The Policeman's Belt

We are just back from our holiday in Hampshire. We stayed in a cabin on the edge of the New Forest at a place called Shorefield near Milford-on-Sea. Door to door the journey should take only a little over two and a half hours, it took us nearly six. It would have taken longer if not for a policeman's belt. The A3 is one of the arterial routes out of London: a six lane, high-speed series of fly-overs and underpasses funnelling traffic out to the M25 orbital motorway or onwards to Portsmouth with its ferry links to the continent. The road is packed with commuters, juggernauts, families on their way to Chessington World of Adventure, locals and a myriad of commercial vehicles all rushing to get where they are going at breakneck speed down unfeasibly narrow lanes and ominously dented crash barriers. It is, without doubt, one of the scariest roads in the South-East. At Tolworth the road dives into an underpass beneath a large roundabout and the hard-shoulder is replaced by concrete walls mere inches from the left-hand lane and the air is replaced by exhaust fumes and the thunderous echo of speeding internal combustion engines reverberating off those all-to-close walls. It was here, as we were being swept through the underpass at 60 MPH, that from beneath our car came the shrieking, clattering, deafening sound of metal on road surface and from behind a tail of sparks lighting up the carriageway. Polly reduced speed down to a crawl but it still sounded like a brick in a tumble-dryer and there was still a small firework display trailing behind. As vehicles screeched and swerved around us she pulled onto the small triangle of hatched white lines that marked the lanes merging from the roundabout above with the main duel carriageway exiting the tunnel heading south. Traffic was now screaming passed us on both our left and our right hand sides causing the car to vibrate and sway as it was buffeted by turbulence from high-sided vans and lorries. Polly phoned the police and explained our predicament. No, we couldn't vacate the car and find a safe place to wait for assistance. The nearest safe place was a minimum of two lanes of high-speed traffic away and over a crash barrier. It would be tricky to get there with two children, an OAP and an electric wheelchair. The police dispatch operator said they'd send someone straight away. Sure enough, a few minutes of buttock-clenching fear later, a police van pulled up with reassuringly bright flashing blue lights to close off the lane behind us. A quick glance under our vehicle told the police officer that our exhaust pipe had snapped, possibly caused by some of the debris that littered the underpass, and that was the reason we were parked where we were and not because we were extreme picnickers or something. "It's scary here," he told Polly nervously, flinching as a juggernaut whipped by. "Very scary. I think I'll call traffic. They're equipped for this kind of thing. Maybe they'll be able to tie your exhaust pipe up. I'll wait in my van until they get here." Soon, two traffic police cars arrived and the officers assessed the situation. They assured Polly she had done exactly the right thing and then set about trying to temporarily fix things. Eventually an officer leaned in the window. "We've tied the exhaust pipe up," he said. "It should hold until we can get you somewhere safe. We didn't have any wire so I've used my belt. My colleague's belt is plastic so it would melt but mine is leather. Good job I had a hearty breakfast or me trousers would be down around me knees. Now we'll stop the traffic so you can get up to speed. Follow us and we'll lead you to a safe place to wait for the AA. Then can I have my belt back, please?" We were escorted off the A3 by the police. You could see passing drivers wondering what awful crime we had committed. The traffic police led us to a garage forecourt and the policeman retrieved his slightly singed leather belt. We waved them off and settled down to await the AA who arrived after about half an hour. The AA man explained that the exhaust had broken at a particularly tricky place and because our van is adapted to carry a wheelchair the exhaust is nonstandard, it having been customised to allow for a lower floor. In short, he couldn't fix it. Instead he tied it up, this time with wire, not a belt, and led us to the local Kwik-Fit in Surbiton. Because the exhaust is nonstandard Kwik-Fit couldn't just plonk a new one under the car. We have to order a completely new customised unit from a specialist manufacturer. Shouldn't take more than a week or so. The man said he would try to make a temporary mend using a cuff he'd order from the main supplier. It would take an hour or so to arrive so we settled down in their waiting room and played with the fancy drinks machine while we waited. Eventually the part arrived and the Kwik-Fit man got to work bodging a fix. It took a little while but, at last, the man announced that he and his colleague had engineered a solution that held the two bits of exhaust pipe together and that it should last through our holiday and until a new complete unit could be made and fitted. We braced ourselves for the bill for this impromptu piece of automotive construction. "No charge," said the man cheerfully. "Have it on us. Enjoy your holiday." It might not be true that you can't get quicker than a Kwik-Fit fitter but you certainly can't find nicer. Thank you Kwik-Fit, Surbiton. And if you see a police traffic officer with a burnt leather belt then please give him a wave. Thank you for reading.

