What I Did On My Holidays

We apologise for the late running of this service; there were the wrong kind of leaves on the line. No, wait, I've been in Barcelona's fabulous Primavera Sound, dancing my aged feet off to Pulp, Belle & Sebastian and PJ Harvey. So in the grand back-to-school tradition, I shall tell you What I Did On My Holidays, with sun, sea, and the fucktacular fun-policing of people with disabilities!

Thursday night, my gentleman companion and I went to watch The Walkmen. After a hard day's sightseeing, swimming, and stomping city streets, I was not entirely full of beans, so was enjoying the music in my own special way: lying supine on the floor. I was having a whale of a time, so it was quite surprising when some ghastly self-righteous smugface took it upon herself to lean down to scream in my ear "WAKE UP! It's a FESTIVAL!"

Due to aforementioned surprise, I didn't get to express my fury at this; but that's the good thing about blogging: those elabourate comebacks you compose days later have somewhere to go. So imagine I'm saying this to her.

"FUCK OFF! It is indeed a festival, and one of the main tenets of festival life is that you can do whatever you want! And what I want right now is to enjoy the music and the atmosphere while conserving what little energy I have left! It's 10pm, the music goes on until 6am, and if I need a little disco nap then you have no damn business telling me off. Fun thing about living with chronic fatigue: you learn to enjoy the things you want to do in whatever damn way you can, because otherwise you don't get to enjoy them at all. There's a guy on crutches over there: are you going to berate him for not dancing vigorously enough? Are you going to shout at wheelchair users until they Empower themselves with the magical force of Positive Thinking and get up and Shake their respective Thangs because IT'S A FESTIVAL? I actually wouldn't be surprised if you did, because you are so clearly a bad seed.

"And if you're now getting all apologetic and "Oh sorry, I didn't know you were disabled", let's be clear: if I was 100% able-bodied that would still not be okay. How other people choose to enjoy themselves - or not, because what's with the endless imperative to Have! Fun! All the time! anyway? - is absolutely no business of yours.

"Also, you're in Barcelona, you chump: shouting at people in English is not the best way to represent our country abroad."

On a much happier note, the indignats had taken over the Placa de Catalunya to demonstrate their outrage at the country's financial situation, and everything else that's wrong with the world. At the edge of the protest camp was this sign:

If your revolution isn't wheelchair-accessible, I'm not coming.