Essential Service

An occupational therapist dropped in this week to gather notes for a report to the council (i.e. local government). He was expected in the afternoon, so Benedict Ambrose came home early from work, just before I had to chair on online meeting. 

B.A.phoned from the pavement outside our terrace, I rushed down the stairs to unlock the cupboard, I carried the ramp to the street, and B.A. rolled down into our pedestrian alley. I then carried the ramp to the stair leading to the path to our staircase, and B.A. drove up it. Then I carried the ramp back to its hiding place, watched B.A. pick his difficult way up our stairs, drove the wheelchair into the cupboard, locked the door and raced back into my office/bedroom/dining-room. We left the door open for the O.T., which was just as well, as he arrived early, right while I was in my meeting. When the meeting was over, I went into the sitting-room to offer the O.T. a cup of tea. 

I had scrubbed the kitchen floor that morning, in case the O.T. wanted to have a look. However, another O.T. had already taken the measure of the indoor spaces, and this O.T. was interested only in the outdoors. He turned down the cup of tea and listened to our plan for creating a new space in the garden for a wheelchair. The council, he said, would not pay for this unless it made B.A. independent. By this he meant independent of me, which made me blink.

"You won't be here all the time," he stated, as if it were common for women to leave their wheelchair-bound husbands alone at home and go to Ibiza with the girls. (That said, I did go to Sussex with my mother.)

B.A. and I were perfectly happy for him to be made independent if it meant the council would spring for a new concrete path into the garden, more railings, a wheelchair garage, and permanent ramps. In this scenario, B.A. would go down the stairs, hanging onto the railings at usual, turn around, hold onto to new railings, and walk straight into a new shed, where he would sit himself down, drive out and then down a council-built ramp and finally up a second council-built ramp to the street. Independence!  

When I went with the O.T. to look at the proposed route, however, we hit a snag: the stair from the residents' path to the alley is so high, any ramp would have to be 12 feet long, and that would block the access of other residents. The council is very strict about the Building Code. The step from the alley to the street is doable.

I am grateful to the nation that it robs Peter (me, though taxes) to pay Paul (B.A., through disability allowance), that it sent an O.T. at all, and that it was open to paying to make B.A. physically independent. Nevertheless, I am pondering what a communist-era Pole would do in this situation. Perhaps he would make his own ramp down the too-high step, ignoring the Building Code, and then summon back the O.T. 

"Citizen, we were mistaken. There is already a ramp along the too-high step. It looks like it has been there for many years."

"Well, Citizen, we will in that case send out a team."

Of course, the team might destroy the illegal step instead of just going ahead with the works. Or it might leave the step and never get around to the works. But that is a moot point, for we live not in communist-era Poland but in Two-Tier Britain, so I did what I always do and made an appointment with an independent contractor to give us an estimate.

(An estimate for the garden works, I mean. A bigger problem with the stair, in my view, is that neither we nor the council own it. According to the O.T., it belongs to the landlady of the flat directly beside it.)

I find the idea of being independent from one's own spouse almost amusing, and it goes to show how little the modern state values the institution. Perhaps it sees marriage as a Comrades-with-Benefits situation, in which two autonomous individuals trade goods and services. Fortunately, marriage is so woven into Scottish culture and society, that with enough confidence ("I am his WIFE!") a married person can prod others into older ways of thought. 

Meanwhile, I have a new appreciation of marriage from making B.A.'s breakfast and lunch and going out every morning to fetch his wheelchair and ramp. At first these things made me grumpy--rushing about as soon as I wake up is not my usual mode--but then B.A. told me how much me making breakfast and lunch really make to his energy level. 

His words were like a magic charm: I am making a difference! Perhaps if every husband told his wife how much making his meals (picking up his socks, etc.) made a difference to him, there would not have been quite so much divorce in the 20th century. And to be fair, I suppose wives should tell their husbands the same thing. Their salaries make a difference. Their yard work makes a difference. Any housework they do makes a difference. 

It will be a happy day when Benedict Ambrose can stand and walk unaided, but until then I will derive satisfaction from the fact that I am providing him--and Scotland--with the essential service of ensuring that he gets to work in the morning.