My faith in humanity has been restored… some of my regular blog readers will already know I’m disabled – 70% because of osteoarthritis in both knees, many years after suffering a bad tackle playing rugby, and 10% after crushing three of my spinal discs whilst taking a medical for the Ambulance Service.

I can climb stairs with little difficulty, it’s the going back downstairs which gives me trouble. Consequently, as you are aware, I work for www.getyouonline.co.uk, and as our offices are on the second floor of Humber House in Beeston, Nottingham, I am fortunate that the building has a lift. It is one of those old lifts, with two cage type gates.

The floor above ours used to house Young Potential, which was an agency getting youth into work, but, and their sponsorship dried up because of the government cut backs, they had to close down and move out. While they were here, they often left the lift gate open on their floor, which necessitated me struggling with the two flights of stairs to get to the ground floor. Several complaints made no difference, things didn’t change, and I was relieved when they left…not for very long though, another company moved in and took over the second floor – they are called Grangeprint and everyone who works there is very pleasant, but were still leaving the lift gates open.

Twice I climbed the stairs (with their mail, as the postman tends to leave every delivery either on the ground floor or our floor), and spoke to Paul, the owner of Grangeprint, telling him of my predicament. Last week, Paul came into our office, located me and gave me a ‘lift calling button’ – so that whenever the lift is at the top floor, if I press the button, someone will come and close the lift gates. I was absolutely flabbergasted – fancy going out of his way to do that for me?

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Paul and Grangeprint for such a kind thing to do for me. I have only had to use it once, so far, but at least I have it for the next thirty seven working days, until I retire (see my previous blog).