MFWHTBAB and I were killing time this morning, waiting to hear from the garage about the car MOT. He had a lousy night's 'sleep', and I've still got a nagging shoulder/neck pain I picked up somehow while asleep on Saturday night. So to stop us vegetating too far, we decided to go out to Morrisons for, in no particular order, some fresh air, some groceries and a change of scene.
Stage one: Getting kitted up. I put my coat and grabbed a small rucksack, while MFWHTBAB safety-pinned himself into a pair of adapted jeans.
Stage two: Getting downstairs. I lead, in the erroneous idea that I might catch him if he fell. He follows, one step at the time, leg-crutches-leg-critches-leg-crutches.
Stage three: Into the chair. Crutches are stored in the patent crutch-holders - a piece of drainpipe each side cabled tied to the frame, into which each crutch is dropped. I'm thinking og getting him a pair of flags to fly from them.
Stage four: Down to the gate, and out, negociating a small patch of cobble, sorry, pave, and the lumpy tarmac of the narrow pavement outside. I'm pushing a bit, and MFWHTBAB is helping by wheeling, although he shows a tendency to wheel faster than I can keep up!
Stage five: nice wide pavement, cross the main road at the lights, over the motorway via the highly decorative Eccles footbridge, past the station, down the pedestrian main street and over the road to Morrisons. Slightly downhill, so MFWHTBAB covered the brakes...
Stage six: Morrisons. I have to get used to not being a single person on foot prone to nipping in between dawdlers, and remember that I'm wielding several stone of man and chair. We find the peppers ok, and pesto, but plain couscous eludes us - plenty of ready flavoured stuff to serve one or two, but MFWHTBAB wants enough to make a big communal salad. We ask a chap, who goes off somewhere else and comes back and says they've run out. We decide to change plan to pasta salad. MFWHTBAB decides to have a look at the reduced items, and attracts the attention of an old lady, who asks him if she can reach him anything, in a tone clearly tailored to the mentally suboptimal. I knew pushing this wheelchair would be an eyeopener with regard to barriers, physical and mental! All groceries obtained, we head for the checkout, encountering the same old lady, who checks that MFWHTBAB has got everything... Interesting that she addressed him, and I may as well not exist - a reversal of what I might have expected!
Stage seven: Back across the road, where MFWHTBAB is determined to outrun a mother and pushchair, for his first scalp. Back up the pedestrian street, I'm happy for a little wheel assistance, although the whole rig isn't too hard to push - it helps that I'm used to hauling about some jerry-built trailers and trolleys at work, often loaded with 200kg of paper or similar, none of which have decent bearings. We stop outside one of Eccles' many classy emporia for a photo op:
DSC_0506 by
Panticle, on Flickr
Then it was back over the bridge, over the road, getting briefly stuck on a slightly raised paving stone, and home again just in time for lunch.
Distance covered, about 0.75 mile, in about three quarters of an hour, including dithering and queueing time in Morrisons.
Epic!
