Four Wheel Drive

It was a bit of an adventure taking our new SUV (Dd's wheelchair) out for an urban spin today. Talk about front seat drivers! I'm clearly still at provisional licence level and despair about getting my full one. I think the trick will be to keep both hands on the wheel . . . my passenger got a bit jumpy when she caught sight of one coming off, thinking that the other must also have liberated itself from any steering influence and her chariot was about to dive into traffic.

One thing is clear - no matter the age or the reason, no-one likes being in a wheelchair and, seriously, we must all be more understanding of the feelings of every such chair's occupants. It may seem (and be) a supremely practical solution to help with a range of incapacities but that perspective is hard to acquire if you are the occupant.

We did the rounds of local authority and medical centres in a convoluted admin process to have Dd declared unfit for work. It wasn't helped that neither of us have ever been seen by a state doctor in the 24 years we've been here and therefore had never registered with any which, you guessed it, is a prerequisite to one of them making the declaration we wanted. And you just can't pick any old doctor. He or she has to be allocated to you by the local authority and you can't be allocated one unless you have registered and proven your residency with the local authority and even though we did that years ago, it has to be renewed every two years and guess who hadn't done that!

Still the doctor when we did see him eventually was a character and kindness itself and gave us all the paperwork we needed in a cheery meeting including back dating the entitlement to the time of the accident itself taking into account my absence in Brazil.

Later we met Seeingthings for a drink after her (and what should have been Dd's) work finished. A fun catch up and time to say thank you for all the help she's given Dd at home recently.

Here we are in Plaza Sant Jaume in Barcelona with the regional authority building behind us. Dd was determined to be erect, albeit on crutches, for this shot and not to be seen in the SUV.