CDs & moves


No.32    Saturday 25 August 2012

Exactly a month since my last blog - at least at least I've got a sort of excuse - the machine I mentioned in my last blog, on which to record my music, arrived a couple of weeks ago. It is absolutely magic and does all sorts of very clever things so I have been loading my CDs onto it. It takes about 10 min to load a CD provided that the details are on the database (which is absolutely massive) otherwise it takes quite a while to type in all the title of each track. Of the things I have saved so far I find that the database had about 92% of those I wanted to save. Those that were not in the database I am saving until later - to do a couple each day (perhaps).

I have been watching programmes called “Escape to the Country” and it struck me that I have been doing the reverse, escaping from the country. When we retired in 1998 we lived in a bungalow which we had bought in a hamlet in mid Wales (about 13 miles from Aberystwyth). In 2004 (my wife had died in 2001) I moved to a house in Coleford in the Forest of Dean which I suppose could be described as a country town. I had only been there for three months when I had my accident and spent the subsequent 10 months in various hospitals. During that time my sons had the house checked and found that it could not be adapted to take a lift to get me upstairs in a wheelchair so it had to be sold. Its replacement was a shared ownership house in Cheltenham (I owned a 65% of it). When a good proportion of my compensation came through I looked around for a house which could be altered to suit my requirements exactly and found the one I am in now in Gloucester. I have been here for nearly 3 years and the modifications that I had done have proved to make it ideal for wheelchair use. Although it was spread over five years that was my escape from the country - but I shouldn't think it would make much of a television programme!!

What a lot of people, especially older people, don't realise is that escaping to the country throws up all sorts of problems. There is the problem of shopping - where we were it was nearly a half hours drive to get to a supermarket. The next problem is weather - councils don't do anything about clearing or gritting remote country roads in fact we were lucky in that a local farmer cleared the worst snow off the roads with his tractor. There is also the difficulty of communication - many country areas do not have broadband and sometimes even the telephone system is a bit patchy. The final noticeable one is the distance from relatives - we were over a three-hour journey away, which is all very well if you're young and fit, but when you become older and more unsteady it is rather a long way for people to come and help - especially in an emergency!!

The wheelchair trial, which I mentioned last time, happened this week and the chair did everything I wanted it to in the spaces that I had available. I gather they are going to get one for me - but this will take about six weeks. The new one is much better over uneven surfaces than my old one in that the latter flexes a lot over bumps and rough surfaces where is the new one is much more solid. The lady who has tested me on it and who brought it to my home is an Occupational Therapist. When I discovered that I knew I was in safe hands because all the experiences I have had with them have been good ones and they really are the most knowledgeable people. We had about one for every four patients in the Spinal Unit at Salisbury and it was as much their guidance and efforts as that of the Physiotherapists which made it possible for me to live independently.

Mike

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