While doing a bit of a spring clean, we found an old Embassy ashtray. No small item this, but one which would take pride of place on even the biggest pub table (from which is was lifted) back in the day, and it made me think about how the smoking ban has contributed to a changing in social attitudes.
Even with my sympathy for the plight of smokers ( I smoked myself until seven years ago), it's hard not to see the benefits in the ban. Not coming home reeking of fags after a night out is one, or though as parents of a young child, we don't have nights out anyway. Then there are the health implications, again something felt keenly as a parent, but also as someone with spinal cord injury.
The affects of smoking when one has an SCI can be catastrophic- smoking is bad for your circulation, thus putting you at an increased rick of developing pressure sores and problems with feet as well as reducing your ability to heal after any dings or scratches on the paralysed section of your body. Smoking is also disastrous for the respiratory system, a particular negative for those with higher level injuries who are not able to control the muscles of their diaphragm fully and so have an increased risk of developing pneumonia.
But yet I have met countless people with SCI who describe smoking as one of the few pleasures still left to them, particularly if they are recent injuries.
My hope is that they would discover in time that more pleasures are available, and perhaps think about maximising their possibility of enjoying them by knocking the cigarettes on the head.
But then I still feel a little spark of nostalgia towards a previous time. A time when ashtrays were so big that six people could simultaneously use the same one for a whole night, each with their own individual cigarette resting place, and still struggle to fill it. A more decadent time? A time of plenty? A time of innocence? Or just a morning of hacking coughs over breakfast and a laundry basket that sets off the smoke alarm.
Still, the kids love it, eh?
Even with my sympathy for the plight of smokers ( I smoked myself until seven years ago), it's hard not to see the benefits in the ban. Not coming home reeking of fags after a night out is one, or though as parents of a young child, we don't have nights out anyway. Then there are the health implications, again something felt keenly as a parent, but also as someone with spinal cord injury.
The affects of smoking when one has an SCI can be catastrophic- smoking is bad for your circulation, thus putting you at an increased rick of developing pressure sores and problems with feet as well as reducing your ability to heal after any dings or scratches on the paralysed section of your body. Smoking is also disastrous for the respiratory system, a particular negative for those with higher level injuries who are not able to control the muscles of their diaphragm fully and so have an increased risk of developing pneumonia.
But yet I have met countless people with SCI who describe smoking as one of the few pleasures still left to them, particularly if they are recent injuries.
My hope is that they would discover in time that more pleasures are available, and perhaps think about maximising their possibility of enjoying them by knocking the cigarettes on the head.
But then I still feel a little spark of nostalgia towards a previous time. A time when ashtrays were so big that six people could simultaneously use the same one for a whole night, each with their own individual cigarette resting place, and still struggle to fill it. A more decadent time? A time of plenty? A time of innocence? Or just a morning of hacking coughs over breakfast and a laundry basket that sets off the smoke alarm.
Still, the kids love it, eh?
Hello Tim...Funny how attitudes change towards the smokes ...Golden Virginia was your "baccy" of choice if my memory serves or was it Drum. Glad to say with the arrival of my son I was coerced into giving up too...unfortunately I took up cake..not the Chris Morris kind either.
Keep up the good work I only managed to type Tim Ru into Google and your name pops up-fame at last fella. I like the 'currently listening to' box ,a nice addition to the blog,sort of like looking at the books on someone's shelf to gauge character.
best wishes .
mick.
Dear Tim
I just wanted to write to thank you for your most entertaining column and the wonderful memories it has brought flooding back for me.
I hope you don't mind, but your column has made me want to write and share these memories with you (I suppose in a hope of offering inspiration - although you have an amazing inspirational spirit of your own which shines through in your column).
I was the Rosalie of your column, with a wheelchair bound mother, and it is in this vein that I write.
During my birth my Mum's back decided it wasn't playing any more and they whisked me away and Mum to theatre. After operating, the doctors confirmed Mum was paralysed from the waste down and would never walk again. I think you would agree, not an ideal position for a 28 year old married woman who had just given birth to her seventh child (a child who didn't even have the grace to feel any guilt for what she did to her mother - but then we shared a special bond of I crippled you and you loved me despite it).