We'e All Going To The Zoo Together

On Monday we went to London Zoo and contrary to my pessimistic expectation it didn't rain. In fact the weather was rather nice. We went with our friend C and her son, Matty's friend from school, taking advantage of the way we could all fit into our car because C's husband, an airline pilot, is currently stuck in Washington because of the Icelandic volcano.(Every volcanic aeroplane death cloud has a silver lining, apparently.)

London Zoo has changed since my youth. Gone are the elephants and Polar bears circling confined enclosures, going slowly mad. Instead the emphasis is on conservation with Gorilla Kingdoms and Rain Forest experiences. I particularly enjoyed the Night Life experience, which was not a disco but a chance to see all sorts of nocturnal creatures knocking about naturally.

I am slightly suspicious that many of the terrariums in the reptile house were empty despite signs saying they contained a Taiwanese Spitting snake, a Borneo Bouncing lizard or a Completely Invisible Sleeping newt. Occasionally I did spot a snake but it might quite easily have been a rubber one from the zoo souvenir shop. Telling me how cunningly they used camouflage didn't fool me.

Sam, having been to see the film How To Train Your Dragon was keen to see the Komodo dragons. He was disappointed to find they neither flew nor breathed fire but was slightly mollified when I told him how they could kill a buffalo. Matty found it difficult to choose a favourite animal, being torn between the giraffes and “those catty things with spots near the tigers.”

It was a good final day of the school holidays.

Until next time. . .

Wales 09 or Don't Hold Your Breath

When going on holiday what is the last thing you want to forget? Sun cream? Swimming costume? Wheelchair battery charger? Ah yes, another Deal holiday gets under way with its customary smoothness.

Fortunately the Paul Sartori Foundation who had the misfortune to be responsible for my homecare while we were in Wales are a superb group of people and managed to wangle a suitable charger from the very nice man who had undertaken to mend the electric bed and overhaul the hoist. Sophie at Paul Sartori must have wondered what terrible thing she had done in a previous life to have merited such severe punishment as having to organise the seemingly endless and complex list of requests phoned and emailed to her from London. The result, however, was a model of homecare provision with a succession of nurses arriving to sort me out morning and evening with good humour and skill. Their team was supplemented by 'No Problem' Greg who drove vast distances morning and night every single day to form the lynch-pin of my holiday care, and met every task asked of him with a cheerful “not a problem”.

The holiday passed with a mix of Welsh sunshine and showers but left us plenty of opportunities to enjoy the lovely local beach. The Pembrokeshire countryside is wonderful and we got to explore some places we had never been before. The boys particularly enjoyed the freedom afforded by a very safe environment and would disappear to play, armed with wooden swords, for hours on end with Alex from next door and other holidaying children. Ten days was not long enough so next year, Paul Sartori Foundation willing, we may try for longer.

A highlight of the holiday was our day spent at the Pembrokeshire County Show. This vast three day event takes over a local air-field and despite my wife's disparaging attitude of “why am I going to look at tractors?” turned out to be great fun. There were horse jumping competitions, dog agility trials and a truly breathtaking motorcycle display team who shot up ramps with such gravity defying acrobatic death-wish like grace both Polly and I wondered if their mothers knew what their sons did for a living. As one young man leapt some fifty feet in the air and casually let go of his bike, we both turned to our open-mouthed boys and said simultaneously “No!“ There were lots of rides and bouncy things for the boys to go on, including an army operated climbing wall which both of them gleefully scrambled up. As Sam abseiled down he banged his head on the tower and a whole platoon of battle hardened soldiers went “Ouch!“ (Sam was fine, his main concern was making sure we had all seen he had climbed as high as Matty.)

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper Deal holiday if all had gone smoothly. About a week into our stay the alarm on my BiPap ventilator began to go off with increasing regularity each night. Now the display on the BiPap is something akin to the tactical array on the USS Enterprise and it tells you such useful things as pressure, duration of breath, number of breaths per minute and whether your Phaser is set to stun. You can also turn off the alarm – for two minutes, after which, unless the problem is sorted, the piercing alarm goes off again. . and again. The display told us that there was a leak in the system but if there was we couldn't find it. The alarm began to go off at about 11 o'clock every so often, but by about 3 o'clock it was going off continually. Polly would get up to disarm it time and again but it always went off as soon as she crawled sleep deprived back to bed. It got so bad that Paul Sartori arranged for a night-nurse to stay over for the last night because they were concerned about Polly being safe to drive back to London. The nurse spent the night frantically stabbing at the alarm off button while I was dragged in and out of sleep. I was seriously thinking of taking the wretched machine down to the beach and throwing into a rock-pool. We rang the Brompton hospital but getting an engineer into the wilderness of west Wales is no easy matter especially when mobile phone reception is as variable and unreliable as a Libyan terrorists conviction. In the end we decided to leave it until we got home.

