Tag Archives: mobility scooter

Getting the Hang of It

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Teasel heads

No, not driving the electric scooter. I had several moments in that again, including a repeat of the track crossing where I came close to running off the path.  It swoops down whilst slanting off to one side and switching angles all at the same time. I probably should take a photo to explain, but I may just stop going that way. Mostly it was OK though and I am getting better at driving it.

Greylag Geese on a grey day

As I stepped outside this morning I noticed something brown and furry on the driveway, disappearing behind the car. I followed, with a sense of rattish foreboding, then looked in amazement as a rabbit hopped out of cover, through the gap in the boundary vegetation (to call it a hedge would be boastful and inaccurate), across a path and onto the grass strip between us and the woodland strip. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a rabbit in the garden.

Rabbit

The day was cold and gloomy, made more cutting by the brisk wind coming off the cold body of water.

I really need to dress better for using the scooter, including finding my gloves. I have several different pairs, but seem unable to find any at the moment. I suppose I will be looking for things for months, or years, to come. That’s the problem with moving in a haphazard fashion. It’s also part of the fun. I have rediscovered so many things in the move, including some I didn’t know I had. In the end I stopped taking photos because of the difficulty in operating the camera with no feeling in my hands.

Cormorant on a buoy

That’s about it for now. I’m going to go and sort some of the stuff we brought from Nottingham this week. The problem is that we have been bringing stuff up without sorting it, so we can get the house cleared out, but we are falling behind with the sorting at this end and the bungalow is in danger of becoming cluttered. That is precisely what we don’t want.

Teasel – me being arty

 

Travels on an Electric Scooter

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About a year ago I realised I was going to need some help with mobility. My predicament is of my own making, and weight loss, physio and arthritis injections can only do so much. This is particularly true when you are fat and lazy, as that leaves the injections to do the heavy lifting.

First we decided that we were going to move to a bungalow. This is a bit of a defeat, but dragging myself laboriously upstairs on all fours had long lost its novelty value. The trip down, on the other hand, clutching at the bannisters and fighting gravity all the way, always felt like it could end in a trip to hospital. A bungalow was not a hard decision.

 

The next step, the mobility scooter, took a bit more thinking about. We are close to a number of attractions – railway, country park, library, shops – and they would all be in reach on a scooter. However, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that my retirement dreams of striding out over mountains and fells had all dispersed like mist in the morning, and that I had become a cripple.

I know it’s not a word that’s gone out of favour these days, but “disabled” is such a weak word and makes you sound like a victim. I’m not a victim, I’m an idiot who has made, and continues to make, a lot of bad choices, and am therefore the author of my own life story. If I’d worked harder at school and had more focus I could have achieved my ambition to be a history lecturer at a University, but I didn’t, and as my aptitude tests all showed I would be happy working outside, that’s where I went. The arthritis in my back and neck may still have occurred after a lifetime of sitting at a desk hunched over books, so the eventual result may have been the same anyway.

Decision-making always takes time, in this case about three months, so it was only last night, an hour after the end of the delivery window, that I took delivery of a bright blue mobility scooter. The grey was a bit nondescript, the red is a bit dark and the yellow one exists only in my imagination. So blue it was.

I went out on it today. Considering that I have driven cars, vans and even lorries for work, in the UK. Ireland and Africa, and had a variety of two-wheeled transport, you’d think that a four-wheeled mobility scooter would be a piece of cake, wouldn’t you? It’s not. I had my first near-accident within fifty yards of the house, when I thought I’d try full speed. That’s 8mph. It’s not generally considered fast. However, on a cycle path, approaching bollards, and wobbling slightly, it’s both ill-judged and a lot faster than it sounds.

The next three miles continued with a lot of worries about tipping over, avoiding pedestrians, avoiding dogs (ditto children, bikes, adverse camber) and getting up hills. It’s not really designed for hills. On the web page it looks like it is, but an 18% gradient in real life is a lot less than 18% in a catalogue with a creative camera angle. I also spun my wheels several times on muddy patches after off-path excursions (some planned, some not (see comments about avoiding pedestrians etc) ) but managed to extricate myself and get back on my way.

I can now see why they recommend you insure these things – it’s mainly to cover you when you run into somebody.

Twice, towards the end of the “walk”, I found that the green bars had disappeared off my display as the gradient drained the system. Fortunately they came back as I reached a flat bit. Half a dozen times I ended up making sudden stops because I couldn’t control it properly.  This became easier after an hour of practice but it will obviously take time.

