Today is the day when our domestic help generally calls around but this week her visit to us was being postponed until Friday. So after breakfast, I popped down into town to collect our newspaper and then Meg and I made our way to the park, where we consumed our elevenses. On the way down the hill, we chanced across our Italian friend and had a few words with her about the crash across the road from her house before we made our down the hill. On the way we received a call on our mobile from one of the occupational therapists so I was having to conduct quite a lengthy conversation with her on the one hand whilst steering Meg down the hill in the wheelchair on the other. The upshot of all of this is that we are to expect a visit from one of the OT team next Wednesday so we will need to prepare ourselves and make sure that we are ‘at home’ for when she calls. There are a few issues that we need to discuss but I am glad that we are actually getting a face-to-face visit as there is a limit to what can be communicated over the phone. When we got home, one of our neighbours had pushed a copy of the local newspaper through our front door where the crash that we witnessed last week was the front page news. Having passed the crash site several times in the past week, I have now calculated that if we had arrived on the footpath some two seconds earlier than we did and if the crashed car’s steering wheel had veered to the right rather than the left then Meg and I would almost certainly have wiped out by the oncoming car. The other experience in my life that was vaguely similar to this was the incident that occurred in 1973 when I was employed at Leicester Polytechnic where I was moving from a lecture in one part of the campus to a seminar in other building. The Polytechnic campus straggled a main road and at a ‘T’ junction, the driver of a Hillman Imp fainted at the wheel, crossed straight over the ‘T’ junction and sent me flying (breaking both legs in the process) and carrying the two students with whom I was conversing on its bonnet through some iron railings and piling them against the wall of an adjacent building. Meg’s father to whom we recounted the accident in all of its gory detail asked the rather naive question why I did not jump out of the way in time. We had to point out that a car travelling at 40mph is covering approx 60 feet per second and as I saw the car crossing the centre line of the road I had approximately a quarter of a second to jump out of the way. This was just about enough for my brain to register to my legs to not continue walking forward and thus I was dealt a glancing blow and thrown in the air and out of the way of the body of the car which probably saved me from even more serious injury. I have a further two instances where the coordination between eye and brain assumes some importance. At Leicester Polytechnic, there was installed what was known as a ‘pater noster’ lift which resembles a series of cubicles strung together in a long elliptical chain and which made its progress up and down the building. To use the lift, one was meant to approach it and then step into it (to ascend) or of it (when alighting at the appropriate floor) Sometimes, if one was in a hurry, there was great temptation to jump onto a rapidly ascending cubicle but by the time one’s eye had judged this and the brain activated one’s jumping muscles, then the pater noster lift had ascended by several crucial inches by the time you actually arrived at. Consequently, one had to learn to ‘over jump’ i.e. to jump to where you learnt to judge the cubicle had actually arrived rather than one’s first sight of it. We also had a paster noster lift installed at Salford University where I studied for my MSc and where the Duke of Edinburgh as Chancellor was called upon to open a new building where the lift was installed. The story was often told how some adventurous postgraduate students stood on their heads as the cubicle went ‘over the top’ (which was itself quite a nerve wracking experience) to the astonishment of the visiting royal party to whom the innovative new lift was being shown. One of these lifts was installed at Newcastle University and it had the most tremendous crash but in July when all of the student population had departed – but if the lift had been populated there would have been several casualties. The Health and Safety Executive immediately slapped a ‘stop’ order on all of these lifts throughout the country and subsequently they were judged to be too difficult to maintain or dangerous to operate so they were withdrawn throughout the country. A second instance of ‘eye and ‘brain’ concerned running for a bus where one made a leap for the wide platform towards the rear of the bus. Again, one had to learn to ‘overjump’ as the bus had moved on a foot or so by the time your body actually arrived at it. I am sure there must have been accidents all over the country with people running for and not quite catching their intended targets.
This afternoon, Meg and I were just settling down to enjoy the last episode of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ when the doorbell rang and it was hairdresser who had arrived to cut Meg’s hair and my own but which I had failed to put on our planning board. The hairdresser and I put our heads together and we scoured the internet to find a special hairdressing bowl so that Meg’s hair can be washed ‘in situ’ the morning before the hairdresser actually arrives. Our hairdresser had been coming to us for the best part of fifteen years now and so knows our situation intimately so it is easy for she and I to collaborate to give Meg’s hair the attention that it needs. Meg and I have a planning whiteboard in our kitchen upon which we mark up forthcoming appointments but on occasions, the writing of a new entry can rub out an existing one and I think this must have happened on this occasion.
© Mike Hart [2024]