Come Smile With Me - Episode 4

My homecoming is a cauldron of emotions. I am happy, sad, tearful, frightened, worried, and excited all at the same time. The butterflies in my stomach have decided to escape through my throat, and my heart thinks that I have just completed a three-minute mile. I am gently lifted from the ambulance by stretcher and carried carefully into our living room. Mum has set my bed by the window and I can see into our garden. The view is wonderful, the smell is home, and I am exceedingly happy.

The plan is that I am to stay here for four months, laying horizontally, encased in the plaster jacket, until it is time for me to return to Stanmore to have the cast removed. I shall be having a teacher call every morning to help me with my studies and a health visitor will also call in case mum or I have any concerns. It is great to be part of our family again and I am soon back in amongst the gossip and experiences of my three younger brothers who help me in every way possible. Dad is much relieved at not having to travel to Stanmore every Sunday. I think it has really worn him out, although he never shows it.

I am still having to use the dreaded bedpan and of course now I am home mum has to help me. I don't know how she manages it all, with me an added bother to her already busy life looking after dad and my three brothers.

I am going out for a walk today. Mum and dad have managed to get hold of a trolley from the local hospital that we can borrow, so that I can be taken around the town for a spot of fresh air and a change of scenery. It has just been delivered and I am devastated. It looks exactly like a wooden coffin, but on wheels. It has four quite high sides, a base, and handles along each side. Laying in it, I cannot quite see over the top and feel highly embarrassed.

“How is Peter today?”

“Doesn’t Peter look well”,

“Is he enjoying his trip out?” Hold on, I’m not deaf, or daft. I talk, why don’t you try talking to me. I am on display, part of a macabre exhibition, being transported around the town for people to look at and wonder.

“Oh poor boy”,

“How did he end up like that?”

I am not enjoying this at all. I am annoyed and embarrassed, and want to go home. Why are people so hurtful and tactless?

The last four months have passed very quickly and the transport has

arrived for the return journey to Stanmore. Gently transported into the

ambulance, we are soon off and heading for the ward once more.

Nothing much has changed, there are several new patients, and many of

my old friends have been discharged and gone home. I recognise some of

the nurses, who seem very tall. I hadn’t noticed this before; how strange.

Today is the big day and I am off to have the plaster cast removed. I shall miss it after all this time and it is covered with signatures collected over the last six months. I am transported to the plaster room and using the very same saw as before, I am released. What a strange feeling, and the smell of dried skin, dirt and goodness knows what else. A bed bath is in order and I thoroughly relish the experience.

Wonderful.

I can move about on my bed, but I must not get up until the Milwaukee brace has been fitted which will be tomorrow. I can’t explain the joy of being able to lie in bed and actually feel the covers. I am a bit worried about my back, which doesn’t appear to be as straight as I thought it would be. However, the doctors assure me that it is.

The brace is fitted and I sit up for the first time for six months. Incredible, everything is so much smaller than I thought. It is a long way to the floor and swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I am not certain that they won’t reach the floor. But they do. Walking, however, is another thing altogether and I have completely forgotten how to do it.

It has taken me almost a week of exercise and parallel bars while towering over the nurses (who are surprisingly short) to learn how to walk again and I am still not very confident. One of the hip supports has been rubbing on my hip and has produced a sore that is proving difficult to heal. I am not going to be let home until this clears, and it is not looking very promising.

Seven days later, the sore has healed sufficiently for me to be discharged from hospital and I am to be allowed home tomorrow. This is excellent news and I am overjoyed.

I feel very important, I have an ambulance that is taking me to Victoria Station, and it drives right on to the platform, parking alongside the train that has a carriage reserved for just for mum and I.

Back home and other than the restrictions of the brace, I am trying to get back to normal. I can actually use the toilet properly now so that is a relief, and feel much more independent.

I am having a home teacher for a couple of weeks and then following a check-up with my doctor I can return to school. I am considerably apprehensive about going to school. Not the physical part, but the response that I might get from my schoolmates and those who don’t know me. Teenagers can be very harsh and don’t always consider what they are saying.

Return to school was great. None of my fears materialised and everyone took me back as though I had never been away. The only negative response was from some of the younger guys who complained that I had a taxi to take me to and from school, and they had to walk.

