A carrot or a hammer??

Today hubby and I went out for a day trip to a local county show and we were lucky when the sun shone all day and it was really warm. Now struggling around a lumpy bumpy field in a wheelchair was almost bound to result in:

1. a face forward tumble out of the chair and
2. a cut hand /skinned knuckles on the portaloo door (ew!)

but nothing like that was really going to dent my mood, as to get such lovely weather so early in the year was just great. We even ran into the BIL and his partner so that was nice too.

On the way home, hubby suggested that we stop off in a little hostelry that he knew. “You know the one” he said, “It’s the one across the other side of the river that you have to go across the footbridge to get to”.

Well, you can be sure that I remembered it then but only because of a story that a friend of hubby’s told me from when a group of them went there. On that occasion they took someone with them who was a bit older than the rest of them – someone who actually had pretty advanced Parkinson’s disease and who couldn’t walk very far at all. He told me that he took one look at the footbridge and just decided that it was too far to walk and so hubby’s mates cooked up a scheme to get him across to the pub. Now this scheme involved a sack truck and some elastic bungee cords. Now when I first heard this, I think I assumed that they must have been to at least 3 pubs already(!), but in the end, they did get him across the bridge in exactly that way. They stood him on the trolley, strapped him on tight with the elastic cords and wheeled him across to the pub where, no doubt, he had to sit in the garden because the trolley wouldn’t go up the steps to the front door. I guess it was the thought that counted though...

Anyway, I asked hubby why he thought that the chap had refused to use a wheelchair and hubby couldn’t come up with anything apart from ‘the kind of prejudice that is typical of people who are determined not to give in’! Now most of my friends might think well, heck, she can’t talk, she’s as stubborn as they come and half the time doesn’t use her chair when she needs it...and yes, I admit it, there are times when that really is true. But equally there are times (like today) when I see my chair as a tool and something to make my life easier (despite the faceful of grass and the skinned knuckles!).

“Why wouldn’t he use the right tool for the job?” I queried. “After all, you wouldn’t try to knock a nail in with a carrot would you?”