HALFLING: A FAREWELL TO LEGS - Part 21

The latest instalment about my collapse, surgery and subsequent life in a wheelchair, and the attitude of society towards the disabled - not quite humans, but 'Halflings‘.

Yesterday, I fell out of my wheelchair, after consuming whiskey sours, red wine, sake and champagne in the space of a few hours. I didn’t do it in the street, which would have been easier, if more disapproved of; I waited till I was home, and my companions were gone. I cannot get back into my wheelchair once on the ground, so as on the previous occasion this happened, in the summer, I had to literally drag myself to the phone to call my husband, who promptly came over and put me back in.

I’m aware how cringe this is. If a drunken old woman is the most pitied and disapproved of intoxicated individual of all the demographic groups, a drunken old disabled woman manages to outdo even this wretched figure in terms of public disdain. This is in some ways understandable; why would someone already in a vulnerable situation make themselves more so? The answer for me is simple; I love to drink.

I’m not drowning my sorrows; I’ve always drunk loads, since I was a kid, coming from a loving and stable family. I’ve always thought that if you made a Venn diagram and put PRODUCT OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS on one side and JOURNALIST on the other, the intersection would say, simply, DRUNKARD. I drank when I was a happy young married mother and an ecstatic runaway wife, when I was extremely successful and professionally shunned. Alcohol has been my naughty secret (13-16), partner in crime (twenties), dangerous obsession (thirties/forties), toxic bestie (fifties) – and now, at 66, health and safety hazard. But I’ve never considered myself an alcoholic, and if I’m being totally honest always considered those who use the description of themselves as being a little bit am-dram. When Taylor Swift sang ‘I was a functioning alcoholic’ in her song ‘Fortnight’ there was a great deal of discussion over whether this was fact or fiction, compounded when she told Time magazine in 2023 that she stopped drinking in order to get match-fit for her forthcoming exhaustive tour; ‘Doing that show with a hangover. I don’t want to know that world’. Personally, I wouldn’t define an alcoholic as someone who could rationally choose to give up booze in order to drop a few pounds, functioning or not. I’m guessing that Miss Swift’s idea of a heavy drinking habit was something like a white wine spritzer before a cosy lunch with her beau and perhaps a cheeky Margarita on a girls night out; the American Idea of ‘drinking a lot’ is simply a lot less than ours is.