We stopped in Bristol to see my mum on the way home and didn't get back to Carshalton until gone 9 o'clock. That night Polly slept with the BiPap virtually tucked under her arm. Throughout the night the alarm went off time and again. The next day an emergency engineer drove a hundred miles to come and fix it. After prodding and poking it he checked the record detailing the machines history. “There must be some mistake,“ he told Polly. “It says here the alarm went off 582 times last night. That can't be right.“ Polly just laughed hysterically. Further prodding and poking revealed there was nothing wrong with the bloody thing. Which means the problem is not with the machine but with me. Sigh.

As far as I can gather in my sleep befuddled state the problem occurs when I am in deep sleep. Apparently my facial muscles must be relaxing and allowing the pressurised air to escape through my mouth. The BiPap thinks there is a leak and alerts us to the fact. The engineer has given us a different machine that does not have an alarm but unfortunately it is not as powerful as the old one so is only a temporary solution.

I sense that a trip to the Royal Brompton Hospital is on the cards.

Of Wales And Wonders

Well, we've had the new car for a week now and it remains unscratched and undented. Polly has discovered Sport on the gear stick and now uses it whenever there is a bend in the road or a hill, or indeed, a tree by the side of the road. She is still getting use to the football pitch length of the vehicle and we have had to massively cut back a bush to get it into our parking space.

We are off to Wales on Monday for two weeks so if you don't hear from me it is because I am in the land of my fathers and wireless broadband access is rarer than hens teeth. If I can post I will but the odds are against it. Talking of Wales, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people at the Paul Sartori Foundation who have bent over backwards to make arrangements to organise care and equipment for our holiday. It must seem to them that accommodating the Deal's for a fortnight is more hassle than sorting out care needs in the rest of Pembrokeshire. I assure them we do appreciate the hard work.

Today a man from Possum came to fit a bracket to my wheelchair that can hold the Possum environmental control unit I have had for a while. This little grey box of electronic wizardry can operate all kinds of equipment, including the TV, the lamp, the back gate opener, and the front door intercom and opener. Up until now it has sat frustratingly just out of reach of me and the children have used it as one of the world's most expensive light-switches. Now it is attached to my chair. The only problem being, what with the already attached Neater Arm, my wheelchair is now the length of a pantecnicon. I have the turning circle of a bendy-bus and the chair is beginning to look more than a little Heath-Robinson. I am not safe to be out when there is even the merest hint of an electrical storm.

Right, I'm off to push random buttons on my gadgets to see if I can launch a nuclear strike.

Some Things Awfully Nice

It’s been a long week and once again I’m sorry for the lack of recent posts. On Saturday we had a 40^th birthday picnic in the local park for a friend of Polly. And then on Sunday we had another party, this time for Aunt Megan who was 70 this week.

Megan’s party took place at my brother’s house in Southfields, south London, one of those terraced houses that cost £800 originally but now sells for £450,000 give or take a Victorian fireplace surround or two. The house has a split-level ground floor with a lovely kitchen/diner down a flight of steps. Being a loving brother with two wheelchair bound siblings he has spent a small fortune designing and having made a portable ramp that can cope with the dogleg on the way down.

The party was a great event and friends and family turned out to celebrate. Polly had made a birthday cake made out of 70 chocolate and lemon cup cakes, beautifully presented on a three-tier cake stand decorated with flowers. There was an extensive buffet and plenty of wine and champagne. I enjoyed myself immensely and the boys were thrilled to be loaned digital cameras and asked to be official photographers.

The Cake (photo by 4 yr old S)

Every now and again something unusually nice and surprising happens. On Monday we took the boys to Legoland, Winsor. (No that’s not the nice and surprising thing – we usually go at least once during the summer.) The boys love Legoland and I prefer it to most of the other theme parks in the southeast because the rides appeal particularly to the under 12s. It is however very busy and expensive during peak times such as school holidays and Scrooge like as I am, I begrudge paying the exorbitant entry fees and then spending most of the day queuing 45 minutes at a time for a chance to watch Polly and the boys whiz around a track on a plastic brick-built dragon for 90 seconds. But still, it was the last week of their holiday and they had been good all summer and… well and, sometimes you get pleasure from seeing your children’s excitement and delight at a surprise treat.

