A JOHNSON of Radcliffe Road, would like to know how to acquire a "magic orange badge for disabled parking. I will tell him/her how.

First you awake one morning, as my husband did, with an agonising crushing pain in your chest. You have had a heart attack. You are "touch and go" for a few weeks, and then spend the next 14 weeks lazing around in bed.

You leave your well paid job on the advice of a "friendly" doctor, and join the band of "privileged" welfare recipients, and become "weighed down" with an invalidity allowance.

This allowance is a few pounds more than income support, but these few pounds are gleaned back in such things as rent and community charge.

As for "privileges" we have found none.

Now you find yourself with the princely sum of £112.95, £1.06 in excess of income support and so you have to pay in full for your prescriptions, in our case £53 a month. These we juggle depending on whose need is most urgent at the time.

Your partner could also jump on the bandwagon, as I have done. I am a bronchial asthmatic. Stress has greatly affected my condition.

Don't forget to 'look perfectly healthy' as we do, it is not obvious we are ill.

You will find shops now are too expensive. Car boot sales now are for you. So you don't go to the town often, but when you do you will drive around to find a disabled parking space. There are not many, and you will probably find most of them occupied by cars WITHOUT orange badges, so you are obliged to park 'anywhere'.

Mr/Mrs Johnson, you can have our orange badge with pleasure, but in return could we have your health, but not your compassion.

Mrs D Perks

Cromford Close, Halliwell

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.