Personal Space

(This is lighthearted not serious)

Even before I was in a wheelchair I liked a lot of personal space, space around me. The current government rule of 3 metres seems to me like a very good distance to keep. People get far too close normally, especially to a wheelchair. It’s as if because I’m in a wheelchair people see it as a bit of furniture that they can lean against, hold onto or stand next to. At public gatherings I think people tend to crowd my personal space far too much. So a three meter exclusion zone sounds like a great idea as a permanent plan. Before you all start messaging me with angry responses hold your horses. I am jesting… a little. It’s true that I like a bigger personal space than most. Besides I think 2.9 meters will be fine, I don’t need the full 3 meters. There is another area of social distancing that isn’t a hardship for me, I am not a hugger; except with my wife and family. I never was, so giving people a hug is not something I miss. OK hold off on your abuse and anger, I do have my tongue in my cheek. I have a tendency to get a lot of very serious responses to my blogs. Please read them the way they are meant; a bit of light hearted relief in a difficult time.

Talking of personal space, I have changed rooms, I am now in a room that has some privacy and access to our wet room… hurray! Gradually I am having things brought near to hand and organised. The interesting thing about gathering things from multiple locations is you discover just how many you have of different things. Not knowing I already had sticky tape, I have ended up with about 8 rolls! I wish that was all that was duplicated; why have I got 6 cans of shaving foam? Mind you I also found things I thought were long lost. Screen protectors, power leads, Lego, hang on Lego? Yes Lego, I do enjoy Lego technic. I even found missing DVD’s, very helpful for entertainment and magazines; ones about my Raspberry Pi. No, you don’t put cream on it then eat it, it’s a tiny computer. It was designed as a cheap and fun way to learn about programming and electronic/PC interfaces. True I don’t do much with it anymore, but I like to read about what I could do and used to do. It represents a past hobby.

Lying in my new bedroom I have a new bookshelf at the base of my bed. It has a shelf with models I have made over the years. A wonderful looking wooden marble run. It would work brilliantly if it wasn’t wood, wood tends to be too warped, well that’s my excuse, it’s not how I assembled it. Then there are my Lego technic models. Also on that shelf are two opened up hard disk drives. Why you ask? Well back in the 1980’s when I was so young I hardly remember. I was working (child labour obviously) in the computer industry. My boss, the managing director had an open hard disk drive on display in his office, in a glass case with spotlights on it. At that time they were very expensive. If you have never seen inside one they are like mirrors surrounded by electronics and look really cool; honest. (See the photo on my blog site) OK so they are really cheap and commonplace now, but they still look good. I had a broken couple of disk drives that I had opened and displayed some time back, they are displayed on my bookcase. A reminder of years gone by.

Personal space is such an interesting concept. It means time and space to find restoration and healing plus it means the space around us when we meet others. So it’s something we need physically as a place and it’s a concept of the space around us that we all have and which varies. Which means this ‘lock down’ will be much harder for some than for others.

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