Blue Above the Chimneys by Fraser Christine Marion

Author:Fraser, Christine Marion [Fraser, Christine Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141972510
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Blue Horizons

The idea of a wheelchair never occurred to any of us till one fateful day Mam was telling a neighbour about the long hours of boredom I spent in the house.

‘Why not a wheelchair?’ said the neighbour. ‘My nephew’s disabled and my sister has just got a new chair for him. The old one’s there for anyone who wants it.’

So I came by my first chair. It was a huge affair with a wickerwork seat. I was so small and thin I disappeared into it but it had wheels and I had no qualms about using it. It was my passport to the world. On a day of blue skies Da carried me downstairs and Mam took me on my first outing to the Elder Park. Gulping in great breaths of warm fragrant air, I imagined that I would never want anything more than these walks to the park with my dear Mam. But I was wrong. I was only twelve years old and my youthful energy smouldered inside like an unexploded firecracker. I longed for excitement and Mam understood. One day she told Alec and Margaret that they were to take me for ‘a nice walk’. Their eyes gleamed because they had long itched to get their hands on my chair. Under their careless guidance it became a miniature tank. They battered me up and down pavements, my bones and teeth rattled but I laughed to the skies with joy. I wasn’t a sedate little invalid any longer. My health had improved greatly. The unleashing of my wild spirit was like taking the cork out of a champagne bottle.

We wandered round Govan, poking into the trees in the park for caterpillars. I was too young to be embarrassed when passers-by looked first at my chair, then at my legs to see what evidence manifested such a premature halt to activity. I stared back and stuck out my tongue uncaringly. It was later, in my adolescent years, that I experienced the terrible embarrassment wrought in me by the curious.

We were quick to discover that my chair made a great hiding place for ill-gotten gains. At weekends we went along to the plots, small patches of cultivated land. From my chair I watched while the daring Margaret helped herself to fat sticks of rhubarb which she stuffed down the sides of my wickerwork seat. Sometimes we were spotted and Alec and Margaret would each grab a handle of my chair to zoom me in and out of dusty potholes away from the danger zone.

People looked askance at such rough treatment but I loved every minute of the outings. They were beneficial in many ways, the most important being that I was never allowed to feel sick or helpless. Mam smiled when she saw the sparkle back in my eyes. ‘These walks are doing you good, Chris,’ she approved.

Had she witnessed the wheelchair acrobatics I was subjected to she might never have allowed me out for another ‘walk’ again. Margaret was the daredevil.

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