For six months I wore the brace. I could take it off at night, and towards the end, some parts of the day but I was glad when the day came for me to return to London to have my final check-up.

It was confirmed that I could have the brace removed permanently as long as I was careful for the next few weeks and had regular checks with my GP in Worthing. The bad news was that the operation had not been as successful as they had hoped. I would continue to have a protruding shoulder blade and some rib cage displacement, which although it would notget any worse, could be disfiguring. I had two alternatives; I could undertake the whole operation again and spend the next 6 months back at Stanmore, or; a plastic surgeon would remove my shoulder blade which would cause my right arm to be useless. I took the third alternative, said no thanks, and returned home with mum.

It is a peculiar situation because before I went through the past twelve months I had not bothered about my appearance at all. Now I am very conscious of my deformity, and feel that I have been cheated out of a year of my life. I understand that without the operation my breathing would have become very restricted as the curve of my spine and rib cage increased. I would not be able to do the things that I can now do, but my appearance is very important to me at fifteen years of age and I feel let down.

I am certain that people with whom I meet notice my curvature. They will not mention it, but I can see them glancing at my back and stomach as we talk. Regrettably, the plaster cast worn for six months whilst I was still growing has also seriously affected the development of my chest, and has left me barrel-chested. I am not disabled in the real sense of the word. I can do everything that any teenager can do. Maybe not so well, or for so long, but I can participate, and I do. I must lead a normal life and get as much out of it as I can. In some respects I would like my disability to be more obvious, maybe use a stick, or limp, and then people wouldn’t expect quite so much.

During the summer holidays, I have a job working in an ice-cream kiosk directly on the beach. My speciality is ‘frothy coffee’, ice-cream whips with a chocolate stick, and the traditional candyfloss. This is great fun and I am making loads of new friends. The pay is not too good, but to a hot-blooded teenage boy, the opportunity to serve ice-cream and candy-floss to hundreds of delicious bikini clad girls is pay enough.

My GCE examinations come and go, and I obtain some reasonable grades. I am not accepted into the Customs and Excise through failure of their medical, and I change my mind about the Air Traffic Control after reading about the enormous stress that many of the teams go through. I spend some time at the local Sixth Form College working for three A Levels, but decide that earning some real money is more important, and begin training as a Quantity Surveyor with a local practice.

I am determined that my physical condition will not stop me from participating in normal activities so on my seventeenth birthday and very first holiday without the rest of the family, I take a ten day coach holiday to Austria. Picking up the coach from Victoria Coach Station we are very soon heading through France. The coach has two drivers to permit the coach to be driven non-stop and as we are speeding along one of the Autobahns, the present driver locks the steering wheel, leaves his seat and is strolling casually to the rear of the coach meeting his colleague coming forward. Just as casually, the new driver sits in the seat, unlocks the wheel and continues the journey.

Toilet stops are sparse and after 8 hours sitting on a bouncy coach seat trying to get some sleep, desperation begins to set in. There are no toilet facilities on the coach, and the next stop we are informed is 80 miles away. I calculate this to be about two hours. (I have always been good at arithmetic – I achieved a GCE grade 1). This doesn’t help however, as I doubt that I will last that long. I do manage to last. I cross my legs as hard as I can. I think about anything other than liquids and even try to sleep, but succeed I do, and the relief I feel as we pull into the service area is immeasurable.

Austria is marvellous and prides itself on one of the highest publicly accessible mountains in Europe. One of the programmed tours is to the very top of this mountain and having been told in London that I should avoid extreme heights due to a thinning of the air and a shortage of oxygen, the challenge was accepted.

It is beautiful up here, I can see for miles and miles. Across the white capped peaks of many smaller mountains covered in pine trees and maroonheather, down into distant valleys where thin snakes of blue are winding their way through forests of every shade of green, and where I feel that I can almost touch the icy blue sky. The air is crisp and still. I am standing on about two foot of freshly compressed snow and I can hear the soft crunching sound as I slowly walk around the fenced summit. My steps are easy. I feel light and free. My breathing is short and difficult, but the complete awe of what I behold is worth every moment. I feel that I am a tiny part of some enormous plan, a character in a well-written play with the scenery painted by someone inspired. I feel good. Austria is a country that I shall return to again, and one day, maybe, bring a friend.

