A day off spent reading and writing

'Little Princess on wheels', by Susie Mallett, Summer 2012

Blogging and bloggers

All about adults on wheels

There are a few blogs that I read regularly, sometimes I mention them here. One that often gets a mention is dean’s stroke musings –

There, amongst many interesting links, you will find another recent posting from the saga of learning to ride a bike, post-stroke –

http://oc1dean.blogspot.de/2012/09/baby-steps-in-biking-2-stroke-rehab.html

Another blog that I enjoy very much and read regularly is Lawyer on Wheels, from the desk of R. Strzalkowski, Esq.

I have just read this –

http://blog.lawyeronwheels.org/2012/09/getting-around.html

As I was reading I was wondering about how it is possible to make people more aware of the associated problems that come with motor disability. Problems that could be described as little things, but as they happen daily are actually big important things.

Like wanting to arrive somewhere well-dressed only to find that the wheels of the wheelchair have left black smudges on the sleeves of a newly, carefully, strenuously, crisply-ironed white shirt, the overcoat having been removed as it was much too hot!

Then there are the many situations, as the lawyer-on-wheels described, like arriving hot and sweaty after a long uphill, or, just as bad, a downhill ride. And then there is the arrival made soaking wet as it began to pour with rain half way along the route.

I have experienced this all while accompanying wheelchair users and to some extent I have experienced them myself as a cyclist without a car. But I do not have a motor disorder I can quickly find a spot to change when I get at my destination. Most wheelchair users would need another extra hour added to an already long journey to do this.

Yes, awareness is improving in some respects. Children attend mainstream schools where some have school assistants, and public transport is more accessible, theatres and cinemas too. Even most buses now have ramps, but not all buildings have automatic doors, and phew are some of them heavy to open, and still not all pavements are lowered at junctions meaning long detours need to be made. Using a manual wheelchair really is very hard work.

Having a manual wheelchair however, often makes it easier to access buildings and transport, they are smaller and it is easier for someone to help if necessary to maneuver it. The alternative, a heavy bulky motorized wheelchair would take the sweat out of the journey but at the end of it you may not get in the lift or through the doors.

I know many people who opt for the hard work so that they can still have greater accessibility. I admire their determination but I also wish, again as the Lawyer on Wheels puts it, that people would take just a little bit more notice of how these wheelchair-users actually ‘get there’ when they attend functions, parties, the cinema, etc.

The offer of a lift on a humid or rainy day would, I am sure, be most welcome.

R. Strzalkowski, Esq., our lawyer on wheels, please keep the brilliant posts flowing!

I look forward to the twice weekly installments about life as a lawyer on wheels, just as much as I look forward to receiving my Guardian Weekly newspaper and reading its Nature Watch.

Tour de France

‘How I remember Normandy, 1968’  by Susie Mallett, July 2012

It is not often that I wish that I had a television

In fact I am usually very pleased that I do not have one and never have owned one of my own.

But, today I would have liked to be near one just to have been able to watch the closing stages of this year’s Tour de France. I would like to see it tomorrow too as the riders pedal along the Champs-Élysées, but today’s 19^th stage time-trials will decide whether Bradley Wiggins, who has been wearing the yellow jersey since stage seven, steps up on the podium tomorrow in first place, probably with his team colleague beside him.

I have no television and I am, as always, content with just listening, or reading about it all in the papers, later on. As I write I have heard that Team Sky have taken first and second places in today’s time trial so there will be a lot of Union Flags flying high in Paris tomorrow. I wonder if my Canadian cousin, who lives just around the corner from the finishing line, will be there to witness it and cheer for me too.

It looks pretty good for Team GB’s cycling squad for the following weeks in the Olympic races.

A trip down memory lane

When I was ten-years-old, on an exchange trip with the school in France, my host family took me on a car journey to the Normandy countryside, not far from Rouen one of Norwich's  twinned cities. I had no idea at the time why I was sitting there in a Van Gogh landscape, in burning sunshine, beside a picnic-table in a field, with other families spread along the country road doing just the same.

