The bulk of this post was written on the brink of midnight as I struggled to sleep due to intense pain. It hurt so much that coordinating my movements and focus to type was extremely tricky. I’ve decided to leave all the mistakes in for the remainder of the post because I think they help convey a little of what I was experiencing at the time – these errors are crossed through and greyed out.…

At the start of lockdown my friends Ruby, Leo and Laura made me an incredible word-search which I had loads of fun completing, so I decided to make one for them. But rather than use words I used combinations of pictures.…

A month ago, at the start of lockdown, I wrote about the huge amounts of extra time and labour I was having to expend just to meet my basic requirements for safety, health, nutrition, finance and logistics.

I’m re-visiting this, 28 days later, for a quick update on how my issues have been resolved – or not – and to highlight the ways disabled people are still falling through the gaps during lockdown life.…

Exactly one month ago, on 23^rd March 2020, the UK entered ‘lockdown’ to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This means everyone stays at home except for essential travel, food shopping and exercise.

As a disabled person with additional high-risk factors, I took the decision to lockdown a week earlier when it was clear that the situation was escalating and posed a significant threat to my health.…

Leftwing Idiot’s good friend Si had symptoms of COVID-19 and started self-isolating over a week before the lockdown began. It was touch and go for a while, but he seems much better now.

A lot changed while he was staying in and it was interesting hearing his observations from his first trip out.…

In just a few weeks, many of the assumptions we’ve taken for granted for generations have been totally transformed.

While this is undoubtably a surreal and scary time, we’ve seen how quickly systems can be transformed when the right approach is taken and when adequate resources are in place.…

As families across the UK head into the second week of school closures and lockdown, here are five more challenges for you to get stuck into. These are written with primary-school-aged children in mind, but they could be adapted to work for younger or older people.…

In a matter of weeks life across the world has changed dramatically, and like most people I’ve been trying to adapt to the uncertain times ahead. While many people are focused on navigating the challenges of home working, home schooling, increasing social restrictions and living with uncertainty, I, like many disabled people, have been focused simply on survival.…

My sister is a hospital doctor. She lives across the road from me with her husband King Russell and my niece Bean. They’re less than a hundred metres away and you can even see my place from their top floor.

The longest I’ve gone without seeing my sister since she was born is six weeks, and that’s only happened a handful of times.…

Just over a week ago it became clear that in order to stay as healthy as possible during the current COVID-19 pandemic, I needed to self-isolate. I always need close physical support from others to complete many essential daily tasks like washing or moving in and out of my chair, but this close contact increases the risk of me catching the virus or me passing it to others, so I also decided to limit the number of different people providing my support.…