My first very own vehicle is a Triumph motorcycle and I have months of good honest fun touring the local highways and byways and gradually I work my way through a selection of models including a motorcycle and sidecar combination.

The local Volunteer Emergency Service (VES) is recruiting new members and I join up. My duties are to support the various emergency services by transporting equipment and supplies to area in need and where alternative sources of transport are either not available or not suitable.

One of my first jobs is to transport a few pints of blood from our local hospital to a clinic in Horsham and from here on in, I am called to assist at least two or three times a week. The service is very rewarding and there is a feeling of great comradeship amongst the members. The last motorcycle that I had the pleasure of owning was a small ‘Honda 50’. A nippy little bike with not a lot of power, but a comfortable bike to ride and the unusual luxury of an electric starter.

My brother and I travelled around quite a lot on the Honda, and this morning we have decided to visit Gatwick Airport for a spot of plane watching. I have had some problems with the bike in that it seems to be loosing oil, but my local workshop have cured the leak so this will be like a road test.

We are travelling at about forty miles an hour down the long A23 into Crawley. The road is reasonably quiet, except for one or two vehicles behind us; one of which as I am to discover later is a police car. Forty miles per hour is a comfortable speed for the Honda, especially carrying a passenger, so as we begin to gather speed down the hill, I decide to gently apply the brakes.

The next few hours have been completely wiped from my memory, but this is what happened according to the following police car. On applying the brakes, the rear wheel locked and skidded on a patch of oil that had been dripping on to the tyre ever since we left Worthing. The bike had swerved to the left, and struck the kerb, throwing me over the handlebars and depositing my passenger untidily onto the road landing on his bottom. According to the policeman, he had called the ambulance even before I struck my head, splitting open my crash helmet, on the road verge.

Transportation to hospital is still a blur, and I can only remember waking up in the accident ward almost six hours later suffering from concussion and a slight fracture. My brother had several bruises that prevented him from sitting down for quite a few days. As for the flying through the air – I can remember nothing at all.

Eventually, I manage to afford to purchase a car and am the proud owner of a second-hand black Ford Consul. I am officially appointed as my groups of friends’ locals free taxis and spend a fortune shuttling them around Worthing and West Sussex.

It is Saturday afternoon and five friends and I have just left a stockcar race meeting held at a large track near Eastbourne, some twenty miles from home. It has been raining steadily all day, which to be honest, has enhanced the track events considerably, and the roads are flooded as we head down a long hill to meet a swollen ford at the bottom. Travelling at speed the spray from each wheel is very impressive as we hit the water and we are soon speeding away up the hill on the other side. Reaching the brow of the hill, the car once again is heading down hill and I notice that ahead of us there is a sharp bend to the left. Nearing the bend I apply the brakes... Nothing happens, I might just as well be dragging my feet. Instead of braking we actually speed up as we approach the bend.

I have two choices; I can either warn my friends (who are completely oblivious to what is about to occur), or; keep quiet and hope that I make the bend. I decide to do neither as I could see that there wasn’t any way that we would make the bend at this speed. Through the hedge directly on the bend and ahead of me appeared to be some sort of gate. Whether it was open or not, I could not make out, but it had to be better than trying to round the bend. It is quite a few seconds before my friends realise that something is wrong and by now we are shaking our way down an old farm track slowly grinding to a halt almost one hundred yards from the road. The gate had been open. The brakes dry out in about thirty minutes and we resume out journey home.

Over the next couple of years I owned a Triumph herald, a Ford Cortina Mk 1, and an ex Army Armoured Car. I am not certain why I bought this, probably on a whim, but it could go underwater, so this was possibly the thought in mind.

Whilst going through these adventures I was still living at home, and dad often kept a few chickens in the rear garden. The eggs were delicious and as the chickens ceased laying they were killed and either cooked, or if they were too old, buried or disposed of in the dustbin. This particular morning dad has decided to slaughter a couple of the older hens and as they are far too old to eat proposes to dispose of them in the usual manner. Dad, however, was very concerned that none of his hens should suffer any pain or discomfort. One of his hens recently had been particularly difficult to slaughter by the traditional method of wringing its neck, and so had decided to behead them instead. At least this is quick and positive, if not quite the recognised method to be adopted when slaughtering chickens.