We arrived to find cars queuing the entire length of the access road and realised that the park would be extremely busy today. We were aiming to meet up with a friend and her children at midday which seemed an increasingly unlikely happening. Fortunately Legoland has a substantial disabled car parking area. Unfortunately the substantial disabled car parking area was full. We circled the car park several times while I glared at people who seemed to leap from their cars and do handstands and cartwheels before remembering to limp slightly towards the park entrance. (Okay, perhaps I'm being uncharitable but could all those people really be disabled?) Eventually we pulled up behind a car from which a wheelchair was being unloaded. We weren't in a designated parking bay but since at least 50 other cars weren't either we decided to risk it. I took the boys to stand in the entry queue while Polly started chatting to the people unloading their wheelchair, making sure our van wasn't blocking them in any way.

The boys and I joined one of the seven or so lengthy queues to get into the park. It was already 12 o'clock and I was about to reach for my phone to call Anna and say we would be late meeting up with her when I looked up to see her standing one place ahead of us in the same queue. Once we'd had the “What are the odds on that happening” conversation she explained that they were parked in an over-overflow car park so distant she felt it was probably in another county. At that moment Polly arrived grinning like a Cheshire cat and clutching something in her hand.

At full price it costs a fortune to get in to Legoland. A family of 4, 2 children and 2 adults would set you back £122 ($240). Fortunately you can usually pick up a voucher from a magazine or supermarket product that will enable one child to go free. Also, with a proven disabled type person a registered carer can go for free. This brings the price down for our family to a little more reasonable £61 ($120).

Polly gleefully held up 4 shiny yellow tickets. “Look what I've got! Those people in the car in front of us when we parked gave them to me.” “Why?” I asked not unreasonably and with my innate suspicion of 'free' gifts. It turned out that Polly, who can make life long friends with people whilst waiting to cross the road, had been chatting to these nice people about wheelchairs and parking and what have you. In the course of the conversation she offered them a discount voucher she had spare, but the family declined explaining that they were staying at a hotel on an all inclusive deal where as part of the package they'd been given an extra days set of tickets that they couldn't use because they had to travel home tomorrow. Then in a spirit of 'wheelchair users united' they gave Polly the spare tickets. “Here”, they said, “have an ice cream on us.”

We had a lovely time, with the children going on rides, building things and watching shows. The weather was lovely and even the queuing didn't stress me out because we weren't wasting our hard earned pennies on having paid to be there. Result.

So, if you are one of the very nice family who gave us your extra tickets in the overcrowded disabled car park at Legoland on Monday then thank you very much. I hope your random act of kindness is returned to you 10 fold.

A Wheelchair In Wales

Sorry for not posting for a few days; I'm still recuperating from last week. It's a case of two steps forward, one step back at present. The main problem is fatigue. I'm tiring very quicklybut I'm getting there. Now where were we? Oh yes, Wales.

The Pembrokeshire coast is a national park and is spectacularly beautiful. It is a rugged coastline, dotted with sandy bays, caves and rare wildlife. The whole area is littered with medieval castles. When it rains it dissolves the landscape into a melodramatic scene of countless shades of grey. When the sun shines it is glorious, When the sun shines.

Pam's cough got steadily worse and as a result a doctor had to be called out. This proved easier than you might have expected. Within a few hours of being called a doctor arrived to dispense a prescription and that was pretty much it. Over the next few days Pam gradually recovered and our holiday continued on.

The first few days were spent on the beach doing seasidy type things. When it rained (which was often – this being August, Wales and my summer holiday) we retreated to the local leisure centre to take advantage of Wales' 'free swimming for all` policy. In between showers we visited Carew Castle (pronounced Care-ree) which is a a small but spectacular castle ruin where they put on archery exhibitions and demonstrate medieval armoured fighting techniques. I was beginning to feel a bit bubbly in the chest.

I wouldn't normally have worried too much, At home I would have used the cough machine and kept on top of it, but here, without the necessary equipment the strain began to tell. The more I had to cough, the more tired I became and the harder it was to cough. I could feel the heat of infection starting to burn in the base of my right lung. So on the Saturday, once again a doctor was called but somewhat understandably he sucked air through his teeth and said he would ring the nearest A&E department and warn them to expect me.

