Ian wondered if we may have said yes to a Belgium cat – or any variation of cat/wedding/Belgians ,but the next morning the doorbell went and there they were with a wheelchair – Hoorah!
Within the first 20 seconds I drew the first blood – mine unfortunately as I wheeled myself into broom handle. Not too bad – but enough for me to spend the day looking as if I had dribbled tomato ketchup – not a look I was aiming for. I then managed to wedge myself into a corner and unable to reverse out. As I was randomly bumping off walls and doors, Ian told me I looked like I was playing solo “coches locos” (bumper cars) and that it might be easier to ‘drive’ if I imagined I was a tractor reversing a trailer. No doubt excellent advice had I been a tractor driver.
The other thought that I had was remembering when Dad was in hospital last year recovering from the removal of his brain tumour – and one day when I was visiting we ‘lost’ him. Somehow Dad had taken himself off around the ward in his wheelchair – apparently much more adept than I am. And this was a time when Dad was still getting confused as to who I was so quite remarkable really. I realise quite how remarkable now I am trying to negotiate corners etc.
We then took our first trip out into the village. Because it is such a hassle to get the car out for such short journey’s I’ve not been out – however it was great to be able to get to the health centre without messing around with the car. Ian pushed part of the way and I self –propelled the rest. However we did stop for a small ‘debate’ as to whether he thought pushing me with one hand over cobbles at what appeared to be 50 miles an hour seemingly out of control, was a responsible way to push ones already slightly damaged wife, and he, in turn, wondered if my screaming ‘watch the car/house/curb’ was completely justified (which it was).
On Friday night we went to a birthday party. It was a surprise party – which was lucky really as we didn’t know the surprise bit and could quite easily have let the cat out of the bag and for it to have been a not-such-a-surprise party.. We didn’t take the wheelchair as the party was in a house by the castle and I had a horrible vision of doing something similar to the cresta run back into the village. My theory was yet again proved correct – get 3 spanish people together and a guitar will appear. There were 10 people there when we arrived with three guitars and a couple of bongo drums. I should have bought my guitar – I am sure that everyone would be delighted!
Yesterday we took the chair out again and went to one of the bars. The ‘quick drink’ developed and we spent a pleasant afternoon – there was quite a group of us around a table and people stood around the table. I hopped off to use the loo (we took the crutches as well as the chair) and my almost-worse nightmare was realised. I didn’t pull anything off the wall, but the chain came away in my hand and I could not reach up to put it back. So I hopped back to the table with the chain discretely in hand to give to Ian to sort out, who was unfortunately choosing this moment to be particularly dim and thought I was giving him a present. Quite why I would give him something resembling a toilet chain, I have no idea, but whilst Ian was waving it around wondering why I had given it to him, he gave everyone the opportunity to see what I had done – and as he went off to fix it, the bar erupted into more laughter. So much for trying to be discrete.
However – all in all the wheelchair is a Great Success!