Page 18 of Escape to the Country

‘Watch it, lady, you’ll be raising my blood pressure with that bit of information,’ he replied, still tittering to himself as I rammed the wheelchair into the architrave around the front door on my way out, muttering ‘whoops!’

We kept to the pavements, and luckily the complex was quite new and the walkways smooth and quite wide, so wheelchair-friendly, without too many dips up and down, although it was a shame that people weren’t particularly considerate. They parked on kerbs in some places so closely that you couldn’t get a wheelchair past and it really wound me up, and I huffed and puffed as I had to go down a kerb, around a car, and back up a kerb again more than once. And the dog mess! What the hell was that all about?

‘Why don’t people with dogs think that they have to pick up their dog mess? Dirty buggers! It’s disgusting and if someone with a wheelchair drives through it, it’s just going to get everywhere and could even get back into your house when you get home.’

‘I used to get upset about it too, but I’ve now discovered that there’s no good that comes from it. The only person that gets annoyed is you. Do you think that the person whose car it is cares and spends the day being wound up? Do you think the person whose dog just shat on the pavement cares about my wheelchair? We just have to realise that people are so busy wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t think. It’s not deliberate. So it’s best to just let it go.’ He was talking such sense. It was a lovely way to look at it, much better than getting all annoyed and tense about things.

‘Tell me what you can see, Maddy; humour me and be my eyes.’

I pointed out every little detail of the apartment complex and noticed things that I’d never even seen myself before, from the mixture of beige-coloured and red bricks and grey slate roof tiles of the buildings we were passing with their grey aluminium window frames, to the green, short grass and the bright yellow of the wild dazzling daffodils and vibrant multi-coloured tulips, which brightened up the hedgerows. And as I described things to him, it was as if all my other senses were coming alive too.

Along the waterfront, the lake that I’d always seen as murky was actually clear in parts and there were radiant water lilies at the lake’s edge, with pretty pale pink flowers – although there was also the odd carrier bag, a bicycle wheel and some other debris that I didn’t bother going into detail on for fear of shocking him, and I didn’t want to look too closely at it myself, to be honest.

I described the shapes that I could see in the clouds in the sky and we laughed easily as I told Stuart how my mum always used to take the mickey out of me because I used to see animals in the clouds as a child and she never could. I always said she needed to have a much better imagination. She always said that mine was way too over-active.

I smiled as I saw a mother duck with seven little babies following in her wake, describing how small and fluffy the chicks were and how they were rushing along to keep up with their mother so they didn’t get lost. And how busy the mother duck seemed to be, waddling along at quite a pace, glancing back from time to time to check that they were all still there.

I’d always thought – ignorantly, I now realised – that trees were just green, but now I was looking at them in a different way, and describing them to Stuart made me realise that there were so many different shades of green, as trees and bushes that had lost their leaves over winter began to grow new leaves in various shades and buds began to open. Pretty pale pink blossom on the cherry trees painted even more colour into a landscape that had come alive for me.

Describing these tiny little things that I took for granted every single day of my life made me so very grateful that I had the gift of sight, when so many other people didn’t. We really don’t appreciate what we have and should show more gratitude in our lives for the things we do have, instead of thinking about the things that we don’t.

We soon arrived at the little bistro café at the centre of the complex and I described the red and white canopy that covered the cast iron tables and chairs outside as I pulled the wheelchair up against a table. A pretty waitress came out to take our order and she flirted outrageously with Stuart and saw how handsome he was. She never even noticed that he couldn’t see her.

I read the menu out to Stuart and we both chose a chicken panini and decided that we’d share a bowl of chips. He was so easy to chat to and we passed the time of day easily while waiting for our food.

This walk with Stuart, describing the surroundings to him, made it feel like I’d woken up and could see things that I’d never seen before, and in full technicolour too. And once more I counted my blessings.

Stuart talked about Hudson, the guide dog that he would shortly be getting. They’d been bonding over the last few months and the dog had been to stay a couple of times. Stuart was looking forward to getting some of his independence back and giving his parents a break from constantly looking after him.

He explained how most people would look at Hudson as just doing his job but Stuart saw it as opening up the world again and being able to experience things that he’d been missing out on. He was also looking forward to the emotional side of having a furry companion, that wag of a tail and lick of a hand that could brighten your day when you were feeling a bit down.

‘I’d love a dog at some point, but until I lost my job recently, it’s never really been the right time.’

‘But maybe there’ll never be a right time if you wait for it to come along. Perhaps you just have to find the right dog and fall in love with him or her and everything else will sort itself out. I’ve spent my life saying that I’d love to do things one day, but then I had my accident, and it made me realise that I probably will never be able to do those things now and I should have done them when I had the chance. You have to grab life with both hands, Maddy, and do the things you want to do, now. Because you don’t know what tomorrow brings. I’ll never forget that famous saying “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift and that’s why they call it the present.” And it’s true. Don’t let anything get in your way.’

We meandered back to his apartment, once again with me wittering on about every small thing that I thought he might like to know about: the colourful wild flowers growing in the hedgerows, the bumble bees hovering and darting from one flower to the next, the greyish-brown heads, white cheeks and black bibs of the sparrows dancing around from tree to tree.

When we returned, Stuart had a huge smile on his face and some colour in his cheeks after having had a lovely morning. I knew that once again, the feeling of helping someone else was actually one of the most satisfying and heart-warming experiences that I’d ever had. I had never felt like this after a day working at the agency.

I made sure that Stuart was settled back in at home before I left. What he’d said about grabbing life was so true. Since I’d been made redundant, I’d been feeling really anxious about all sorts of things, but I couldn’t let that anxiety take over like I had let it before and stop me from working out what my dreams were and setting out to grab them.

I was desperate to get home so I could ring Rebecca at the library to see if there was any way that I could be put on regular calls to both Stuart and the Darbys, who I felt had taught me more in the last two days than I had actually learned for a very long time. And I was also keen to tell Beth that she was right and that the goals I had been pursuing, thinking they were making me happy, actually hadn’t made me happy for a long time, even though I thought they had.

* * *

I popped into the hospital on the way back before starting my afternoon shift at Growlers and was totally delighted to find Beth looking much brighter. She was waiting for the doctor to do his rounds and it was possible she’d be able to come home today. She was delighted to hear about how I’d got on with Stuart and was pleased that I was thinking of doing some more community projects too. Giddywell was getting under my skin and the thought of helping people really was growing on me. It helped others and made me feel happy. Win win!

* * *

Uncle Tom was waiting for me at the gate.

‘Ready for Growlers then, lovely?’

‘Ready as I’m going to be,’ I replied with a huge grin.

‘I’ve put these aside for you. Save your nice clothes getting too grubby. Don’t want you getting a wet bum again now, do we?’ he chortled, and I just grinned at him.

‘Now you’re going to be a fully paid up member of staff, instead of helping just in the office, I thought we’d better get you kitted out properly. I’ll go and pop the kettle on and leave you to get togged up, and I’ll see you out in the yard in five.’ He scooted off pretty quickly, before I could see what he’d hung over the gate. I realised why when I picked up a pair of wax dungarees with the Growlers logo on the top pocket and a pair of green matching wellies. At least he’d got the right size on those, which was more than I could say for the dungarees, which would have fitted a giant. It was a good job there wasn’t a mirror around; I must have looked hideous.

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