Stairlift to Heaven (8 page)

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April 27 2007.
THE OLYMPIANS.

I’ve always believed that walking is the finest exercise you can have apart from sex, and like sex can be perfectly free - unless you start buying special clothes and equipment for it and call it hiking or golf - and at the age of sixty-six I still walk five miles every day just for the sheer pleasure of it.

It was while I was out walking and passing through the local park on the way to the canal for one of my regular trips along its towpath that I chanced upon an abandoned Zimmer Frame at the side of the path.

It immediately struck me what an unusual thing it was to abandon. I can understand people throwing away prams, their owners having no further use for them once their children have learned to walk, but I would have thought once you have found you need a Zimmer frame to help you get around you’d need one for life. It crossed my mind that maybe its former owner had been suddenly cured by a faith healer and having no further need of it had dramatically cast it away, a bit like the cripple who, on being cured by Jesus, had taken up his bed and walked. Or perhaps it had simply been thrown away by someone who had taken delivery of a new, lighter, faster, aluminium, tungsten-tipped , you-must-have-the-very-latest Zimmer Frame? I don’t know. Anyway it was there in the park and I found it.

You have to take your opportunities for a bit of fun when and where you find them so when I noticed a man of about my age approaching I picked up the Zimmer Frame, twirled it round my head a couple of times, and heaved it into the distance. It had not long since been announced that Britain had been granted the 2012 Olympic Games, and with it the Paralympics, and it was probably this, and the thought I’d just had about cripples taking up their bed and walking, that put the idea into my head.

 After I’d gone to recover the Zimmer and started to walk back the man had stopped to watch, and now looked on, puzzled. I turned to him and said, a little self-critically, “Not bad.”

His face was a picture of inquisitiveness. “What are you doing?”

“Training for the Paralympics.”

“Paralympics?”

“Throwing the Zimmer Frame,” I explained. “Apparently the host country can pick an entirely new event and Britain has chosen ‘Throwing the Zimmer Frame’. It just nudged out the ‘Hop, Hop and Hop for the One-legged’ I believe.”

I returned with the Zimmer to the spot from which I’d thrown it. Two twirls round my head and I launched it again. This time it went about five yards farther.

“Better,” the man observed, encouragingly.

“Yes, must be close to my PB that one,” I said, sounding pleased with myself. “That’s Personal Best,” I explained.

“Yes I know, I’m a fan of athletics,” he said. He thought about it for a moment. “Can anyone enter?”

I shrugged as though I didn’t really know. “Well I suppose. You’ll need a Zimmer Frame of course.” I had a thought. “It’s possible you could qualify for a grant - you might be able to get funding for one if you show you any promise, I’m sure I’ve heard of pole-vaulters getting grants for fibre glass poles.”

I retrieved the Zimmer and made to throw it again.

“Can I have a go?”

I handed him the Zimmer. He drew his arm back and threw it as hard as he could. It landed a good ten yards farther than my last effort.

“You’re a natural,” I said.

“Wasn’t bad was it,” the man said, pleased with himself. “For a first stab at it.”

First stab at it! I had him hooked. I commenced to reel him in. “I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you get a Zimmer Frame of your own and join me? Apparently there’s going to be an individual competition and a Pairs, one of you throws the Zimmer and the other one throws it back, sort of piggy in the middle but without the piggy. Then there’s a team event, the four man lob - I think that involves passing on the Zimmer to the next thrower like a baton, but we’d need another two for that. I train every morning at ten.”

He said he’d be there the following day, prompt.

Atkins, never a man to turn down the chance of a bit of fun, joined me for my next Throwing the Zimmer Frame training session at ten the following morning.

Ever resourceful, Atkins already had his own Zimmer Frame, having picked it up at a charity shop some time ago in readiness for when the time comes when he’ll need one, and employed in the meantime in his back garden as a support for his climbing strawberries.

We arrived at the park to find that the man whom I met yesterday, Mr Jefferson it transpired, was accompanied by two of his friends, who were also interested in training for the Throwing the Zimmer Frame 2012 Paralympics event. They looked to be aged about seventy. One was introduced as Mr Barnaby, the other, a Scot, was Mr Ross. It turned out that Atkins knew Mr Jefferson. He had been Atkins’s milkman years ago before he ran off with a woman from across the road - Mr Jefferson that is, not Atkins - which had forced Atkins into making his milk arrangements with the Co-op. Atkins mentioned this to him, and that he had been left milk-less and strawberry yoghurt-less for a time, and Mr Jefferson apologised profusely. Atkins said there was no need to apologise, if he himself had been running off with the woman from across the road the last thing he would have had on his mind would have been someone’s milk and strawberry yoghurt because she was a cracker. Mr Ross remarked what a small world it was, Mr Jefferson said it certainly wasn’t big enough because the cracker’s husband had found them and given him a right going over, and then we got down to some serious training.