I remember so clearly how intrigued I had been and how I had wondered what this strange custom could possibly be. I was none the wiser when what seemed to me like thousands of cyclists whizzed past us in a blink of an eye!

It was not until years later, when cycling became a bit of a passion for me too, that I realised that we had been there to watch the Tour de France and that I had actually seen the riders pass by in the 4^th, or perhaps 5^th, stage of the 1968 Tour de France. My pen friend’s father was a sports teacher, so of course he would have been very interested, just as I am now.

Some British events become a part of family life

London, 2012

Sometimes I am very glad to be in Britain when certain televised events take place. Strangely enough they are mostly sporting events and royal occasions that catch my attention enough to sit in front of the television.

This year I was glad to be with my Dad to see the middle bit of Wimbledon. This was extra special because of the success of Scotland’s Andy Murray.

On another visit I saw snippets of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee weekend and although I was only at home for part of it, that was enough. I was also able to watch the Epsom Derby, another family viewing highlight, taking place on the same weekend.

I seem to have caught quite a few recent highlights on my now more regular trips to England.

I realise that I even saw the Royal Wedding in 2011, and this year I caught both Ladies’ Day at Ascot Races and the chaos at the Boat Race.

I remember that on Boat-Race Day I received a text from a friend in Surrey that said something like — ‘What chaos!’

I replied – ‘How did you know that I would be watching the Boat Race?’

To which the friend replied – ‘What else would you be doing?’

How right he was. What else indeed?

Last year I was with the same friend in the middle of Norwich waving my flag while watching the Last Night of the Proms on a big screen in the rain with several other mad dogs and Englishmen!

I do not wish to own a television but it is still nice to occasionally catch the occasions that have become a part of our family life. The Tour de France has not been one of the family occassions, but, this year, with the Brits in such good form it would have been a pleasure to have watched some of its stages with my Dad. Maybe later this summer I will get the chance to watch some of the Paralympics, but that of course depends how much airtime it is given.

Notes

Mad dogs and Englishmen – 

 The Muppets – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASrXlOr-p1c

Noel Coward – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ccGh8-Ipww&feature=related

Joy in the natural world

'Peewit or plover'

'Hares galore'

'The april-showers that fortunately missed me!

On my bike!

It has taken me a long time to get my bike out of the cellar, but this year not due to fear –

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/03/fear_8580.html

It was the cold weather that put me off this year, and tiredness. I must be getting soft in my old age!

We still seemed to be in deep winter during the chilly days before I set off to England, with even some snow still fluttering down now and then. It was not at all the sort of weather to put me in the mood for a forty-minute ride to work.

As soon as I returned to Germany in mid-April I brought one neglected bike out of the darkness of the cellar and spruced it up for spring and prepared it for long journeys. Then I wrapped it up and waited for a bit of warmth in the air!

Watching the weather

Day-by-day I watched the thermometer before I decided what to wear. Early each morning I asked myself whether it would it be my nice clothes and a hop on the tram or my cycling gear and a hop on the bike?

It was not until Friday 27th, almost the end of April, that I took the plunge. The temperature rose from three degrees on Tuesday morning to twenty-three on Friday, so off I peddled. 

It was lovely to feel the air on my face and watch the countryside fly past. Even in the city, where I cycled down streets that I have not travelled since December, there were many changes to be seen.

I doubt that the temperature will stay in the mid-twenties for long but I think that the frosty mornings may now be behind us. This will probably be the last month in which I spend money on the expensive ticket for the public transport system, until I dig deep in my pocket again next December.

Watching nature

The trams and buses have been very busy over the past few weeks, some days on the return trip being full to bursting. It was therefore a real treat on Friday to be out in the fresh air communing with nature.

I love the extra time that I get to read when I travel on public transport, but I think that I enjoy even more the time spent communing with nature on my bike.

It is not only nature that excites me, I also enjoy all the action at the airport where I love to stop to watch the aircraft taking off and landing just above my head. I love to dream of being up there. I sometimes think about making a spontaneous decision to jump on a flight that would take me home for the day instead of to work!

