A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Speed
My first taste of speed I cannot remember. But I had to go fast. I would run everywhere before I caught polio, my feet thumping my backside with the boundless exhilaration of it. But I never lost my taste for it, whether in a wheelchair, on a sledge, box-cart, tricycle or, later on, a car. But cars, for now, were just for dreaming.
Croyse White was pushing me down Hampton Hill. Now Hampton Hill is very steep and led to the beach where lay a three-foot drop onto the pebbled beach. Croyse, pushing my fix-wheeled wheel chair, started to run. But the wheel chair went faster than Croyse, so he let go! Now, coming up the hill were two old ladies. I was hurtling toward them like a demented, screaming madman (in my case mad boy) shouting to them to ''Get out the way!''. At the moment of supposed impact I closed my eyes.
Nothing happened. I was still hurtling down the hill completely out of control. I glanced back at the two terrified ladies who at the last moment had moved aside. They had never moved so fast in their old age and there was a look of abject horror on their faces as they followed my course down the hill. I was preparing to die. Not that my whole life flashed before me, I hadn't had a life, but what was I going to tell my mum? From the moment my wheelchair leapt into the air from the three-foot drop, I closed my eyes. The chair crashed down with such force that I was wedged in the stone shingle, and all the tyres came off…but I was still alive! In fact I had hardly moved. The impact was tremendous but I was still seated. Croyse got there as fast as he could, his face ashen. He couldn't believe it. I was safe and so was he, safe from feeling his father's belt on his backside.
My addiction to speed, like my now abandoned addiction to fire, would follow me the rest of my life. ****************************
By the time I was twelve I had, as I have already mentioned earlier, a large tricycle. My sister Melly and my younger brother Kevin would push me up Beltinge Hill to school. When school was over the two of them would cram onto the back axle and we would hurtle down the hill at a fair rate of knots. When we got to the traffic lights, if they were red Melly would jump up and down on the rubber strip to make them change. Or, if they were green, then Whooppee!
On that particular day, a beautiful summer's day, when all was right with the world, we decided that we would ride down Beacon Hillthat ran parallel with Beltinge Hill. I stopped at the top whilst Melly and Kev climbed onto the back axle. Then I let go the brakes and we screamed down the hill. In the distance was a car and we were rapidly gaining on it! I had to make a quick decision, brake or overtake! I decided on the latter.
We pulled out to overtake!
The expression on this gentleman's face was unforgettable. He was wide eyed with shock, surprise and wonder, his mouth wide open as this rather large boy riding a rather large tricycle with two screaming kids astride the back axle, swung out to overtake him!
I'm sure that in reality he braked and indeed was going rather slowly to begin with.
But in our minds we actually overtook a car!
Me on my big tricycle and Howard Cadey.
That feat of daring and speed will remain lodged supreme in my mind forever. Melly and Kev remember it well, too, that adrenalin-rush on that beautiful summer's day. And this memory will no doubt remain lodged in the mind of that car driver, whoever he was, until the day he died!
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