Invisible to the naked eye

This is supposed to be a relentlessly positive blog. The rant about the attitude of the UCI World Cup organisers at Dalbys' attitude to people with mobility problems didn't go in here. The attitude of sneering mechanics didn't go in here either.

If I don't get the following of my chest, nothing will come after, and hell, I like writing this blog because the relentless positivity reminds me of why I get my fat ass of the sofa, so I'm afraid, you're going to need your scroll bar, because this one, this one is for me.

Yesterday, I was invisible.

I have a friend. Bear with me here, it's going somewhere. I have a friend who is a senior lecturer and child psychologist. An incredibly well respected one too. She's been on Womans Hour and Radio 4. She deigns to talk to me with no patronising, no condescension, and no judgement on the things which I find fascinating about people, and she is kind in her willingness to tolerate my more random meanderings on the subject. We get on really well, frankly. I look up to her a lot, she is never over emotional or inappropriate, instead she expresses herself so eloquently and with such grace that in that respect, she is everything I wish to be.

She's also obese. Shocking, isn't it? I could tell you why, but it is absolutely none of your godamn business. She's successful, earns a long way towards a lot of money each year, she is middle class, beautifully spoken, elegant, composed and self possessed, and she is fat. There is a bloody good reason why she is currently fat. Such a good reason, that frankly I would crucify anyone with no holds barred for suggesting she should be anything but right now after the frankly appalling cards life has decided to deal to her. And believe me when I say, when I am angry, I tend to step away from keyboards because in the same way I like to play nicely verbally, I also like to play nicely using the written word, and an ability to use written words to evoke responses and reactions is absolutley no excuse for letting fly at someone. If anything, it is the biggest reason of all to walk away. Grace comes not only through the way you hold yourself, it is in the way you choose to communicate. I'm not walking away from this one.

Yesterday I gave everything I could to someone who needed it because it was the right thing to do. I didn't give a flying donkey about anything else, at the time, than keeping that bloke warm and talking to me. 24 hrs later and some things are, frankly, really pissing me off, and I don't swear lightly either.

Point the first. Why the frikking hell did it take an ambulance 30 frikking minutes to get to a man sat outside in the cold and wet and wind, in the middle of a forest, where he would clearly be struggling with hypothermia? Why did it take 30 minutes and when they did finally manage to turn up, they went the wrong frikking way? Why did they not have maps? Why did they park at the frikking entrance of the frikking car park and not drive down the frikking fire roads? Why did they get there at the same time as the air ambulance? Why did no one at Gisburn know there was even an accident until today when I told them? Why did it have to be me that told them? I didn't want to get involved, I didn't want to stick my sodding head above the parapet and get involved in yet another battle which is not my fight, when I have enough frikking battles of my own to fight. I can't even work out where the nearest ambulance station is to send a barrage of questions at them and get some answers to this. I've suggested better information for the ambulance crews - it turns out there is a procedure and they didn't frikking follow it. Communication. Where the frikking hell was the communication? What broke down? Who didn't have the number? Why was nothing said or done?

More to the point, why is that when they all finally turned up, I explained what was wrong, and all the crews, to the very last, turned to the thinner than me man and proceeded to completely blank me, refuse to look me in the eye, and in fact, looked distinctly uncomfortable every time I tried to talk to them? Is someone going to explain to me why the injured blokes friend could barely look me in the eye either?

I don't want thanks for fucks sake. I don't. I am just sick to bloody death of being invisible. I am not invisible. I am a human being. I have a brain. It works quite quickly, ta very much. I like to think I'm reasonably smart, certainly reasonably well informed about the world around us. I understand quantum mechanics, I ride my bike reasonably well for someone who hasn't been doing it for so long, I push myself as hard as I can, I am relentless in my determination to keep a commitment I made to my nutritionist and I am. not. invisible.

I am fat. I am a girl. I am bored of the rules which say you don't need to acknowledge me. I am sick of not sticking my head above the parapet, and I am sick of trying not to rock the boat. So on Tuesday, for my own peace of mind, I am going to be firing off difficult to answer emails to people. And I bet you I get a response, and do you know why I will get a well reasoned, well thought out, well researched response? Because you cannot tell I am fat from the way I write. You cannot see the wobbles and bulges, and you do not have to keep the barely disguised disgust from your face when I am talking to you.

This is not the way I expect NHS professionals to act. And frankly, I don't give a flying donkey whether it was my gender or my weight which led to my being instantly dismissed as not knowing anything and not having anything to contribute to the situation, despite sitting there completely alone with my other half and the injured party for 20 minutes, worrying and fretting and panicing and keeping all of that out of my voice and out off my face, it is not the way you act. It isn't. And I'm not letting this one drop, one way or the other, because an ambulance crew going the wrong fucking way when there's a man in serious trouble is not a fuck up I am prepared to turn the other cheek to and pretend never happened. It needs rectifying and it needs rectifying frikking quick smart, because woe betide what happens when the next serious problem is a spinal injury or a heart attack. The failure will be a little more public than one not so tiny pissed off little woman writing on her blog in the backwaters of an East Lancashire mill town, I will tell you that for nothing.

Sort.it.out. I don't care what it is you have to do, I don't care what it is that led you to your assumption that either girls can't contribute or fat people don't exist, but sort.it.out. Sort out the communication, and sort out your preconceptions. You judge too quickly for people who are supposedly there to care for others. It's left a bad taste in my mouth on a day which was absolutely nothing at all to do with me. Some of this edit is about me. But most of it is about my incredibly anger at the cock ups which happened yesterday. I believe the trail guys will sort it. I believe they will ensure that this wont happen again. I believe them absolutely when they tell me that. Sadly, it is not the volunteers attitude that I have an issue with, they are stars and I have the utmost respect for them. It's the paid professionals who left me feeling irritated and angered yesterday, and that is not the way it should be.

Now. Hopefully I can sleep tonight. I do not get angry, as a rule, and nor do I whine about peoples attitudes to fat people. I am used to it, barely notice it. Had 'who ate all the pies' shouted at me once too often. But fuck me sideways, I didn't expect such an attitude to come from the people it did yesterday.