I have not done it yet. Instead, as I did on Friday, I watch the herons fly to their fishing grounds, smell the spring in the hedgerows, hear the peewit or plover in the still short cornfield with the skylarks twittering above. At dusk I will stop in silence, as I did this week, in hope of catching the hares in action. Observing a spring boxing-match is a treat yet to come.

But does it change the brain?

Arriving at work with ten kilometres behind me by bike I do feel much wider awake than when I travel the distance by bus and tram. I wonder whether the clients would be able to tell. We shall have to put it to the test next week.

Cycling certainly does change my outlook on the day, my personality is transformed, and my soul is awakened when I commune with nature instead of with the inside of a tram or a bus.

PS

It took me the same length of time to cycle the distance as it did four months ago. The rest seems to have done me no harm at all and the bike seemed to manage it alright too.

Notes

More on the spring start to cycling – 

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/03/influence-of-weather-on-well-being-of.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/03/minus-four-still-no-sign-of-my-bike.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/04/story-of-red-and-yellow-tricycle.html

Fear

"1959 on my first bike that I loved. It was blue and red. With Big- Sis of course"

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”

I have been afraid to get on my bike. I put it away in the cellar in November 2010 and although I brought it out again two or three weeks ago I had still not ridden it. It remained locked up in the courtyard beneath my balcony.

What was I afraid of?

It was very cold still and I was full of aches and pains, so was I afraid of catching a chill? No, I do not think so. I have been healthy all winter while the children at work, and the staff, have been dropping like flies.

I have been extremely tired for months. A medical problem that has been sorted now was the fault of the tiredness so perhaps I was afraid that I may not concentrate and this would cause me to fall off. But I do not think that this fear would be enough to stop me riding my lovely bike.

I think that Franklin D. Roosevelt was right

Although I really have been afraid to jump on to my bike again this spring, with four long months being the longest that I have ever had for my winter break, it was this fear that I was afraid of most.

I do not really know why I was afraid to start cycling again but I had this strange feeling of not wanting to. I was so unsure of whether my body would have the energy to cope with the cold and the twenty kilometres-a-day round-trip but mostly I was full of fear.

I am unused to these feelings because I love my bike and I love to ride it. I love meeting the rabbits and the moles, the dragonflies and the horses – not to mention the fellow-cyclists who I know well enough to wave to. I love to notice how many traffic lights out of the ten that I ride through are on green and how many minutes that saves me on my journey.

I really like not having to wait for trams and I love breathing the fresh air instead of sitting in a hot steamy bus.

Despite loving all of this, and with part of me longing to be cycling again, I had a sense of foreboding. I just did not wish to ride and the actual fact that I had this fear was worrying me. I wondered too how long it would last but decided that it was all right for me to keep buying a monthly bus-pass until the moment came that my fear left me. I was determined not to feel guilty as well as afraid!

I notice sometimes the same thing happening with our clients, children and adults alike. They learn something and they enjoy doing it for a long time but suddenly not any more. I have usually thought that their will and the motivation have vanished - but why? Had it not been like this for me too with my bike? Perhaps our clients too are afraid for some reason and then become as I did afraid of being afraid.

Conquering fear – by action

I still do not know what I was really afraid of but I do know that the more I became afraid the more I worried about having this fear. Until that is on Monday morning, when I got up, got dressed in all the gear that I found in its usual place ready and waiting for me, and I hopped on the bike.

My motivation returned and I was off like a rocket!

All but two of the ten traffic lights were on green, which gave me a flying start to my cycling season.

It was good cycling weather and got better for the return trip when the sun with some warmth in it, even though it was late evening, accompanied me to my door.

I have no idea what re-motivated me at last to cycle to work again at last but now that I have broken that barrier of fear there is no stopping me, although this evening after a twelve-hour day both Évi and I hopped on the bus for a short part of the journey home, she with her roller blades and me with the bike. It was not through fear or laziness that we hopped on the passing bus, we were just exhausted.