Holding the first chicken firmly down on the chopping block, dad brings down the axe with a firm swing beheading the chicken immediately with one strike. Dad picks up the dead hen and drops it into the plastic bag lining the bin. It is possibly ten or so seconds later, when with a ghostly rustle of feathers, the headless chicken appears from inside the bin and begins to throw itself around the garden. I know that in some cases the nerve endings of some chickens can still react quite a few seconds after death, but all of our chickens died of natural causes from this day onwards.

Dad had many different jobs whilst my brothers and I were growing up and was well known and respected up to and after his death almost 20 years ago. One of the highlights of his life, for me, was when he opened his own second hand furniture and haulage business in a fairly large 'lock- up' shop near the centre of town. I spent very many happy weekends working with dad in the shop, and quite often assisted with household removals and haulage contracts.

This particular Saturday morning comes to mind when dad asks me if I would collect a small piano from an address about ten miles away and deliver it to a piano shop in the town. Taking the company van, I pick up my cousin (who has volunteered to help), and head towards the pick-up address. Apparently the piano is a 'baby grand' and will be little problem to us young lads. The 'baby' is a standard grand piano currently located in the front room of a very small basement flat. The access to the flat is down a set of winding steel staircase treads and through a door that a traditional piano would have sneered at. The only other access was through a very tired looking vertical timber sash window of which only the top half appeared to open. Attempting to lift the piano, I managed to clear about six inches from the floor, which was not a lot of good when we had to move it almost 20 feet to the van and almost 12 feet vertically. A problem is only a challenge waiting to be solved. An impossible task is to move this piano.

I am reliably informed that the legs of the piano can be removed, This will make it easier to handle, but has absolutely no effect on the weight. I resolve that the only we are going to get the piano into the van is to 'bribe' a few passers by. After almost thirty minutes I have rounded up four able looking guys (at considerable cost) and we begin the move. I have taken out both sashes of the window (the owner assures me that she will be able to replace them, although to be honest, I have my sincere doubts that that will ever be possible again), and the piano is eventually manhandled on to the floor of the van.

We have about thirty minutes of travelling time to remove some of the 'minor' scratches and securing the piano with our strongest webbing I begin the journey homeward. My partner agreed to stand in the back of the van with the piano (well it is my dads van), to check its stability en-route. All is well, just ten minutes to go, most of the scratches have been removed, and it hasn't been too bad after all. Rounding a slight bend, I notice a young lad about to step on to the road. I don't think I stopped particularly sharply, and I did shout a warning, but there was a loud snapping sound, which resounded around the van, and the piano and my cousin entered the drivers cab.

I am not convinced that the owner of the piano shop where we eventually deliver the piano, knows why we are grinning as we pull up outside his shop, but they quickly disappeared when he informs us that he presently alone, and has a hernia.

Dad assured us that he had been told it was a 'baby grand' and on the ground floor, but I have always wondered why he didn't do that particular delivery.

This weekend, having just achieved my Heavy Goods Vehicle driving licence (HGV - Class 1), I have been asked to deliver a number of 'flat- pack' kitchen units to a small town in Wales and am looking forward to the trip immensely. I am driving a large high-sided box unit lorry. The journey so far has been very uneventful, and I am soon driving into the extremely picturesque town of Ross-On-Wye in South Wales. One of themain streets is quite steep and with queues of traffic behind and in front of me I am crawling up the hill to a set of traffic lights on the brow. The lights change to red and we all screech to a halt. The sounds of my air brakes hissing like an old steam train coming to rest. Red and Amber, Green, I am off. Well, not quite. Everything has gone dead. I have no power at all, the engine has died on me leaving me without any electrical supply, brakes, or steering. The only thing stopping me from rolling down hill and into the cars waiting patiently behind me is the emergency hand brake, which I lock on. I very rarely panic, but I am in a situation that I have no idea how to resolve. There is a tap on the passenger door and a smart gentleman introducing himself as the local traffic warden asks if I have a problem. I carefully go through the various options with him and together we decide that the only thing that I can do is to slowly! reverse down the hill and into a parking area some one hundred yards behind me.

Using the emergency brake in a series of short on/off movements I reverse the lorry down the hill through a clearing in the traffic formed by the traffic warden, and gradually come to halt in the parking area. Needless to say, I am annoyed, exhausted and covered in beads of perspiration. Jumping down from the cab, I slam the driver's door shut, to my complete amazement and disbelief, suddenly hear the sound of my hazard warning lights flashing nonchalantly away as though nothing iswrong. Every part of the system is back on and working. I very quickly make the delivery and head back home.

