Low life
Wheel meet again
Jeffrey Bernard
Last Monday, the Times devoted two pages to Disabled Living. There was a slightly ridiculous and absurd piece called `Dressed for a smooth ride' and subtitled `Finding suitable and fashionable clothing for life in a wheelchair is not as simple as it sounds.' The author stated that people who are confined to a wheelchair are as interested in fashion as anyone else. No, they aren't. It is not a preoccupation with me anyway.
A Barry Kaighin, 34, of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, was working for the CBS record company when he crashed his Ital- ian Laverda motorbike seven years ago. The accident left him paralysed from the waist down and he talks about the fact that clothes are not a problem at the time of an accident but that they become a problem. What interests me is that the Times, like any other paper, has to give us not only Mr Kaighin's age and address, but has to tell us what make of motorbike he was riding when he crashed. It goes without saying, I sup- pose, that a Laverda is one of the poshest bikes in the world. But I suppose the piece is of great interest to anyone collecting a list of the names of the residents of Wallingford who possess Laverda motorbikes.
Fourteen months ago, when I came round from the operation to amputate my right leg, my tears flowed, I thought of sui- cide and realised all at once that life had no meaning. I then hit upon the idea of counting the number of times that disabled people living in Wallingford could be men- tioned in national newspapers during the next 14 months. I have been smiling and joking ever since and I can tell you that life in a wheelchair can be tremendously inter- esting as well as fun.
On the same page as the Disabled Living article there is an advertisement for 'spe- cialists in easy and level access showers for the elderly and less able'. They ask us to visit their oh-so-modern showroom which is, would you believe, on the edge of the Peak District town of Chapel-en-le-Frith, near Buxton in Derbyshire. How extraordi- nary that they have the nerve to mention the word access anywhere in their advertise- ment. Admittedly I have seen a constant stream of wheelchairs heading north past my flat, but I assumed that they were all headed for the Middlesex Hospital up the road and not the swinging, easily-accessible Peak District town of Chapel-en-le-Frith.
There is also an advertisement whereby a trust for handicapped people says it pro- vides love, laughter and opportunity and that we can all go on a pilgrimage holiday of a lifetime to Lourdes. For a second my heart gave a jump as I mis-read Lourdes for Lords and I thought of being taken there to see the West Indies play cricket.
Another advertisement aimed at the dis- abled caught my eye which is for a new gadget that banishes Menstrual Misery. The word 'gadget', which can include any construction from the safety pin to the hydrogen bomb, has me worried and my morbid imagination working overtime. Another advertisement offers `Accommo- dation in carefully converted flint cottages on working farm with access to young ani- mals'. I don't like the idea of being on a working farm and I wonder how many wheelchairs it would take to pull a four-fur- row plough. About 1000. Why the age of the animals on this farm should be of any significance I do not know but at least, since they are young, it is great news for us politically incorrect cripples to have lash- ings and oodles of calves' liver and sucking pig for supper.
But last week I had an experience even more harrowing than having a bath in the Peak District and that was going to a party, a literary party to boot, only made bearable by the fact that I was taken to it at Hatchards in Piccadilly by the lovely Jean Marsh. We go back 30 years and I have only seen her once since then, but that is another story and a good one too. But if you are confined to a wheelchair, never go to a party unless you can get your back to the wall. Even then you are going to be half- surrounded and held captive by a load of idiots talking down to you in both senses of the word and asking silly questions.
Laurie Lee, the lamb cutlet bandit, was being escorted by the amazingly brave Clare Francis and he offered to buy me a drink, which he always does at parties where it costs him nothing. At one literary lunch a few years ago, I sat next to him while he stuffed his pockets with unwrapped lamb cutlets which he later admitted to having taken home, rinsed under a cold tap and then put in a deep freeze for later. I would have thought that the royalties from Cider with Rosie would enable him to buy a brand new cutlet or even the entire animal itself, but I know that a writer's life is terribly hard.
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