Tomorrow I will be out there again with the rabbits and the moles, the planes and the pheasants, and much more besides, all of which I have described here before:

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/08/i-follow-yellow-brick-road.html

Having just re-read this posting that I wrote eighteen months ago I cannot believe that my bike stayed in the dark cellar for so many months. There is enough in that story to motivate me to keep on pedalling, at least until the next snow starts falling.

Notes

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” -

Franklin D. Roosevelt 1932, in his first Inaugural Address.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

Blogging on a bike

Landscape by Susie Mallett
September 2010

Conversing with nature again

I was cycling home in the lovely evening sun, watching geese flying in formation, crows landing on newly ploughed fields, and smelling the freshly picked garlic that gives the area between home and work its name: "Knoblachsland", Garlic-land.

Catching whizzing words

I have recently learnt how I can catch the thoughts that pop up between my observatons of nature while cycling. I also now know how to keep the thoughts safe until I get a chance to write them down.

I love having this new-found skill. Over the years that I have been cycling, fifty or more, so many thoughts have whizzed into my head and whizzed out again. All lost for ever because they were travelling much too fast to be caught on my bike without a notebook.

I have improved this skill of catching thoughts yet some more since I have been blogging and that is why it is on my bike that many draft postings are written.

I actually drafted one today. I started it on the way in, getting on quite well with it until I was interrupted by some lovely red rose-hips that I just had to stop to pick as material for the next crafty project. The rest I drafted on the way home.

By the time I got home it was dark, by the time I had run a bath it was late, and by the time I had dried by hair it was time to go to sleep.

It is even later now with all thoughts of posting bike-written blogging gone, but I will still put up the latest news about the conference that is taking place in Würzburg next month and then may even take a peek at what more has been written on the blogosphere about Mária Hári, if anything.

Würzburg

I received an invitation from the German Conductor Association telling me that it is giving its members a special discount if they attend for both days. As I mentioned in my first postings about this conference, I, and I expect many conductors, have to work until 17.00 each Friday so I will not be able to take up the special offer. I will race to Würzburg on the ICE train on Saturday morning.

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/09/autumn-begins-to-chill-air.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/09/more-on-bavarias-autumn-congress.html

The invitation that I received is for the seventh congress that has been organised by the German Conductor Association with a series of different partners. This year the Association's partners are the Verein Fortschritt Würzburg e.V, that is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, and the conductive centre of the Institute for the Blind that is celebrating its tenth anniversary.

The organisers are happy to include in the programme scientists from the area of clinical research and from rehabilitation. Through the presentations, workshops and discussions it is hoped that a connection can be found between the results of current research projects and their effects on modern therapy and the work of András Petö, and the practise of conductive pedagogy.

The full programme is published here:

www.fortschritt-wuerzburg.net/kongress

A translation of the first programme I received can be found on my blog:

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/09/more-on-bavarias-autumn-congress.html

I began this posting yesterday evening but fell asleep before I had finished it!

In the early hours of this morning I received more information about the congress from Wolfgang Vogt.

Bitte um Unterstützung
Würzburg ist eine Reise wert

Liebe Freunde,

unser Kongress naht - mit Spannung. Ich freue mich, dass es gelungen ist, genau diese Referenten zu gewinnen um das tolle Programm auf die Beine zu stellen. Wir wollen die Förderung für Menschen mit Hirnschädigungen weiter vornan bringen. Diese Menschen haben ein so großes Potenzial, welches leider viel zu häufig brach liegt. Man traut ihnen einfach zu wenig zu. Oft mit fatalen Folgen - für die ganze Familie.

Wir wollen auf dem Kongress gemeinsam schauen, wie die vorhandenen Instrumentarien, Erkenntnisse, Studien und Erfahrungen besser genutzt werden können. Und mit neuem Wissen verknüpft, zu höherer Effizienz und größerem Nutzen führen.