As my brothers and I grew older we would very often help during our holidays or at weekends with the occasional house removal, and this particular morning dad has asked if we would help him with a complete house clearance. The owners have split up and are selling their unwanted property. Dad has borrowed the key from a neighbour and we arrive outside the small terraced house in town. Our initial reaction upon entering the property is one of surprise as there are no signs of packing; in fact the rooms look 'lived in'. We have, however, met all sorts of client in the past and so begin the process of packing, boxing, and transferring to the lorry.

Many of the items are not suitable for re-sale so these we pack in separate containers for disposal at the local 'tip', with the remainder being transferred to our shop for valuation and purchase. The day has gone smoothly, all of the items have been dispatched to their appropriate destinations and a cheque is made out to the owners for the objects purchased. Entering the shop are two quite smart looking men, holding identification cards. They are from the local police station and are detectives looking into the illegal removal of property from a house in town. It would seem that a neighbour had spotted several men transferring goods from the house into a lorry. The description given of the lorry fitted dads perfectly.

It is an odd sort of day, starting well, developing smoothly and now it seems we are to be charged with theft. We have been taken for a ride by a rather upset husband who, when his wife admits to having an affair, arranges for a local furniture company to enter his wife's house and remove her belongings while she is away on holiday. We haven't been charged with any offence, dad has lost a fair bit of money (the goods have to be returned), and I decide that the removal business is not for me.

Three weeks later and dad has been offered an unusual job to transport a lorry load of furniture and belongings to a newly built flat in Northern France. I have taken the lorry over to France on a couple of occasions but not an entire lorry full. Naturally, and without thinking, I agree to drive the large furniture lorry and early this morning we are on our way to Dover to catch the mid morning ferry to Calais. Customs and Excise at Dover check the mountain of paperwork that we have to completeand I am then instructed to board the ferry. On this particular ferry we are asked to reverse the vehicle in to place and normally this would not be a problem but my comprehension of the French language at this time is suspect. The ferrymen could only speak French (or so it seemed). Almost causing an international incident our lorry is eventually parked where 'they' want it and we mount the stairway for much needed refreshments.

All too soon, the port of Calais is reached and we are disembarked into the incoming goods area where our manifest is checked. I think the biggest mistake that we made was to be too honest as we had listed every piece of furniture that we were carrying, from the dining room table to a nondescript little picture taken from the guest bathroom. "Picture, monsieur", I am approached by a small French gentleman, pointing to item number 45; picture, entered on the paperwork. I explain that it is a very small print of a flock of geese flying across a lake, and in any case it was one of the first items to be packed, and therefore at the very front of the lorry. "No matter, I must see the picture". We are not to be released from the pound until the picture is checked.

Dad and I are discussing how we should approach this, when from an office a few hundred feet away appear two official looking characters carrying some tape and a small box. "It is lunch-time now and we must seal your loading doors until we return in two hours time. Then we will expect you to unload the lorry and show us the picture". The doors are taped, an official seal is affixed to the tape and the officials are gone. There is not a lot that we can do in a Customs' pound so we head for the nearest café and order some lunch.

It is now just past six o'clock and having left the Port of Calais (vowing never to return), our next challenge is to find the delivery address. I take a right hand turn, ending up on the left of the road and bumper to bumper with a French lorry heading for the docks. "You stupid English" is heard beautifully pronounced as we again turn right, this time into the courtyard of our destination.

I haven't been involved in the construction industry for too long, but can recognise a building site when I see one. Several piles of building materials surround us, scaffold poles, fencing, and a range of untidy sheds where it would seem the workers relax. The address scrawled on thedelivery note is 'Flat 907'. To be honest I wouldn't have guessed that the partly completed building in front of us was either particularly safe, or nine stories high, but I was wrong, because it was and our destination was on the top floor. I presume that the installation of the lifts is one of the last jobs to be done because there aren't any. Access is via a dangerous looking set of concrete stairs devoid of any handrails, and with a seventy-foot drop as we reach the top. We are back home now, having missed two ferries and spending a cold night sleeping in the cab of the lorry, but to look on the bright side...