The nearest hospital was just over 20 miles away and Polly and I arrived mid-afternoon. We were swept through triage and past a large group of waiting patients to a cubical where someone took blood and measured my O² saturation (90% since you ask) and went through the traditional “We'd better keep you in” chat. Nice though they were, there was no way I was letting myself get trapped in a provincial, non-specialist hospital: Before I'd know it I'd have a tracheotomy and a NG tube. No thank you, I'd take the antibiotics and take my chances. Some friends from home were coming to camp nearby and would arrive on Wednesday and they had said they'd bring the cough machine with them.

On our way out we followed exit signs and went through some double doors towards the car park but found the exit blocked because of building works. We turned around but found the double doors we had come through had automatically locked for security reasons. We went back towards the blocked exit and around the corner to the next set of double doors. These too could only be opened with a security code. Tile were trapped in a corridor. Two elderly ladies sat morosely on chairs."You won't get out that way", they told us with grim satisfaction. Polly and I are made of sterner stuff though and planned our escape with cunning. We waited by the locked door and when someone opened it, looking for the loo, we slipped out, hearing the door click locked behind us, and condemning our unwitting rescuer to limbo and two old ladies. As we moved away I swear I heard a voice say "You wont get out that way." (And was that a cackle?)

Back at the holiday house I began to wonder if I'd made a mistake. My lungs were burning and I couldn't stop coughing. Sucking air in was increasingly hard and I was beginning to feel faint and it was difficult to speak. By the following morning I knew I was in trouble. Polly was seriously considering a 500 mile round trip to get the cough machine or us all packing up and going home. And then, out of the blue, 3 days earlier than planned, our friends Stewart and Catherine and their 4 children arrived with the much needed machine. They'd received Polly's text detailing the situation and had promptly come to our aid, despite having no reserved place to pitch their tent. The cough machine made an almost instant improvement to me. It shifted the by now extremely sticky and hardened mucous and I felt instantly much better.

After a couple of days the antibiotics started to work and for the next week I enjoyed my sunshine and showers holiday with my family and friends. We went to fun places like the excellent Folly Farm and the beautiful Tenby. Our day at Tenby was one of the few purely sunny days of the holiday and was wonderful. I sat on a ramp right next to the beach and read while the children paddled and made sandcastles. On our last day we went to Manor Park, an innovative wildlife park where you can walk through the enclosures along side Wallaby's and Lemurs. When we arrived there was torrential rain and lots of people huddled in cagouls so we ate our picnic lunch in the van and made a dash for it when the rain turned to drizzle. It alternated rain and sun all afternoon but by the end of the visit I was starting to feel feverish.

We stopped at my mum's in Bristol again on the way home which was nice but I was definitely wilting. I made it home and then spent the next 36 hours in bed. The rest you know.

I'm too tired to edit this now so I'm sorry about grammer, spelling, coherence and so on.

Thanks for reading.

The Wheelchair Goes West

I awoke this morning feeling so much better that I wondered if I'd just been making afuss these last few days. Even when I sat up the resulting coughing fit was relatively mild and I was able to transfer to the wheelchair before needing a nebuliser and the Cough Assist machine. Offering up a prayer of thanks for the inventors of the antibiotics and steroids I've been taking I settled down for my first cup of coffee of the day and to watch a glorious day for the British Olympic team. Just for a while we can feel like a proper sporting nation. My temperature is a bit up and down in line with my consumption of Paracetamol and I'm tiring very quickly but essentially I'm better. So how did the situation come about?

We went on holiday to Wales. To be more precise we went on holiday to Pembrokeshire in the far south west of the country, to stay in a holiday house my parents bought back in the late 1970s at Freshwater East. The house is part of a holiday complex and is completely unremarkable but the setting is wonderful. Only a few hundred yards away is a beautiful, unspoiled, child-friendly sandy beach. It is a perfect bucket and spade, paddling and body boarding sea-side bay. The holiday village is a collection of some 500 white fronted, virtually identical terraced houses mostly grouped together in cul-de-sacs of 15. Groups of young children roam freely, watched over by, but generally unsupervised by, a host of parental eyes, enjoying a freedom of play rarely enjoyed back home. The children have grown up together, though only meeting up for a couple of weeks a year, they form their alliances and establish pecking orders and fall into patterns of friendship as though they have only been a part for a few weeks. New children come and go as families arrive and depart like a tide. Our boys, as you might imagine, adore the place.

The four of us plus Pam, Polly's mum, and our luggage had been packed into our van Tetris style and had to be driven the 250 miles to Pembrokeshire. Because space was so limited compromises had to be made with the amount of baggage we could take. We took the bare minimum of wet and dry weather clothing and necessary equipment such as the battery charger and BiPap but we left the Nebuliser and Cough Assist behind because I only need them when I'm ill and I hadn't had a cough for months and months. The odds of needing them were remote and the Cough Assist is a bulky piece of kit, about the size of an old style portable television. Space in the van was very limited.