So there was Dad, a welding lecturer, with a wife in hospital, paralysed, and seven kids ranging in ages from 7 to zero to provide for and look after (and a house they'd just bought that proved to be a project the equivalent of the fourth road bridge).
Mum's time in hospital was not only difficult for her, she made it difficult for the doctors. Mum challenged the doctors' patience, their abilities and more often than not their authority. Never more so than at Christmas. The consultant wouldn't let her home to be with her family - she may bring back GERMS! Mum was distraught, especially on Christmas Day when the same consultant made his rounds with HIS children in tow. Mum being Mum, said if his kids germs were good enough then so were her kids - and that if his kids got to spend Christmas with her, then by God her kids better be allowed up or there would be hell to pay. Not very often a consultant in those days backed down. Dad got to visit with the all the kids (she got to hold me for the first time - 11 months to the day since I was born and finally get her arms around all her family again at the same time).
The Christmas visit made her realise how much she needed her family and more importanly just how much they needed her. Mum watched Dad getting thinner and thinner, working, dinner and time with the kids, visit mum, time with the kids, get the kids to bed, up work.... and She PUSHED to get home. The consultant told her,
"McRitchie the only way you're going home is if you can move that toe" (have you ever seen the John Wayne film, Wings of Eagles (1957) - if not you should watch it together).
Mum concentrated and concentrated and with sweat dripping from every pore of her being she swore the toe flicked - she buzzed, she buzzed, the doctor came. "Well McRitchie your just going to have to do it again - I didn't see it!). As it was she'd expended so much energy making it happen she used the last of it to tell the consultant he was lucky she couldn't walk or he would be a dead man at that point (I think I'm putting it rather more politely than she did). Glad to say it was the beginning of the end of her hospital stay.
Mum was in hospital for a year but Dad's only comment regarding this period was, one night he had to walk through the head injuries unit to visit Mum in her ward. He saw a young comotose car crash victim his family distraught around his bed and Dad felt ashamed. He realised his wife's legs might not be working but he did not have to cope with the pain of the family he just witnessed. He vowed never to feel sorry for himself again (and I can bear witness that he never has, despite the trials that life has thrown his way - having 7 kids).
After Mum came home she got one of those little 3 wheeled electric powered invalid cars (probably before your time, a bit like a miniature Reliant Robin - death traps by all accounts). Dad, friends and family built a garage for Mum's latest wheels.
Dad & Uncle Charlie decided they should give it a test drive for her. It wasn't exactly a speed machine. charlie was driving with Dad running alongside, advising Uncle Charlie until he ran into a lampost - should have been watching the road!
Another time Dad persuaded Mum to let him drive, with Mum in the passenger seat. Worked great until they broke down at traffic lights on a Saturday afternoon at Parkhead Cross. Unfortunately for Dad the traffic lights were out and the police were directing the traffic. Seeing this poor disabled man in the broken down invalid car he decided to help. As Dad, had no driving licence and should not have been driving the invalid car, he had to sit and pretend HE was paralysed while the policman gave him a push start! Mortified and relieved to get away the car cut out again at the next set of lights, again with a policeman directing traffic. Once again he was crippled and needed a push. It was the only time my Dad did anything illegal in his life - what were the odds). Needless to say Mum never let him forget that one and Dad never got behind the wheel of her invalid car again!
Dad & Mum took advantage of the kindess of Celtic in allowing wheelchair users a pitch side view of the football. They enjoyed a few hours out every second Saturday together (probably where they were going when the invalid car broke down!). On one match day, there was scaffolding up on one of the stands and a Rangers fan had climbed up to get a better view. Unfortunately, Rangers scored, the fan forgot where he was, jumped up cheering only to fall, landing right on Mum's collar bone. She reckoned if she'd been standing he would would probably have broken her back. It was the one time she said "Thank God I was in a wheelchair".
Being so young, I can't remember Mum in the wheelchair, but I do remember opening her bedroom door and seeing the wheelchair and her comode - as I guess at that point we didn't have a downstairs bathroom. (I didn't know it was a comode until many years later).
