Nothing could have been further from the truth. I loved school. But certain aspects of it were becoming more challenging for me, clearly. And though, once again, I wasn’t really aware of this myself, my parents became increasingly concerned. Their concern mostly centred on my gait. I didn’t walk like my siblings and no one knew why – and my gait definitely wasn’t getting better. After a couple of months of this, my mother made her mind up: she would take me to the local clinic to see a doctor.
I still remember my incomprehension about this visit. I wasn’t feeling sick, and nor did I have a sore throat or a rash, but even so, I was being taken out of lessons. Why was that? I was no less confused when we got there and the doctor immediately took off my shoes and socks and began tapping my ankles with a little rubber hammer.
But it was my mum who was most confused when, the foot inspection over, the doctor turned his attention to my arms and hands. She was just about to ask him what my hands had to do with anything when he let out a loud and alarming ‘Hmmmm …’
‘What?’ asked Mum anxiously.
‘Hmmm …’ said the doc again. ‘I think young Nigel here needs to go and see a specialist.’
He then began talking over my head, to my mum, while she helped me put my shoes and socks back on. I didn’t understand much of what he was saying – though I soon would – but the gist of it seemed clear: ‘I don’t actually have a clue what’s wrong with your son, Mrs Holland, so I’ll pack him off to someone who might.’
On the way home, feeling as you do after a visit to the doctor (a little bit relieved, a lot brave, a tad martyred), I hoped – even expected – that there might be something in it for me. A small toy perhaps, a bag of sweets, a penny lollipop. But I got nothing. Mum was never one for over-indulging her kids. I got deposited straight back at school.
8 February 2012
Number of inches of snow dumped on Wellingborough in January: Easy – more than enough to prevent me from getting out.
Ergo, number of challenges so far completed: Still 0.
However, number of challenges attempted today (finally): 1 – ‘Donate blood.’
But number of challenges actually completed today: Another big fat 0. Oh, and I also got wet.
Well, that was a great start, I don’t think. You might have noticed that, despite a flurry of early enthusiasm and activity, there is nothing recorded here for January. Which is because nothing actually happened in January. Yup, that’s correct. Nothing whatsoever. Yes, we ate, slept and did all the day-to-day things that needed doing, but in terms of My Big Important Project, not a thing.
I know I shouldn’t beat myself up too much. The bottom line is that wheelchairs and snow do not mix – unless you count regularly landing on your own bottom line among your list of favourite pastimes. And it’s not as if I haven’t been getting things under way, making phone calls, sending emails and doing research.
But I’m frustrated because apart from signing up for the half marathon (which does not mean actually doing it, of course, however many training laps I put in before Christmas), becoming a blood donor was to have been pretty much my first completed challenge, and the one I was most keen to get over with.
Except I haven’t got it over with. Which is infuriating, as the day began so positively. Well, I say positively, but there wasn’t really anything positive about it. Just naked fear. Because actually I was terrified.
‘So why are you doing it, then, Dad?’ Ellie wanted to know. It was a reasonable enough question. Though I was pretty sure that by now she understood the concept of the list and why I was doing it, I wasn’t so sure she’d embraced the idea that it might include doing things I didn’t want to do.
We were all finishing breakfast, before the kids left for school. Though I say ‘we’, I couldn’t eat a thing, because I was off to become a blood donor in less than an hour, the thought of which had completely robbed me of my appetite.
‘Because I’m confronting my fears,’ I said, probably rather grandly, in an attempt, as much as anything, to psyche myself up for it. ‘That’s what you do,’ I went on. ‘That’s what makes it a challenge. That it’s difficult is really the whole point. If it was easy for me, it wouldn’t be challenging, would it? If it was Mum doing it, say,’ (Lisa’s a long-term blood donor) ‘it would be easy. But because I have a phobia –’
Ellie looked confused now. ‘What’s a phobia?’
‘An irrational fear,’ Matt supplied. ‘Like when you’re really scared of snakes or spiders –’
‘There is nothing irrational about being scared of snakes and spiders,’ Amy chipped in. ‘Not if they’re cobras or rattlesnakes or black widows or something …’
‘And yours is needles?’ Ellie asked. ‘Needles being poked in your arm?’ She demonstrated on herself for me. ‘And then sucking all your blood out …’ she added, warming to the idea now. ‘A bit like they’re vampires?’
Which wasn’t the best image to be starting the day with, frankly. Twilight has an awful lot to answer for.
‘Not like vampires,’ said Lisa, presumably seeing I was turning green now. ‘Nothing at all like vampires, in fact. No, it’s done by nurses, and they’re very, very gentle. Dad will hardly feel a thing, because they’re also very good at it …’
But still a lot like vampires, even so.
* * *
It’s not surprising that I have a phobia of needles. From the age of five, and throughout my childhood, they were coming at me from all angles.
My first foray into a world that would become painfully familiar happened just a few weeks after my visit to the GP, when a letter arrived requesting my presence at an appointment that had been made for me at Guy’s Hospital in London.
Being so small still, I didn’t have much idea what was happening. Though I’m sure Mum and Dad told me, I have no memory of making a connection between my bendy toes and the trip to the big city. Going to London was, and would continue to be, synonymous with only one thing for me: a trip to go and visit my Auntie Betty.
My aunt and uncle lived in a sprawling housing estate just off Abbey Road, and I’d go and stay with them at least once every summer. I loved going to visit Auntie Betty and Uncle Gerry. Together they ran a successful stock car racing team, which made them terribly exciting to be with. They would travel all around the country, to race their car in the national championships, and we’d set off to whichever venue we were headed for in an enormous coach that they’d converted from the standard passenger variety into something that, in its day, would not have seemed out of place in a Formula 1 paddock. It carried the stock car on the back and the inside had been adapted so that we could not only sit in it but also sleep in it.
Trips to Auntie Betty’s were the genesis of what would become a lifelong passion for motorsport, and from a very early age, one of the highlights of travelling to London was the point when we’d go through a long tunnel on the A4, and I got that tingle of anticipation, knowing we’d soon be there.
This was different, though. And the big difference that sticks in my mind was that rather than end up at Auntie Betty’s, as usual, we arrived at a scary place, full of incredibly high buildings. In reality not so enormous – hardly the Manhattan skyline – but to little me, they