Society's fascination with short people

I read about the publicity stunt to publicise the release of the "Guiness Book of Records 2009", due out today. They brought together the 'shortest man who can walk' - He Pingping who is precisely 2ft 5.37 inches, with 'the woman with the longest legs' - Svetlana Pankratova whose legs are more than 4 ft long.

It's the usual voyeurism draw but people are constantly fascinated by short people [and very tall ones too]. But when being short is just the norm, as it is for me, it's hard to understand the fascination?

I have to say I wouldn't mind meeting He Pingping because I'd actually be meeting an adult who's shorter than me, which I've only done about twice in my life so far!

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080916/ap_on_fe_st/eu_britain_world_records

The Paralympics!

There's no denying that the BBC coverage of the Paralympics is better than ever before.

Nightly programmes which have roughly the same format as the Olympic coverage, together with well known commentators and presenters [not to mention the added bonus of Tanni Grey-Thompson], makes the coverage slick and impressive.

Apart from the fact that someone couldn't be bothered to build a couple of ramps for the podiums, the only downer I find is the classification system for disabled competitors - is it just me or is it overly complicated?

This means my partner and I end up playing a "guess/spot the disability" game whilst watching.... It's a fine balance I'm sure, no one is expecting the commentator to come out with "look at that blindie", "wow he's only got half an arm" but a little bit of a clue would sometimes be quite useful, interesting. Perhaps the commentators don't want to make PC gaffs but they do get it right, it's just that for me they don't seem to say often enough what's "up" with people!

Have Kids Will Travel - article for Getting There magazine

Check out my article recently published in Getting There magazine about the issue of being a disabled parent using public transport with a child in tow, no mean feat but possible with the sort of planning that would do the military proud.

http://cid-7d03cd7cc3e2777f.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Getting%20There%20magazine/Have%20kids%20will%20travel%20for%20Getting%20There.pdf

There's a photo of Archie taken fairly recently, with a bus and a tube, at the start of the article and one of me and him in a tube station, taken ages ago now - looks like he's got something wrong with his eye but it's actually a bad 'anti red eye' fix....

Being able to jump [or not]

Ben and Archie are into trying to jump at the moment; I'm sure Ben will get the hang of it fairly soon but Archie might never get the hang of it because having Kniest and jumping don't really go together.

I was never that fussed about not being able to jump [or run] but then it was slightly different for me because I didn't have a little sibling snapping at my heels making me want to do better than them.

When I was young, the one thing I was fussed about was not being able to kneel down and sit back on my feet, if you know what I mean? It always looked like a very comfortable way of sitting on the floor but even if hell had frozen over I still wouldn't have been able to do it, my joints were never flexible enough.

However I remember, when I was about 7, a misguided physiotherapist telling me that if I did this exercise and that exercise I would be able to attain my dream sitting position. Of course this was just an outrageous scam to get me to do the exercises, which was totally unnecessary because I was slightly obsessive about doing them anyway.

Needless to say I did the exercises and I still couldn't kneel and sit back on my feet. I think I was more annoyed about being conned than upset about the exercises not working in the end!

I hope Archie can end up pleased with the things he can do rather than focus on what he can't but I guess that's always going to be slightly harder when he has a little brother who looks like Olympiad material to me - but he is my first non disabled child so it's a learning curve having such an 'able' child in contrast to one who is the mirror image of me.

Reach for the skies - if you are a disabled person

Here a link to my article on new air travel legislation for ABLE magazine, which was published in the print version of the magazine as well as on their website:

http://www.ablemagazine.co.uk/index.php/component/content/article/69-airlines-explored.html