We are blessed with two children who don't get travel sick on long journeys. Ensconced in the back with a stack of comics and a Nintendo DS they happily passed the first stage to Bristol where we had an unscheduled stop at my mum's because we had forgotten the keys to the holiday house and had to pick up the spare set. The boys were thrilled to see Granny and for a chance to run around her garden while Polly, Pam and I enjoyed a hot drink and chat. Afterwards we set off again, in glorious sunshine, and crossed over the Severn Bridge in to Wales. We stopped again at a retail park at Sarn to buy school shoes at the Clarke's outlet store and have something to eat. I bought a jacket from a discount store and Pam said she'd pop in to another shop to buy a sun hat. 30 seconds later the heavens opened and it began to pour with a drenching rain.

Back in the van, we rejoined the M4 and continued west. Then Pam began to cough.

To be continued. . .

Go West, Young Man

We are off to Wales on holiday tomorrow. This will have an effect on the blog for a a couple of weeks because getting Wi-Fi where we a staying is a bit tricky. I don't want to get technical on you but essentially unless the sheep are properly aligned and Mrs Jones the farmers wife has her sheets on the line you've got no chance of a signal. Please do check back here occasionally and normal service will be resumed as soon as I have recovered from the trench foot and hypothermia associated with a British summer holiday. Don't be surprised if you hear about unseasonably cold and wet weather in the south west corner of Wales over the next few weeks.

Thank you for reading. Have a great summer.

School's Out

We have wound down to the end of term here. We've had sports day and the Nursery concert, the school disco and end of term reports. The last day of term is upon us.

Sports day seemed to consist entirely of relay races involving hoops and jumping over small hurdles. If the London 2012 Olympics has a 'Getting Dressed As A Waiter And Jumping Over Small Plastic Hurdles Whilst Carrying A Tray Of Cups Half Full Of Water' then Team GB are a dead cert for a Gold. The best bit was the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom race where (in relay of course) the child athletes crawled through tunnels, donned a hat, flicked a skipping rope like a whip, all the while being chased by an infant on a space hopper who was doing an earnest impression of a rolling boulder.

The Nursery concert had a horticultural theme, with all the children wearing paper hats in the shape of flowers. S wore a hat with an enormous sunflower type thing that totally obscured the poor child behind him who has therefore been effectively eliminated from the photographic history of this years nursery class. I can imagine his parents scanning the dozens of digital images taken and wondering if their darling one was actually in attendance. All the songs featured a flower, vegetable or life-cycle of an insect. All very sweet. (Except have you ever really thought about the rhyme 'Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home`?)

I am happy to report that the boys school reports were excellent The worse that was said of M was in the section dealing with Sports and Fitness where his footballing prowess was described thus: 'M is a team player with adequate ball skills', which I think may be the very definition of the phrase 'damning with faint praise'.

So school's out and the long summer holiday begins. I will let you know how they are going.

The Honeymoon Story (Part Two)

In which the police are needed.

Polly drove the hired Ford Escort van north on the M1 and then the M6 to Cumbria and the Lake District. The English lakes are a place of unsurpassed beauty and timeless charm. That crumpled corner of the country has inspired poets such as Wordsworth and authors like Beatrix Potter and, my favourite, Arthur Ransome. I had several happy family holidays there as a child and I was longing to show Polly the region. We were booked into a hotel in Bowness on Windermere just a few minutes from the edge of the districts largest lake.

Our hotel had a wheelchair accessible room in an annex at the back of the older main house. The dining room had views over the lake while our room overlooked the mature grounds. Unsurprisingly, given the previous nights experience, the first thing I did on arrival was check that my wheelchair fitted through the en suite bathroom door. It did. The room was unspectacular but comfortable.

We spent the first few days visiting some of the dozens of meres, waters, and tarns (the Lake District only actually has one 'lake`, Bassenthwaite Lake). Polly insisted we visit

The World of Beatrix Potter, an homage to all 23 of her tales, where we could see Mrs Tiggy-winkle in her kitchen and Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor's garden. (My sympathies were firmly with Mr McGregor. That rabbit should have been road-kill. Blue jacket or not.) On another day we visited the Steamboat Museum where I was delighted to see the original Amazon from Swallows and Amazons. (You will have to had read the books to understand the excitement I felt. Polly hadn't so to her it was just an old wooden dinghy.)