Meanwhile, Julia ensured I kept a sense of proportion by keeping pace with, and even overtaking me on a couple of occasions. She also gained some amusement by enquiring if I was light enough to go over some of the bridges we encountered on the way. Roman Generals used to have a slave behind them  muttering as they held their triumphal processions – something that a modern man can have by simply getting married.

When we got home we had our best ever sighting of a kite over the bungalow – it was only about fifteen feet above and seemed to be directly over our garden.

The scooter is currently being charged in the garage and will be back in use tomorrow as we go to the shops.

Pictures are from Julia, using her phone. She did take more but they all seem to be about the size of postage stamps.

 

Soup, Birds and Mobility

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I woke early, felt full of enthusiasm and set to work. You’ve heard it all before so I won’t go on, but I often feel that a good start leads to a disappointing finish. In this case, however, it lead to some useful work and a very nice lunch (even though I say it myself) of cauliflower soup. Actually it was cauliflower and leeks with garlic, black pepper and nutmeg and a few shavings of cheese thrown in from the Christmas leftovers.

There is enough to do lunch tomorrow too.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but I’ve been looking into buying a mobility scooter. I need to get out. I don’t remember the last time I went out except to drive to either Nottingham or Peterborough. No, now I’ve typed that, I do remember. I went to the Military History Meeting – drove straight there in the dark, parked, walked 200 yards to the museum, sat, listened and then did it all again, but in reverse. It’s hardly surprising I have little to write poetry about.

Blackcap – the Northern Nightingale or John Clare’s March Nightingale. Times change and we now have them all year round.

I’ve narrowed it down to two models from different companies. One has solid tyres and a a lithium battery, which are both good things that I want. The other lacks the tyres and lithium battery, but has LED headlights (the other has an old-fashioned single lamp,  which has attracted negative feedback for being difficult to replace). The final complication is that one company seems to offer better customer service than the other, though I have just been talking to someone at the one that is supposedly deficient, and it seems OK to me.

It’s very difficult making decisions sometimes, and it isn’t made easier by the amount of information that is now available on the internet. The feedback for one company is freely available on Amazon – both good and bad. The other doesn’t seem to sell anywhere apart from its own website, and the feedback is restricted to glowing testimonials from happy customers.

I’m going to sleep on it and decide tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it’s the Garden Birdwatch this weekend and we are planning on doing it tomorrow, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some good bird sightings.

Blackbird.

 

So Much to Say

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I’m not sure where to start today’s rant blog. Perhaps I’ll start with the the woman on the mobility scooter who sounded her horn at me because she thought I was holding her up as I walked along a pavement with my walking stick.

It is legal to drive one on the pavement, it seems, though not legal to drive one on a cycle path. Strange laws…

It probably isn’t legal to zip along the pavement sounding your horn and imitating Boadicea, as we always used to call her before we were told Boudicca was the proper name. Even the spell-checker doesn’t like Boudicca.

However, unless I’m going to set myself up with a bodycam I don’t suppose I’ll be able to do much about it.

Image result for mobility scooters law

Ancient British Warrior Queen

Image result for boadicea

Little Old Lady out Shopping – photo from pixabay.com

That has set me thinking about old people and an experiment I have in mind. We have an endless supply of them, so if we lose a few along the way I don’t suppose it will matter. Well, it will matter to them, but it won’t matter to me.

My idea is to fit Mobility Scooters with defibrillators wired into the horns. Sound your horn at me and you will get a high voltage reminder about courteous driving.

OK, it might see one or two of them off, but in conservation terms they are of Least Concern so it’s not like losing a Black-Footed Ferret or an Orangutan.

This way we can teach the drivers better road manners and, in all probability, liven some of them up. The unlucky few who can’t cope with 1,000 volts will serve as an example to anyone else who wants to run me down on the footpath.

(Two cautionary notes before any elderly readers get upset – I’m old too. I’m officially old enough for free prescriptions and tonight, at the pharmacy I wasn’t quizzed as to whether I had to pay for prescriptions. Though I’m not yet old enough to spread terror on the footpaths in a mobility scooter.

And two, a serious point – I was once rammed in the back of my legs by someone driving one of these scooters in a Supermarket. They need tests and they need insurance! And I need protection.)