January 2010 Archives

A small piece in today's Times in response to the government's plan to produce a guide to fatherhood for dads-to-be.

Do I think it's a good idea in principal? Yes. Will they be accused of 'nanny-state- meddling? Yes.

But here's the thing. It's usually the same people that level accusations of social meddling at government who then shout loudest that something should have been done when there are cases of abuse that have not been prevented by social services, or when pensioners die alone in the cold. Or complain about absent fathers and single mums destroying family values.

I think we have to accept that, in the absence of more traditional mechanisms of social care and education, the government can and should have a role to play. This is not to say that every proposed scheme is well thought out or even necessary.

Society is changing. There are more men in the role of primary carer for children. There always have been some men in that position and it would be good to see them recognised a bit more. The likelihood is that a government information scheme isn't the most enduring way of giving men information about fatherhood.

But it has also been demonstrated that when fathers are informed about breast-feeding (and they have finally stopped their juvenile giggling), their partners are twice as likely to still be breast-feeding their baby at six months.

Dad Info is a scheme that already exists with enthusiastic backing from the Royal College of Midwives. They produce a small information card for dads which are handed out by Midwives. As much as the card has good information on it, it is often just the fact that the midwife is giving the father to be something that makes it significant.

Right, that's enough for now. I'll get back to wheelchair adventures and cute animal pictures soon... 

It is of little consolation to read that other wheelchair users find themselves pretty much housebound by the snow. Andrew Farrow, for example, talks of getting stuck between the house and the car, when he found himself wheel-spinning in the snow. I managed a few good wheel-spins on my semi-slick tyres yesterday.

Then I rolled through what appeared to be snow, but was actually a load of crushed mothballs (?). No really. As a result, my wheels, my gloves and even the cuffs on my jacket smell like the long-abandoned depths of a grandmother's cupboard. I keep glancing nervously over my shoulder, half-expecting to be savaged by a mink stole. I hope the smell doesn't have the same fur-coat associations for foxes, as one has taken up residence in our garden...

On the whole, I have remained relatively mobile, thanks largely to Penny clearing the path and the good people of Hackney Council coming and regularly shoveling snow off the pavement. That being said, I have still avoided venturing out except for the odd foray to the supermarket.

This feeling of house-boundedness has served to remind me just how much of my connection with the outside world was severed along with my spinal cord.

Before my accident (fell out of a tree while working as a tree surgeon for anyone new to this site), I worked outdoors every day. If a day went by without me going outside, a used to feel really odd. A sort of crawling the walls, claustrophobic odd.

Most of my leisure activities involved being outdoors- football, mountain biking, hiking, camping, Ultimate, or just hanging out in the park or on Hackney Marshes with friends.

Now, it is possible for me to go three days without leaving the house. This is extreme, of course. We don't usually have this much snow. If we did, I would probably work out a few strategies to make life a little easier. I still have quite big tyres on the wheelchair wheels that I 'wore' to Australia, and that certainly helps.

But with a platform lift between me and the street, and a balcony and flight of stairs between me and the back garden, I have lost the ability to just 'step outside'.

So I find my wishlist growing ever longer. As well as dreaming of an open plan home with level access throughout, I would like to be able to roll out into a garden, cup of coffee in hand, and stare at a few trees. Please.

Mind you, staring out of the window into the back garden revealed that I am not the only one who appears house-bound at the moment...

...snow. Wheelchairs aren't really at their best in it. It's better than sand, being a little more sticky, so that it's possible to push through with decent off-road tyres. But it's cold. Very cold. And it makes the pushrims on the wheels very cold. And wet.

This makes finding the right gloves critical, as they have to be reasonably waterproof and still grippy when wet. And you still need to maintain a reasonable level of dexterity. I have tried many variations. Sailing gloves, which are my first choice normally are great for grip but freezing in the snow. Fleece gloves are great for keeping warm (although the seams inevitably leak) but they're lethal when wet. After running out of control on a relatively gentle slope and gliding elegantly into a large shrubbery, I decided the fleece gloves had to go.

I have even tried neoprene gloves which are certainly warm but much too grippy, making 'braking' sudden and very unpleasant and leaving the wheelchair user with whiplash at the bottom of the first hill. But thankfully I have rediscovered some gloves that the missus bought me for cycling in the winter a couple of years before my accident. They have pretty good grip, but not too much, and I can still feel my fingers after five minutes so it is those that will adorn my hands on the way the the Arsenal this evening, if the match isn't snowed off.

Sorry, that's much too much waffle about gloves. The truth is, for all my bravado, off-road tyres and warm gloves, I find the snow very difficult. Not because It's so hard to get around in. OK, that doesn't help much, but that is as nothing compared to the feeling of sadness at not really being able to take R up to the park, build a snowman, go zipping down hills with plastic bags for toboggans, and then carry her home when her feet are too cold to walk anymore.

So instead I glance out of the window facing an internal struggle between the child-like almost instinctive excitement, and the curmudgeonly practical gloom as the snow continues to fall.

I'll be honest, the worst thing about the comparison between the sand of the beach and the snow of the city is when they are separated by a matter of days and about 35 degrees celsius.

See what you think. Which of these two pictures looks more appealing, especially without any cocoa? By the way, it's not raining in the bottom pic, it's a sprinkler I went to sit under because I was overheating.