About a week into our holiday we de

cided to visit Kendal, home of the famous Mint Cake, a confection so sweet you get tooth decay just by looking at it. We took the busy A591 out of Bowness, a multi-lane road that rises over the low fells. As we came round a steep bend the van suddenly juddered to a halt, cars behind us slammed on their brakes and swerved around us, tyres screeched and horns blared. Polly desperately tried to start the engine again but to no avail. A coach hurtled round the bend, missing us by inches, the driver's ashen face flashing by mouthing obscenities, along with forty terrified passengers. “We can't stay here,” I shouted above the roar of traffic. “Oh, really?” replied my beloved. “ I thought now would be a good time for our picnic.” Before I had time to remind her that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, a lorry sounded it's air horn as it narrowly missed us and we both realised that we were in serious danger. Polly had flicked the hazard warning lights on but they were as effective as a match in a blizzard. We were facing up hill so couldn't roll forward onto the grass verge, and

because of the traffic screaming up behind us we dare not drift backwards. “Any ideas?” I asked.

You must remember this was long before mobile phones were commonplace so the only practical thing to do was find a land line somewhere. We hadn't passed a phone box on our way out of Bowness and there wasn't one in sight a head of us. About a quarter of a mile away on our right, across the busy road, was a farmhouse. It was our only hope. Polly very carefully slid out of the van and, leaping straight out of the frying pan, dashed across the road, ignoring the flattened hedgehogs as she ran. I spent a terrifying 10 minutes, bracing myself for impact at any moment, waiting for her to return and praying whoever lived in the farmhouse wasn't out hunting sheep or worrying sheepdogs or whatever it is farmers in that area do for a living. Eventually she returned and, standing on the verge and shouting through my window, said she had phoned the police and that hadn't she been good not to accept the farmer's kind offer of a cup of tea. In the distance a siren could just be heard above the sound of brakes and horns.

The police car came to a halt right behind us, lights flashing, and two women police officers climbed out. I was hugely relieved to have a buffer between me and the flow of speeding traffic,. While Polly explained to one of officers the situation and how she had risked life and limb to call them, the other one looked daggers at me. You could see her thinking what an oaf I was, sitting there while my wife ran around sorting things out. She tapped on the door and stuck her head through the window. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, making the 'sir' sound as if it were another way saying 'you slug'. “Could you please get out of the vehicle and join your wife on the verge.” “I can't,” I said about to explain. “Get out of the vehicle, sir. You can't stay there, it's dangerous.” Again, I tried to explain. “I'd love to get out, but. . .” “Out now!” “I will as soon as you move your police car back so we can open our van door and get my wheelchair out so I can transfer into it.” There was a pause while the officer rapidly reassessed the situation. “I'm so sorry, sir. You stay there and we'll sort it out. Liz! Move the car back down the hill. The gentleman can't get out of his vehicle. I don't think it's safe for him to get into his wheelchair.” You could see Liz do a double take and realise I wasn't a complete chauvinist slob. The two officers backed away as if the van might burn them and leapt into action. They placed safety cones around us and contacted a garage to fetch a tow truck.

A while later we were towed up the hill and off the main road. The mechanic diagnosed the problem within seconds. We had run out of petrol. We gave up on Kendal and went for a cup of tea instead.

There were five more days of our honeymoon to go. We were looking forward to a pleasant few days. The only thing Polly had her heart set on was a visit to Lakeland Plastics. I couldn't see any reason not to go. It was a decision I would come to regret.

The Honeymoon Story (Part One)

In which a Swiss Army knife is needed.

The first night of your honeymoon is supposed to be memorable, and believe me Polly's and mine certainly was. If you've been following the tale of our wedding day then you will know that we had both been sent to be covered in confetti at an event called London Lights. Afterwards we were driven to our flat where we met up with my best man Kevin and his partner Harvey who had been unloading the huge pile of wedding presents and cafetieres.

The story continues. . .

In those long agodays I used a manual wheelchair for everyday use but had a high powered out door electric wheelchair for whizzing to the shops and such like. We had hired a small van for the duration of the honeymoon and Kevin and Harvey helped us load the heavy chair in to it. I made the, by today's standard easy, transfer to the passenger seat and we were off. Polly did not yet know where we were spending our wedding night so I directed us through South London towards Wimbledon.

Polly grew up a few miles from Wimbledon common and had spent many happy times there. On the edge of the common is an area called Cannizaro Park, named for the house that has stood there in one form or another since the 18^th Century. When Polly was a girl the house was a rather twee nursing home and she could see

residents taking tea on the veranda from the house's now public gardens. She often wondered what it was like inside the grand building. In the late 1980s the house was converted into a fine country hotel and this was where

we were heading.

