E-Book, Englisch, 184 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-912262-58-8
Verlag: Clink Street Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Tim Marshall CBE is a disabled sportsman who played a key role in bringing disabled sports, particularly wheelchair racing, in to the mainstream.
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A Churchill Fellowship
Back in the hall of residence all had gone quiet, as term – indeed, the year – had finished and the students had all disappeared for the summer. The pigeon holes where their post was distributed by the hall office remained largely empty, though some post too big for the pigeon holes was simply left on top of the table below. Mass circulars were not routinely forwarded, the hall office told me, but they would wait a week or so – a student might have been passing, even in the middle of the summer vacation, and have dropped in to pick up any post – before forwarding individual letters, or throwing mass circulars away. One day a dozen or so plastic-wrapped circulars appeared on the table. Through the plastic I could just see that they were from the Youth Hostel Association (YHA). Curiosity arose. I’d done a lot of hostelling before my accident, and I wondered what kind of information was being sent out nowadays. I picked up an envelope that had been sent to a student who had graduated and left the university altogether. Somewhere inside was an advertising panel. The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (WCMT) had just announced its new topics for awards to be made in 1978. Amongst the topics was “Leisure and Recreational Pursuits for the Disabled”. I read on, and eventually sent for an information pack. The WCMT was established shortly after Churchill died. A large sum was raised by public appeal, and rather than build a statue (which pigeons might have no respect for) or some other physical memorial, the Trustees decided to invest the funds to produce an annual income which could then be used to finance a number of bursaries, or scholarships, for UK citizens to travel abroad to learn about some aspect of a subject which the trustees had announced as one of this year’s topics. There were 8–10 topics each year (they changed every year), with 100 or so bursaries awarded in total. The trade-off for the Trust was that individuals receiving a fellowship had to write a report about their travels, and show how they would implement what they had learned during their time away. In this way, it was felt, the Trust would be enhancing the development of civic activity in the country as a whole. There were three stages to an application. You sent in an outline proposal (one paragraph only) of what you wanted to do. There was some sort of screening activity in the WCMT headquarters, as a result of which those who passed muster were invited to write a fuller proposal about what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go, how long for, and so on. A further screening process led to interviews for those who passed the second stage. And then, finally, those who succeeded in the interview were awarded a fellowship. I put together a brief outline of what I wanted to do, under the clumsy umbrella title of “Outdoor and adventure sports for the disabled, and integration with the able-bodied”, and sent it off. There was further help from people already far more deeply involved in disability sport than I was. Norman Croucher told me of a centre shortly to be opened in the Lake District which would be offering week-long residential courses in outdoor activities for disabled people. He had become a trustee, and told me when the official opening was taking place, some time in the autumn. I went, hovered in the background (I had absolutely no official status there at all), and managed to snatch a word with the newly-appointed director, Emrys Evans, about visiting the centre to see what was what: what they were going to do, how, and for whom. I arranged to visit early in the new year. And Bill Parkinson, either during the Plas y Brenin week or later, lent me a copy of an American wheelchair sports magazine “Sports ’n Spokes”, which he thought might be of interest. It was. It covered the conventional range of wheelchair sports – basketball, table-tennis, ten pin bowling, and so on – but also new developments in wheelchair design, and new sports and activities tackled apparently for the first time by wheelchair users. Eventually, I took out a subscription. In the meantime I managed to pass the first hurdle of the WCMT application process, and had to put together a fuller application. With hindsight, what I said I wanted to do turned out to be only partly what I ended up doing. The original idea was to attend a few of the American regional wheelchair games to see how they managed the publicity, and to go to their national games, which always seemed to be held under the aegis of the Bulova watch manufacturing and repair factory in New York. This turned out to be a no-no, for all the regional games, and their national meeting, had occurred well before the summer vacation here, realistically the only time I could find a large enough block of time free of student teaching. (It was obvious, really: the Internationals were usually in late July, so in order to select a team the American nationals had to be held earlier, and the regional events through which you qualified to attend their nationals, earlier still. This would have brought these events back to May and June, several weeks before I could get away. Thank heavens no one in the Churchill Trust seemed to have rumbled that.) From “Sports ’n Spokes” I found an Outward Bound course being put on by the Minnesota OB School, a mixed course (able-bodied and disabled) based largely around a canoe-camping expedition in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area 50 miles north-west of Lake Superior (but whose waters, I was to discover later, drained 400 miles north to Hudson’s Bay). Going on this course was part of the application, stressing a “pushing back the boundaries” of what was conventionally regarded as suitable for disabled people to undertake. A visit to the campus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was more or less mandatory for a wheelchair user visiting the USA on a sort of study tour. Since early post-war, the campus had been developed to make it totally accessible for wheelchair users, and some of what I might find there might be useful back in Birmingham. And I proposed to start the visit by attending the American Spinal Cord Injury Association annual conference in Chicago, to make contacts and thereby fill out quite a lot of unprogrammed time in what I estimated would be a 6-week fellowship. Rather to my surprise I was invited for an interview, late in the autumn. The visit to London, necessarily by train, started badly. At that time there was no provision for wheelchairs in the ordinary coaches, not even in first class, so it was travel in the guard’s van, or don’t travel at all. Well, OK, that’s how it was, I knew that. But the train was late, and years before the advent of mobile phones there was no way of telling the WCMT that I was likely to arrive late. I think I remember phoning them from the forecourt at Euston to explain a “late arrival at…”, but there was then the question of getting to the Trust offices in South Kensington. I had allowed enough time to push – it was about three miles – but the train’s being late prohibited that. This was well before either buses or taxis were accessible to wheelchair users, so instead I had to use the underground – from which, of course, wheelchairs were formally banned, at least from the deep underground sections. From previous visits to London I knew that the best way was not via the ostensibly most direct route using the Northern line to Leicester Square and changing to the Piccadilly (there were steps on the interchange) but instead going backwards, on the Victoria line to King’s Cross–St Pancras, and changing to the Piccadilly there (the interchange was step-free). Using escalators – down at Euston – was just part of the normal way of getting about. But what the station at South Kensington was like I didn’t know. It was no use asking any station officials, because of the ban on wheelchairs. As it turned out South Kensington was partly accessible. There was a lift from the platform which deposited passengers on a sort of gantry which ran above and across all the platforms, but which left a flight of steps up to the foyer. As ever in these circumstances it was a question of nobbling a couple of passing travellers, and one station man, to carry me up the stairs. As a result of all that had gone before, I wasn’t in the calmest state on reaching the Trust, and the pent-up frustration emerged during the interview; or so I thought. Memories of the interview have become somewhat blurred. I remember talking about lack of publicity for events taking place in a small country town 40 miles outside London, and of trying to find out if they were any more successful in the publicity stakes in the USA; of my recent experience of outdoor activities, of my intended visit to the Calvert Trust in the new year, and again, of wondering if they had taken things further in the USA (the MOBS course suggested that they had); and thinking that the panel didn’t seem at all impressed. But the most abiding memory concerned their last question, which was about the need to take a companion/carer with me to provide the personal care they apparently thought I needed. I regarded this idea as quite preposterous – I was entirely self-sufficient in self-care – and replied with near-scorn to the suggestion. And that was it. I left feeling very disappointed – I don’t interview well, and the uncomfortable fact is that a) I know it, but b) don’t seem to have found a way of dealing with it. It had been a worthwhile attempt, albeit in the end rather chastening; and I was still going to find out more about outdoor activities in the UK – or at least, England – through visiting the Calvert...
