大象传媒

Using a wheelchair in my house is a bit like eating custard cream biscuits for breakfast, it is thought to be unhealthy and uncouth. Also they get funny about what it does to the carpets.

I can walk, you see, in a way. Not in a productive way, I can鈥檛 carry much besides crutch handles, or stand in the kitchen. The fact it takes me double time to get to my bedroom means the cry of 鈥淚 forgot what I sodding came up here for鈥� holds a bit more resonance for me than for other absent minded family members. It wastes an entire episode of Hollyoaks for a start.

The importance people place on just the semblance of walking is interesting. That is to say, what we do kinda looks like walking, people will tell us it is walking, sometimes they applaud, I think I got a box of Quality Street off a physio once. But it isn鈥檛 walking as they know it.

Humans walk for a reason, they walked to hunt things, gather things, a bit later on they walked to Rome, Yenan and Bristol, as is my understanding. People move not for the sake of moving but to get somewhere, because it puts them in control of their surroundings. That is walking. If you can鈥檛 get close to that on two feet you have the right to at least consider four wheels. Failing that, some kind of sedan arrangement would suffice.

When I got my first powerchair (ten years almost to the day) it was the latest in a line of mobility aids, only difference being I thought it was well cool. It was easy for me to associate it with freedom, rather than resignation. Like Kanye West said in that song he ripped from Daft Punk 鈥淏etter, Faster, Stronger鈥�. Or something,