I hope you had a good Christmas. I had a lovely time. Seven people squashed into our tiny house including two small boys and a septuagenarian with a taste for comfort having to make do with our ageing settee. But we all got on. No one refused food or got poisoned with my experimental stuffing. The family row was very high level – about spirituality and capitalism. I didn’t join in.
I came down on Boxing Day to find one person reading Chomsky, the eight year-old writing his journal, the youngest counting everything (he’s five and only gets to 100), and coffee being made without me having to beg.
The little one shares hip joint problems with me. He’s had five operations in his short life so beats me by three! He’s had miniature versions of the same equipment I have and been plastered, unable to walk, for half his life. But he, like many children, is amazingly resilient and cheerful. We have a lot to discuss.
He’s very pleased he can use his legs again. But months of physio lie ahead and the pins have to be removed from his reshaped hips – yet another operation. But he copes better than me.
“Why are you still using sticks, Christine, I’m not?” Well I’d like to know that too. Truth is, he is on an upward journey and I’m on very flat plateau. The sticks are mine for life probably.
The kids love my sticks – my spare ones (fortunately one each) turn into guns, telescopes and jumping aids. They love my scooter too. I’m on their eyelevel for conversation and if they’re lucky they get to sound my horn. I don’t get sympathy from them – I get pride! As in: “has your granny got wheels AND sticks? No, I thought not….”
But creating Xmas on sticks is not easy.
My kitchen is tiny. So, no space for seating and I have limited capacity for standing, all cooking prep has to be paced and planned well in advance. Shopping was mostly online. Great turkey crown from Waitrose. Stollen from Sainsburys was not available so they sent substitutes – cake and mince pies – which we already had a mountain of, so we had to have a pre-xmas sugar binge with neighbours. Poor us….
I can’t carry heavy food, or anything really, with sticks in both hands so, like most disabled people, I have to do a lot of logistical planning. And I depend on others helping a lot.
Me and the kids invent things that could help – sticks that are multi-tools and adapt with one click in the handle into – litter pickers, trowels, secateurs, blender blades. (The kids wanted samurai swords as well!) None of it has been invented yet.
But why hasn’t it? How can we send robots to walk on the moon when no one is even producing mobility scooters with waterproof controls or solar batteries?
If I had, for example, a kitchen seat that turned into something to carry food, or a way of getting heavy pots from my oven, or tins from top shelves, my life would be easier. Just sticks that stood up by themselves when you sat down would be wonderful.
In the seventies there was a movement to use the expertise of arms producers, like Lucas Aerospace, to make socially useful products instead of things to kill people. They made improved wheelchairs and more efficient kidney dialysis machines. Why can’t that happen now?
Our local neighbourhood arms company, Instro Precision, might help. I could send two little boys who would explain it all.
Do you think they’d listen?
Christine is a founder member of disability campaign group Access Thanet
