met some great friends and some men with some damage. And now, through the internet, I have met some truly damaged men. Why is this? What’s wrong? Does the internet allow for us to connect in a deeper way so that they share stuff? I’m still exploring this and don’t know the answers and won’t go on. I have also made some good and funny friends. But weighing up? Odd behaviour.
The song? It reminds me of a fantastic concert I went to in the 1980s (we sang along with the Brothers in the hotel afterwards) and a trip I took with a former student who loved this song when I played it to him. Where is he now? Ah yes, inside for murder. Sigh.
Thank god for tango. Crippleness? We think the arthritis is returning. Better make lots of hay while the sun does its thing.
