Starbucks shame and frost-melting rants

It's peaceful here this morning.  The kids have a day of school and seem to be planning to spend most of it asleep, so a whole morning without fights and moans and frantic uniform hunting.. Outside the garden is covered in a thick layer of  frost which, for a little while, makes the world sparkle. Snow is forecast and Mia and Joss are pinning their hopes on schools closed for " snow days," and snowball fights in the road.

I was at a meeting yesterday, discussing how to make Children's Centres more inclusive and welcoming to families with children with a disability. Those meetings make my blood boil. I find it extraordinary that in 2012 we still need to have meetings about it. Time and again I hear stories of families, overcoming their fears of being judged, struggling to get children who find walking difficult out of cars, walking through doors of children's centres or shops or cafes. And when at last, they make it to reception or a table, they are made to feel unwelcome or ignored or kept waiting while people walk past and stare.  And I want to stand on reception desks and shout from cafe tables " Shame on You".  Sounds like I am a do-gooder I know but I'm not.  I am as quick to judge as anyone but it is so WRONG.  Because this world, its good parts and bad parts, snow covered or heat burnt, belongs to everyone, not just those who can walk normally.  

One of my friends has a daughter in a wheelchair. A few years ago she tried to take her to Starbucks in Chichester, only when they got there, there was no ramp and the door wasn't wide enough. And once again people stared and the family " were making a fuss." And the staff in Starbucks didn't even apologise.  I asked my friend why they didn't make an official complaint but even as I asked I could see the exhaustion and resignation in her eyes.  Because there is a limit to how many battles a parent can fight. And while the battle to get your child the right walking aids or a place in the right school, is one you will never give up on, fighting a big tax-evading company like Starbucks when other cafes with perfectly good wheelchair access are just round the corner, is just  one battle too many.

I have ranted for so long that the frost is melting. Maybe, one day, the world underneath will still be sparkling..