Na gut, bevor ich weiter in meinem Lieblingsthema aushole: Es wäre toll wenn Ihr helft und die Information über den Kongress an möglichst viele Menschen versendet und sie bitten könntet, die eMail wiederum weiterzusenden. Auch wenn diese nicht betroffen sind. Ich habe gelernt, dass jeder irgendwie jemanden kennt. Ob Betroffene, Familien oder Fachleute. Kommt also gern selbst und/oder gebt die Bitte weiter.

Wir brauchen Öffentlichkeit und Unterstützung. Jeder einzelne Mensch ist wichtig und hat seine ihm eigene Bedeutung. Unsere Victoria ist meine Motivation aufzuzeigen, was möglich ist. Auf ganz normalen Wegen, gesunden Menschenverstand, Hoffnung, Zuversicht. Ich höre nicht auf zu helfen, die Welt ein bischen zu verbessern. Utopie? Wie sagte Erich Kästner: "Es gibt nichts Gutes, ausser man tut es." Egal wie klein oder groß.

Ich danke und grüße Euch -

Wolfgang

Please support us
Würzburg is worth a journey

Dear Friends

Our congress nears with anticipation.I am pleased that I have been able to attract the presenters that we have and produce such a good programme.

We want to bring the rehabilitation/habilitation of people who have suffered brain injury another step forwards. These people have a huge potential which unfortunately often lies untapped. There is just too little belief in them and their abilities. Often with fatal results for them and their families.

At our congress we wish to join together to look at how all previous knowledge, studies and experiences in the field can be put to better use, how it can be linked with new discoveries and lead to a higher level of efficiency and better understanding.

OK, before I get too enveloped in to my favourite subject, it would be a great help if you could pass on the information about the congress to as many people as possible and ask them to send the information on to others. it does not matter if the poeple are not directly invloved with disability. I have learnt that everyone knows someone somewhere with a disability. Disabled, families or professionals, please come yourselves or send on the inforamtion to others.

We need publicity and support. Every single person is important and has their own values. Our Viktoria is my motivation to demonstrate what is possible to achieve along an everyday path, with a healthy, human understanding, hope and expectation. I will not stop trying to help, or trying to make the world just a little bit better place.Utopia? As Erich Kästner said:" There is nothing good, apart from man doing it." No matter how big or how small.

I thank you and send best wishes,

Wolfgang

I will only be able to attend on the Saturday. I will miss hearing what some of the guests that Wolfgang is so pleased to have attending say, but I hope that there will be abstracts available or their complete presentaions will be published online so that I will be able to catch up later.

Notes

Knoblauchsland -

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoblauchsland

Wolfgang Vogt -
Vorsitzender FortSchritt Würzburg e.V.
Vorsitzender Bundesverband FortSchritt e.V.
Hilfe für hirn- und nervengeschädigte Kinder und Erwachsene

www.fortschritt-wuerzburg.net
www.bundesverband-fortschritt.de

Würzburg congress -
www.fortschritt-wuerzburg.net/kongress

Weather report

"Making waves" by Susie Mallett
July 23rd, 2010

What a different a spot of rain makes

I dodged the rain clouds on the bike this morning and also on the way home this afternoon. I only got a soaking when I walked around to the shops later.

Last week it was between thirty and thirty-five degrees, people were dropping like flies, including me! We were trying our very best to make the most out of conduction, mainly by hanging our feet in buckets of water, stroking our arms and legs with cooling flannels from the freezer and now and then we took the opportunity to jump into the swimming pool. Those are very distant hot memories in the coolness of today.

Today both my client and I were sneezing. With a drop in temperature of almost twenty degrees it is hardly surprising. As I sit and write I am wrapped up in a blanket and with the distant rumblings not a good sign that it will be getting any warmer over night, it will be a chilly ride again tomorrow.

Usually when the temperature drops to fifteen degrees the heating is switched on, but not in July!

I will look out my long cycling trousers for tomorrow just incase. When it is warm enough I prefer to cycle in shorts even in the rain, I get wet legs and have just a waterproof jacket on top. But when it is as cold as fifteen degrees the muscles don't like it so I will have to wrap up a bit!

I look forward to the heat for just a little bit longer, the last winter was just too long.