Our little Ford Escort van pulled into the car park and found a space between a BMW and a Mercedes and we made our way into the hotel. Dressed in our best going away outfits we didn't look too out of place as we were led to our room but both felt that any second someone would demand to know what we thought we were doing there. Our room was lovely, with an en suite bathroom, and their was a bottle of Champagne waiting for us. We couldn't spend long in there because we had a table booked in the restaurant. So, grabbing our bottle of Champagne, we headed back downstairs.

The restaurant was silver service and when our main course arrived and as two waiters dramatically lifted the silver domes from the plates I watched Polly struggle not to say “Ta-dah”. The meal was great and we realized how hungry we were having not managed more than a mouthful at the reception what with the speeches and the catching up with friends and relatives. It was late by the time we got back to our room and we were both tired.

I went into the bathroom and was relieved to find the wheelchair just squeezed through the doorway without scratching too much paint in the process. A few minutes later, face scrubbed and teeth brushed, I turned the chair around and prepared to return to the room and hopefully some nuptials. Unfortunately although the chair squeezed in it wouldn't squeeze out. The door opened inwards and was prevented from hitting the wall by a small rubber doorstop. On the way in the doorstop gave just enough to allow the chair in but going out was another matter. I tried, I really tried, but on the first night of my honeymoon I was firmly stuck in the bathroom while my beloved changed in to something appropriate for the occasion.

I called for Polly who came and pushed at the door trying to get the doorstop to give enough to let me out. It was useless and after several minutes of trying she had to concede defeat. “I suppose we could sleep in the bath,” I said. “There's a great big comfy bed in there. You can sleep in the bath, I know where I'm sleeping.”

After a few more fruitless moments of increasingly frustrating pushing and shoving Polly had a brainwave. She got up and found her handbag and I heard her rummaging through it. She returned waving a two inch red Swiss Army knife. Somewhere among the serrated blades, pointy things and stone removers was a small screwdriver. The rubber doorstop was was unscrewed and at last I was set free. Polly clicked the knife shut and I followed to the bedroom.

In the morning we were off to the English Lake District for two weeks and by now it was past midnight and we were both exhausted. Polly, armed and beautiful looked at me, smiled and asked, “So, what should we do now?” I looked at her, I looked at the bed. “Sleep?” I said hopefully. “Oh, thank goodness for that,” she said and promptly fell asleep.

Holiday Arrangements

We have been planning our holiday; we're going kayaking up the Amazon river in boats we've made ourselves from hollowed out logs using traditional methods and tools such as the jaw bone of a Jaguar we've hunted with blowpipes. We will be camping on sandbanks and only eating food we've gathered for ourselves. Oh no, sorry, that was last year. We're going to Wales. My mum has a little house in a holiday village at Freshwater East near Pembroke. It's very nice, just a couple of minutes walk to a child friendly beach, and surrounded by more castles than supermarkets.

The downstairs of the house is accessible with the judicious use of a wooden ramp custom made by our friend, Martin. There is a downstairs bathroom and a bed in the corner of the lounge come dining room come kitchen. When it stops raining it is a lovely place to be.

Of course, going on holiday, like most aspects of my life requires advanced planning. In the past Polly has done the work of two carers, getting me up and putting me to bed, as well as the usual day to day care which, because we are away from home and our usual facilities, is that much more difficult. A few years a go we hit upon the idea of hiring in homecare while we were in Wales. Easier said than done, but we managed it (well to to be honest Polly did) and it made a huge difference. It cost a fortune but at least Polly actually got to have a holiday. And then, in conversation with a social worker, we learned that we could temporarily transfer our 'care package` to Wales at no cost to us. Yippee! Last year it worked beautifully and the Welsh agency went above and beyond the call of duty. So this year we thought we'd do the same. Simple. Of course it wasn't.

Social services suffered a kind of collective amnesia. “Are you sure that's what happened last year?” And “Er. . .So how do we arrange that then?” And “When exactly will you be moving to Wales? We'll miss you.” And eventually, “Ah, Polly, we've arranged care provision for your son... Your husband? Are you sure? Really? I just assumed. . .”

In the mean time – it's half term and so the boys are at home. Just after lunch today S, who was sat next to me, was concentrating very hard and counting, “23. . . 24. . . 25. . . 26. . . 27.” I asked him what it was that he was counting. He looked at me in surprise, rolling his eyes at my ignorance. “Numbers, Daddy. I'm counting numbers.” He sighed. “1... 2... 3...”