who only by moving can balance

This year the first of December actually is the first day of Advent, so this year's batch of "Advent" calendars aren't even wrong, and I'm always more out-of-sorts about the entire Thing when denied that excuse for peevishness.

(I have spent most of today messing about with colour palettes, because I got to the "upload? some figures?" stage of manuscript submission and experienced the Dawning Horror of "all my graphs are still using the placeholder colours I was going to fix to be more accessible Later, and now... it's Later... and they're still all colour-coded red/green/blue". Does my supervisor approve this use of my time? Eh, probably not. But it now looks good for trichromia and distinguishable for dichromia, and while monochrome reproductions aren't Great you don't lose any important detail, which given that I'm plotting up fifteen different symbols in three broad categories for over a thousand data points, and this will only ever be viewed in monochrome in the print edition of the journal i.e. not, is good enough.)

who the hell am I supposed to contact given:

• smokers are (illegally!) rendering my building so toxic that I can't actually enter/exit it without rendering myself unable to breathe
  
• an initial e-mail 4 months ago to disability services & building manager has resulted in no useful follow-up, and nor have the two most recent chasing e-mails

... because this isn't actually sustainable. I can't do my job without entering the building; I can't enter the building without getting poisoned, and if I were actually on a contract I'd be seriously thinking about constructive dismissal, but that's not how PhD stipends work.

(No, really, at least two hundred metres of corridor and the entire central stairwell are currently not actually usable by me without causing damage. The only mostly-safe route to my areas of work has no working lifts. I literally cannot get to my desk +wheelchair without exposure, or to my lab at all unless I time breathing very carefully. As for getting to my desk without chair, it's about six flights of stairs, which isn't sustainable given my joints. It is shit.)

TODAY THE LIFT IS BROKEN.

PS MY OFFICE IS ON THE THIRD FLOOR.

As it is I have improved it with Pimms, Lashings, and an imminent Lashings performance.

Most of the details are tedious and involve buses and racists and ableism. The following, however, is what actually spilled the day over into FLAMETHROWER.

... as per all of my previous e-mails - see the reference number - I was unable to pay online because of the obligatory title field which *does not list my title* (which every other member of customer support has managed to use: "Mx" is NOT a typo).

When I phoned up I should NOT have been unable to pay for the item: it is a customs item NOT tracked, so should have been held for 21 days, not 18 days.

I am really, really unhappy with the service I have received from you collectively. I appreciate this is not your fault but I do think you should do something to make up for the fact that:
* the delivery card was originally misdelivered to X [Name] Mews rather than X [Name] Street
* the tracking number was illegible
* I was unable to pay online because of your appallingly bad (and transphobic!) form implementation required me to use a title but did not offer my preferred title
* I was unable to collect in person because I am disabled
* I was unable to phone immediately because my combined disabilities
make phonecalls incredibly stressful for me, even without all of the above
* when I DID phone, I was unable to pay *even though I was calling
within 21 days* because your phone structure doesn't take account of the fact that I was calling about a Customs item, with no option to talk to a human who might have been able to sort things out
* I immediately e-mailed you and have spent over a week waiting for
responses, during which time you have returned my item to sender.

I have given you ALL of this information SEVERAL times.

I am really, really unhappy.

-a.

This term, two mornings a week I have a 9 o'clock lecture in one building and a 10 o'clock lecture in another half a mile away. This being this university, naturally the 9 o'clock finishes at 9:55 and the 10 o'clock begins at 10:05 - giving me ten minutes to cover the necessary ground.

In theory, this is fine.

In practice, it really, really isn't.

This is what my morning was like: I arrived at the first building at around ten to nine, got myself onto the wheelchair lift, closed the gate behind me, pressed the "up" button, and... went nowhere. I stopped pressing the button. The alarm of "the gate is not properly shut" went off. I tried opening the gate and shutting it again. This repeated. Until I ended up unable to open the gate.

The estate manager for the building spotted this going on, came over, and started a conversation on whether I was "slamming" the gate, because he'd had to repair it four times due to the pin getting bent. I gave him A Look, and said that I hadn't been "slamming" it beyond the fact that it's quite difficult to twist around behind myself, get my hand up to above my head height to reach the top bar of the unsprung open gate, and pull it to. (I note that I have to grab the top bar: it's a pretty standard four-bar style, but the attached glass screen makes it damn near impossible to get a grip on the bars at a less painful height).

Please remember that my lecture was approaching and I couldn't open the bottom gate.

He proceeded to walk over to his car, get out a pair of pliers, and fiddle with the bent top pin - blocking my exit and continuing to talk at me about how it was bent.

Eventually, after several failed attempts to get the damn thing working, he generously allowed that the gate perhaps was not sitting completely right on its hinges and this might be contributing to the problem. He then went up to the top of the steps, pressed the button, and... the lift moved.

I would like to note for the record that it would have taken me much less time and stress to just get out of the damn lift and carry my 30kg chair up the steps (there's only about 4 of them, and they're quite shallow).

In I went to my lecture. (The lecturer requested that if we hadn't been in the Thursday lecture to sign up for supervisions, we come down to the front at the end to write ourselves down. This is accessed only via steps. I am not exactly hard to spot. I ended up asking a friend to sign me up, only to discover I was already there. This is, for the record, a side-rant.) Out I came again, fifty minutes later, to find a team of workmen attacking the sodding wheelchair lift. The lower gate was not attached. They were kicking the hydraulics. I looked at them in despair and very faint rage, then went through the (closed) museum and looked sadly at the museum receptionists until they unlocked the (locked, heavy, double) front doors so I could use the museum's lift.

THANK GOODNESS, I thought, and whizzed off in the direction of my second lecture.

... and got all of a fifth of a mile, possibly less, before I ended up sat seething gently at a car pulled up on the kerb, hazards blinking, on a double yellow, empty, against a wall, with no dropped kerbs nearby.

I only ended up seething for about 45 seconds before the driver showed up and moved it. So far, so good. And indeed when I got to my department and unlocked the south-wing door, the (heavy) internal double doors were propped open - which was convenient, because the keyhole's at head height, needs relocking after opening, needs me to open the double doors in order to turn enough to be able to lock it behind me, etc. That was a small mercy.

On the downside, my lecture was on the third floor. I summoned the (small) lift and it eventually trundled its poor way down from the fourth; and the doors opened to reveal a large pile of empty cardboard boxes in precisely the location that meant I couldn't fit into the lift at all without moving it. I need to reverse into the lift in any case, because I can't quite turn in it even without cardboard boxes, and I can't reach the buttons unless I'm facing the door.

I ended up reaching down behind me and moving them without being able to see what I was sodding doing. I only just fit. Shockingly, I was late.

---

Both of these departments know I exist, because I had detailed discussions with them about access requirements and which lecture courses I'd be taking well before term started.

I am so, so unimpressed.