I’m sitting in St Pancras station about to visit my friends in Sheffield. I left my house very early in the morning because it takes a while to get here across London. In another life I’d be able to walk to the nearest station and catch a train into central London, but that station is not accessible, so instead I got a half an hour bus to the nearest accessible tube stop, and got that. It’s long, but least I can read my book. It took me over a year of living in London to be brave enough to catch the tube, but now I know to keep an eye on travel apps which tell me which stations are accessible and if the lifts are working, and just suck it up. Besides, my love of transport is winning me over. The tube is faster than the bus, but I like how the bus gives you the view and a map of London in your head. The buses in London have electric ramps that the driver can put out for you, so it’s a fully accessible system without assistance needed. At least in theory. Often the ramp doesn’t work, or gets stuck, or the bus is too full, or something else goes wrong. The other day someone saw me miss two buses because of faulty ramps and asked me if I ever complain. I shook my head with a smile and I laughed inside, if I complained every time the bus didn’t work I’d be complaining all the time! I also didn’t say that I don’t speak out because I know that out there there are stalwart activists campaigning for my right to access London. I do get annoyed, don’t get me wrong, but I wait for the feeling to pass and I try to rise above it. I also can’t complain when the bus is free for me! Also, the good definitely outweighs the bad and I’m having fun. I’m taking risks too, but I’m evaluating which risks are stressful and which give adrenaline. Some things are worth it.

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I’m a natural laugher. I reckon I laugh when I find something funny and also when I’m relieved. I can’t tell if being easily amused is a sign of a good sense of humour or not. I think about it a lot, why I’m like this. I like joking around, but I don’t make jokes to people-please and make people like me. I’m honestly just trying to entertain myself. The function of humour interests me a lot, and years ago I was delighted to learn the word ‘bathos’ (can you tell I studied English Literature?). Bathos describes an “amusingly failed attempt at presenting artistic greatness. Bathos has come to refer to rhetorical anticlimax, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one, occurring either accidentally (through artistic ineptitude) or intentionally (for comic effect).” Years ago when I was in hospital, I heard a staff member comment to another staff member that I might be a bit delirious. This just made me laugh harder, because of the bathetic irony of being in a university theory seminar one day and then finding yourself in a speech therapy group of senior citizens the next. Disability is the ultimate anticlimax, the ultimate serious thing. You thought you were going to be a proper adult, but hey no! Not the life for you! Bet you didn’t see this indignity coming! The fact that it’s so not funny makes it inherently funny to me. Of course, I’m very aware of the privileged position I’m in where I can look back on past events with humour. As Carrie Fisher termed it, “good anecdote, bad reality.” I’m the kind of person who tries to turn any event into an anecdote. What was the point of it happening otherwise? I do this so much I worry if my story wasn’t good enough. I’m haunted by all the times a story or a joke I told failed to deliver or people didn’t get it. My words matter to me. I used to think ‘why am I like this?’ but now I just tell myself “Well, I am like this.”

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My train has just been cancelled and I have to get the next one. I booked assistance on the app so the staff here know who I am and keep me updated. It’s actually much less stressful than navigating trains alone and able-bodied. I predicted this might happen, travel complications, and I can roll with the unknown. The unknown presents itself to me as a choice; do I worry about it or is this an opportunity? Do I want circumstances to change, or do I want to change to be able to meet my circumstances? I think about the difference between spirituality and superstition, and how people respond to the unknown. How the unknown is presented is what distinguishs fantasy fiction from horror. Both can describe unsettling, weird scenarios, but whilst horror imagines the worst possible outcomes, fantasy leaves room for wonder and awe, and even humour. At the end of the day, fiction is trying to make you feel something, and genres give you clues as to what that feeling will be. I recently heard the creator of The University of Glasgow’s MA Fantasy speaking, and he said it was important to him that the course has a silly name because it was important that fantasy literature (and MA students) is/are not taken too seriously. Fantasy is meant to delight even as the unknown presents fears. For me, what he said about fantasy applies to everything in life. I don’t want to take anything too seriously, literature or disability.

(Featured image is from Maurice Sendak’s 1963 Where The Wild Things Are)