No magic helper elf

Cantilip

Another grouch of mine, particularly since I’m asking for so excessively little – info it’d take 5 minutes to put on a website but they just don’t have the imagination. That’s the generous explanation. Warning: this is lo-o-n-g. Magic helper elves abound.

Lemme set the scene. I’m single and always have been, used to doing things myself. I live in a step-free ground-floor flat. I don’t have carers, All my shopping is online. Lovely delivery persons place the package on the seat of my rollator or else on the floor where I push it along with the rollator or tip it down the corridor. I do have obvious parameters

Size of the package

Weight

Is it ready-assembled?

If not, what needs to be done to assemble it?

Can it be delivered to room of choice?

This year I’ve managed a new rollator and a folding table, all on my own. Excessively proud of myself. My cousin lives nearby so I can call her if I do get it wrong.

If you dig, dig, dig, you might get a lovely surprise. I got an under-the-counter freezer from Amazon delivered right to my kitchen – I think Curry’s were out of stock of the model – and the simplest place to buy a ready-assembled adjustable-height vinyl chair is an office furniture site.

I found that out when researching a perching stool. Sometimes digging gets you nowhere. Both the websites of disability aids companies and their Amazon listings monotonously regularly fail to tell me what I need to know, maybe particularly with regard to assembly. I offered a generous explanation. The mean one is I don’t need to know it. As a poor disabled person I can’t possibly be contemplating taking delivery of and setting up anything slightly complex and must have a magic helper elf to do it for me.

The magic helper elf hangs out a lot in carparks, too. There is one critical question when I want to or have to go anywhere new: how far do I have to walk? Websites, appointment letters, I have yet to see any communication that volunteers this simple information, a simple map showing nearest door to where I need to be, nearest place to door taxi can drop me, distance between the two. while of course the concern in question trumpets its disability access. Wheelchair access is not the same and it’s not relevant to me that you will rent me a chair because I have no magic helper elf to push it. I was invited for screening at a mobile unit in a local square. Nobody could tell me where in the square the taxi should drop me, which building was nearest the unit, and how far to walk across the square from there; the people on the end of the phone were not in the unit and apparently incapable of ringing the people in the unit and asking them. Some ten phone calls and emails later, as the unit moved around town, I was seen in fact in a carpark. At least the cab could take me to the door. This was an NHS facility for people between 55 and 74, some of whom just might be thought to have more difficulty walking than say people between 20 and 40.