Before we did this however Mr Barnaby felt constrained to point out that he didn’t actually use a Zimmer Frame - the one he had brought along was his wife’s - and enquired as to whether it was in the rules of the competition that a competitor had to be an actual Zimmer Frame-user, as if this was the case he didn’t want to waste his time training up for the event only to be denied at the last moment. I confessed that I didn’t know but asked him who was to prove otherwise? I also pointed out that the Paralympic Games were over five years away and by then he could quite possibly be genuinely in need of a Zimmer Frame, as indeed might the rest of us. This seemed to satisfy him.

Before we got down to some serious training I added a refinement in the shape of an 8 feet diameter circle, rather like the circle one sees in the sport of ‘Throwing the Hammer’, which I painted on the grass with some white emulsion left over from when we had our bedroom ceilings decorated.

The training went very well, the only problem being that Mr Ross, who is a genuine Zimmer Frame user, fell flat on his face every time he threw his Zimmer Frame. I assured him that this wouldn’t lead to disqualification as the rules stated that provided the competitor didn’t step out of, or in his case fall out of, the circle, it would be deemed to be a fair throw.

In fact it was Mr Ross who threw his Zimmer Frame the farthest. I wasn’t surprised by this, because of his country of birth, the Scots traditionally being very big on throwing things, hammers, cabers, tantrums, uppercuts, sickies and so on. Mr Barnaby wasn’t far behind and I thought it would be interesting to see which of them eventually turned out to be the best thrower. Atkins was hopeless, but this was probably because it took him all his time to keep his face straight, let alone throw his Zimmer Frame any distance.

We ended the session by having a chat about the way ahead and decided to put in for lottery funding, to be taken up by Mr Barnaby. On the way home Atkins and I decided there was no way we could continue without cracking up and decided not to go again, or if we did, to view the proceedings from the cover of the trees.

I had imagined that would have been the end of it but a couple of days later I was tidying up the back garden when the back door opened and The Trouble, wearing her ‘And what have you been up to now?’ expression, called to me. “There are three men with Zimmer Frames at the front door.”

I tried to look unconcerned. “Oh yes?”

“Why?”

I spread my hands. “Search me. Perhaps they’re collecting?”

“Well if they’re collecting Zimmer Frames they’ve had a lot of success. Anyway they’re asking for you.”

I went to the front door. Abreast of each other were Mr Jefferson, Mr Barnaby and Mr Ross. Standing behind their Zimmer Frames they looked like a small football crowd. How had they known where I lived?

“Mr Atkins told us where you lived,” said Mr Jefferson, answering my unspoken question as though on cue. I made a mental note to give Atkins a piece of my mind the next time we met; they’d obviously called on him, Jefferson knowing where Atkins lived by virtue of his once being his milkman before he ran off with the cracker, and were now intent on making me have some of the earache they’d no doubt given him.

“Why haven’t you been turning up for training?” demanded Mr Ross.

“And I hope you’ve got a better reason than Mr Atkins,” said Mr Barnaby.

“Why, what did he tell you?”

“That his wife said she isn’t going without strawberries for five years just so he can go to London in 2012 to make a fool of himself,” said Mr Jefferson. “So what’s your excuse?”

“I’ve decided to switch my event,” I said. They said nothing, just stood there looking at me, obviously expecting me to tell them which event I’d switched to. I thought quickly. I had to be careful; I didn’t want to pick something they might want to change to because if I did that they’d probably rope me in to train with them. The Downhill Stairlift was the first paraplegic-sounding event that sprang to mind. Surely none of them would go to the expense of buying a stairlift? But hang on. Downhill Stairlift? Wouldn’t that be a Winter Paralympics event?
Was
there such a thing as the Winter Paralympics? Skiing down the side of a mountain at a hundred miles-an-hour is difficult enough as it is without being hampered by having only one arm or one leg or partial sight, so probably not.