Rosemary Sutcliff  once wrote (quoted in the Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature):

“there’s a great loneliness about having any kind of handicap in a world which in general doesn’t, however much you get to the stage where neither you nor anybody else notices. You tend to create somebody on your side of the barrier who will talk your own language.”

(I have blogged an article she wrote about disability before)

When I went with Rosemary to collect her CBE (or it may have been her OBE) at Buckingham Palace, I remember well that we had to go with her wheelchair all through the back corridors having come in by some back entrance. Rosemary wanted to see the grand stairway entrance. I pushed her along to the top, where she could see and admire the Household Cavalry in attendance. A senior equerry, a rear-admiral I think, came over and addressed me, not her. Is she alright he said predictably! “Yes she is fine” said Rosemary over her shoulder “and don’t worry, I quite understand, my father was in the navy too!” He had no idea whether he had been patronised, rebuked, teased or what! He shuffled off none the wiser.