I was out drinking coffee, looking at the internet, but trying to build up the motivation to get on with my latest script. My Guardian newspaper was on the table beside me, half read.
A white haired woman approached the table. "Could I nick a bit of your paper?" she asked in a cheeky, sprightly voice, already reaching over to grab it.
"No," I replied, "I haven't finished with it." She looked confused.
"You can't have it, it's mine" I reiterated.
"it's what?" she asked, clearly crest-fallen that the object of her desires was slipping away from her.
"It's mine," I repeated.
"Oh, it's yours," she said pulling a face which looked like I had just farted. Though for once I hadn't. She couldn't believe I was being so stingy with the paper that I had had the foresight to buy and which I was planning to look at in the next couple of minutes.
Perhaps I was being mean. Maybe I should have allowed her to borrow one of the sections, but that isn't what she'd asked for. She'd asked to "nick" a section. In any case I wasn't sure which but I was going to read next. But I was being made to feel like I was being unreasonable hanging on to my own possessions. If I had finished with it, I would probably have let her take it, but its different giving someone something, that you're then going to ask for back. And last time I loaned out a half read paper to a man on a train, opposite me, he proceeded to sit reading it whilst ostentatiously picking his nose and I wasn't so keen to have it back after then.
The script writing was going badly and I just looked at my paper (all sections) and kept circulating around on the internet. I am addicted to this mindless surfing. It is turning into a problem. Then I was distracted by a slight kerfuffle at the disabled toilet beside me. A blind man, with a stuck had entered only to find that someone else was in there and hadn't locked the door properly. The occupant had been standing by the sink and had been hit by the door, or possibly the stick. The surprised blind man had been forced to leave the disabled toilet, and he stood outside for a few moments before realising he was by another toilet door and feeling his way into the cubicle. As it happened it was the ladies' loo, but as each lavatory is a separate cubicle that didn't really matter. And in any case there was almost certainly a non-disabled person in the disabled loo, so the rules had already been broken.
A woman then came up to the toilet door and finding it locked waited outside. Sure enough a moment or two later a perfectly able-bodied looking man came out of the disabled loo, looking embarrassed. He looked around for the blind man, but he wasn't there. I don't want to be top judgemental. I am sure most non-disabled people have done the same. You kind of think it's going to be ok, cos it's unlikely that any disabled people are going to be around. But of course the toilet is there for a reason and occasionally you are going to be caught out.
Personally I think that because I do a lot of work for SCOPE I should be given a special pass that allows me to use the disabled toilets. You'd think they woul recognise my work, but no. There is no justice in this world. Noone has a more unfair life than me.
Anyway, the shame-faced not yet disabled man sloped off, secretly relieved that he didn't have to face the person whose position he had usurped. Whilst the woman continued to wait for the ladies to become vacant.
When the clearly blind man came out with his stuck in front of him, she pulled such an incredible face of shock and disgust, that I had to laugh. "Öh my God," h.er face said, "there is a man in the ladies' loo." she made no concession for the man's very obvious blindness. She could not believe he had the audacity to enter a lavatory that he was not supposed to be in. She had had no problem with the man incorrectly using the disabled loo (and let's be fair, he might have had some unseen disability, though that wouldn't explain his guilty face or his sighted gaze or his confident and unimpeded stride away.
But the woman was so shocked to see a man in a cubicle intended for a woman, that she did not even consider that his blindness might go some small way to explaining the situation.
As he went on his way, and I swear this is true, she even did an enormous double take, checking the female sign on the door, to confirm that the whole world had indeed turned upside down.
At least she had waited for the ladies to become free and had not gone into the vacant disabled loo.
But really., if you've got a pair of working eyes there could hardly be a worse time not to use them properly.
There are none so blind....
As blind people.
In many way they are the most blind of all.