My oldest brother's fondest memories (and one of Mum's too) was when he was eight and giving his wheelchair bound mother some lip. She exploded but he ran up the stairs laughing and chanting "Can't get me, can't get me".
"Oh you bloody think so..."
She wheeled to the bottom of the stairs, got on the floor and then, slowly, with her back to him, started using her arms to lift herself one stair at a time. He was laughing until she got half way up and then a bit of doubt started to creep in. She kept climbing, and climbing and got to the top of the stairs! fortunately for my brother, by that time, Mum was so knackered by the climb she'd no energy left to even kiss him never mind give him what he was due for his cheek. But Mum was mobile and proved she could climb any mountain (and her oldest son never gave her lip again the rest of her life - his hero).
I can remember mum's first steps, both legs supported by calipers. I didn't realise Mum was tall until that point. In fact she was nearly as tall as Dad! What a discovery! I remember everyone laughing and screaming and Mum & Dad both laughing and nearly crying at the same time (and that I was laughing because Mum walked like a robot. Dad couldn't do that. I was impressed).
Then Mum went one better, she got rid of one caliper, sort of swing walking the free leg and swing walking the calipered leg!
I can just imagine the two of them lying in bed tring to figure out how Mum could dump the other caliper - she complained it was bloody heavy and it was really tiring to lug the thing about. Then she got rid of the other caliper, it's substitute, fashioned by my inventive father, thick orange nylon rope, tied in a loop with a piece of rubber at 2 ends (one for the foot and one as a handle). It was BRILLIANT. Mum could swing her sort of working leg and then lift the other non-working leg with the rope.
When Mum sat down, the seven of us used to fight over the rope, nearly killing Mum in the process, with the victor, step-lift, step-lift, step-lifting all about the living room with the six others imitating in a line behind them. We even lined up behind mum, mimicing her "mad mechanics" as she went. (Not quite snow white and the seven dwarfs but was a fairy tale come true for us all never the less). It was even better than playing with the wheelchair that some bugger took away.
By the time I was four, even the rope was gone and Mum was walking. The doctors begged and pleaded with her to come to the hospital to let them do more tests, as every known medical test proved that my mother could not walk, no signal going through or something but she was walking and they wanted to know how! It wasn't that my Mum was selfish towards the needs of medical science (and while she adored her GPs and the consultant at the hospital) it was just that she had a husband and seven young children to look after and just didn't have the time.
Mum's whole life, even each time they tested her, she still should not be walking but somehow despite everything known to medical science she was walking somehow. By the time Mum was sixty her strongest leg started to lose power and without warning would stop working, crashing Mum to the floor. I joked Mum was a secret drinker and was shaming the family falling down drunk in the street like that. The doctors said it was only a matter of time before she was back in the wheelchair as whatever method my Mum was employing to make her legs support her and actually look like she was using her legs to walk was obviously starting to fail. I told her I was too young to remember her time in the chair and it was only right I got a turn at pushing her around and not being a driver myself, we reckoned we could have a laugh with that when the time came.
I read your column and think of Rosalie and what a lucky little girl she is and how special you and your wife are. As children we don't see our parent's disabilities but only Mum and Dad, those incredible people who are always there for us and inspire us our whole life.
I'm sure Rosalie, like me, as she grows, will live in awe of and be inspired by you both, especially as she gets older and sees how amazingly you have both coped with the curve ball that life has thrown your way.
If you ever get the chance, make Rosalie a loop, with a strong nylon rope, with 2 bits of plastic for the foot and a handle and get her to try step-lifting about the living room. It will forever be my favourite toy and maybe one day it could be your favourite toy too.
You are an amazing family and I wish you all the best and will continue to enjoy your column.
Regards
Mel Kelly
Hi Tim - love your Times column which I usually read sat at my desk sipping on a Starbucks cappuccino. I had a chuckle at today's column - our daughter Rosie is 5 so I empathize with Rosalie's interest in folding chairs/sweet wrappers. Rosie managed to sit through about an hour of Hannah Montana before she started launching herself around the cinema (I loved the film though!)
Al