Two for Blue

Kasha and I had a more unusual GoodGym mission on Thursday. Although we walked and ran to Hammersmith, the task itself was more of a brain training exercise than something physical.

We met Miss K and her niece F who was visiting from India. Miss K lived alone, and her mobility wasn’t great due to her dementia and other health issues. F was keen for her to reapply for her blue badge so she could leave her flat with her friends and family, and they would know she wouldn’t have far to walk outside to get anywhere.

I’ve done a few blue badge forms before, but this was a blue/new one for Kash. F helped gather all the documents we would need - including bills, passports, doctors letters and prescriptions. Kash had helpfully brought her laptop, and fired up the government website to take us to the application page, and took copies of the letters and papers as evidence to upload.

Now, the government don’t like to make things easy for us, and there were what seemed like an outrageous number of sections to be filled in. Kash started on the typing, but I soon took over as the form asked questions around mobility and medications. Luckily, I work in healthcare so the drugs that looked like made up words to Kash made sense to me (and some of them I could even spell!), and I knew the buzzwords the form would want. It was a tedious process, as each medication had to be uploaded individually, and we had a little wobble with the internet half way through!

F was very helpful in giving us all the information we needed when asked, and after an hour or so of relentless typing and attaching the scans of doctors reports and proof of addresses, we could finally press the blue submit button.

Miss K was very happy, although wanted a printed copy - we had to explain that F would have a version on her email for her, and it would take up to 12 weeks for the form to be processed, and hopefully they would accept the version of the application we had filled out with no problems.

We left, and congratulated ourselves on filling in such a long old form. It’s hard to believe something so complicated could have to be completed by someone in need who wasn’t as tech savvy or patient as the two of us. Our brains deserved a rest, and our legs took us back home for that after the task.