Interview: Tim
Posted on Jul 29, 2007 and filed under Blogathon 2007, Charity
Tim is a 30-something-year-old, medically retired professional amateur (he tries to be good at lots of things but only ever ends up being average, or so he says). Tim was born with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSH MD) which is basically an incurable muscle wasting condition, which is not life
threatening. He was diagnosed just before his twelfth birthday.
Tim lives in sunny Kidderminster, a small town in UK, with N, his friend and personal assistant, and their dog Rocco. Tim maintains a personal blog at Timmargh.net. He used to run a photoblog too but closed it after about a year when he discovered Flickr. You may want to view Tim’s pictures in his Flickr account.
Tim has a superb relationship with his live-in personal assistant, N, and her family — she has several nephews and nieces aged between 1 and 34 years old whom he loves as if they were his own. Tim’s own family, on the other hand, is spread far and wide from Worcester (15 miles from him), Cheltenham (45 miles) and Chicago USA (erm, lots of miles!).
For Tim personally, the biggest issue he faced as a person with disabilities is people treating him like a normal person. “I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve asked a shop assistant a question only for them to answer the person pushing my wheelchair. There are other incidents, too, but I’ll refrain from going into details here!”
The general public should just treat people with disabilities of any kind as they would any other person they meet — “they shouldn’t talk down to us, ignore us and treat us as if we’re stupid!” he said.
Tim thinks that with the growth of the digital age and simple but effective tools like blogs, the public as a whole is slowly becoming more aware of disability issues, personal or otherwise, and he for one is enjoying watching attitudes change for the better.
