The way people react to you having Parkinson’s is different, but it helps if people just show a bit of empathy not sympathy. That goes a long way to making the sufferer calmer and happier. This is good as stress and confrontation can set a person with PD into a state with full blown symptoms.
People with Parkinson’s try and hide the symptoms that they have and the drugs they take help mask the things that go wrong with their bodies. Rarely will a PD sufferer say anything about their problems – except to those that they love and trust.
Big tip though if a PD sufferer asks for help, then they probably are in need. This almost stubborn denial of these problems that PD causes means that sufferers try and prove they can cope. This puts tremendous pressure on the nearest and dearest at times. They must cope too, as well as care.
So I give you Bike hero #5
The random bloke has to cope with the ‘freezing’ that I am so used to that it has become part of my life – I hope that he is un-medicated, otherwise he is in a bad way. My hat goes off to him for allowing people to film him in that state.
However the person that I say is the true hero is the woman looking on in the background. I assume it is his wife – the person who cares and has to deal with so much pain herself. Not many people out there are able to give that much of their heart and soul to someone else.
I used to teach in a lab that was joined to another with a prep room in between, in a self contained detached block. The block was a bit like a pair of huts, but a bit more substantial. The whole block was brick built with a flat roof that leaked like a sieve. Both labs had a huge bank of windows that looked out over a grassed area called the Quiet Green.
Richard Michaels (aka RM) – the hard-nosed mentor of mine and T-club member taught next door. RM had a way of controlling kids that was second to none and was always willing to “give ‘em a good whelping” if they stepped out of line.
One day I was chalking and talking to a class that were clearly being distracted by something outside on the Quiet Green. So I turned around to see a lad sheepishly standing on a picnic table right in the middle of this open space. I went outside to investigate and the kids I left behind in my lab jumped up on the side benches to get a grandstand view, faces pressed up at the glass of the windows. They all stared at this lonely looking boy stood on the picnic table.
RM had the whole of his own class lined up outside his lab and was barking orders at this clearly bewildered student as the rest looked on.
“That’s it son, up you get!” bellows RM.
The boy stands on the picnic table, blinking and unsure.
“You have not been paying any attention to me back there in that room; it is as if you are sticking two fingers up to me for the whole lesson”
The kid shuffles a bit with his tail between his legs.
“So you can come out, do it properly and stand up there for the whole world to see!” comes the cry, which is so loud that kids in the English block are looking out too at the spectacle.
RM stands there, arms folded. He barks again at this lad, who looks like he needs the toilet,
“So let’s be having you! Stick your two fingers up to me!”
The kid is very unsure as to how best to proceed. Giving RM the old “V” sign is something he is not comfortable with, nevertheless he slowly raises his hand.
“That’s it! Stick your fingers up!”
Two girls in the line stood outside the lab muffle a titter, but RM still turns around to glare at them.
“That’s all that I am good for isn’t it son? Two fingers…..”
The lad still stands there giving the salute.
I shake my head in disbelief and get back to my class.
Well I was walking through Broadmead on the way home after a day “at the office” filing planning appeals at Tollgate House when some random woman keeled over and started an epileptic fit outside BHS.
Loads of people just ignored her – stepping over her with their shopping. I put my jacket under her head (which she semi dribbled/chundered over), put her in the recovery position as best I could and waited for her to stop fitting.
So the backdrop to this video is the same view I had of the shopping centre as I crouched amongst the shoppers.
I used to play a lot of golf with a mate called Alex who could play a bit. We were neighbours at the time when we used to get up literally at the crack of dawn every Sunday and be out teeing off at our local municipal pay and play – Wycombe Heights Golf Club. We would play all winter long like this.
The start of the morning’s round consisted of dumping our bags on the 1st tee and sneaking back to the range to pick up a few practice balls. After cracking open a can of Stella Artois“the choice of champions”, we would take it in turns to hit a range ball off the 1st tee and see if you could still see it land down on the fairway. If we could not see where our tee-shot had ended up it was too dark, so we would sup some more beer.
It would slowly get lighter and once our practice balls stood out on the fairway ahead of us we were off. We used to scoot round in just over 2 and a half hours some mornings.
On occasions we were joined by another mate or two, but they never had the stamina to come out on a regular basis. One such lad called Martin the Mouth joined us one February morning for a game that we had put a few quid on to keep the ‘interest’ going.
We were stood on the 16th tee and as you can see from the video it is elevated above the target green.
In fact if you play as we did (illegally) from the members’ tee the green is well below you as you start the hole, as the tee is set up on a large shelf. The hole itself is a par 3 and not too far, especially as it is downhill all the way to the pin.
All the trouble is at the front where two big bunkers deter you from dropping short with your tee shot. Added to this if you miss the green on the right it can run away for miles down a steep bank.
In wintertime one of the best ways in is to smack the ball left into the beech trees and let the ball feed off a steep, chalky slope from there directly onto the green.
Martin was stood at the tee with the ‘honour’ having one the previous hole. He was ahead on points for the money we had wagered and there were only a few holes left. Basically Martin was in the box seat.
Alex saw this shot as a chance to claw back the advantage by means of a bit of sports psychology. As Martin prepared for his shot at the green Alex casually said
“Right, you win this hole and the money is good as yours Martin. So there is a bit of pressure on you here Boy!”
Martin set himself for the shot and as he did he replied in quiet, calm voice with a great comeback.
“Nah, this ain’t pressure. Pressure is when you are sat on the roof of your flooded house being forced to watch your wife give birth in a nearby tree!” he said as he began to tee off.
He had drawn back his club by now, so he paused for a instant whilst he brought the club through the ball and cracked a super tee-shot.
“Now that is pressure Alex” he said calmly as he gazed at his ball sailing on towards the green.
Once I took over the form tutoring role of a tutor group that had had four form tutors in three years. As a consequence of the constant changes they were a bit feral when I took them over in year 10. The group turned out good in the end, in fact they won the overall form Sports Day Trophy in that same year.
At this stage I had worked out what method motivated them – bribery. A girl in form won the 800 m, literally by beating the only two other girls that turned up, due to the fact that I promised her a bottle of vodka if she ran.
I was good to my word, but I do not let her have the bottle until she was 18!
One promise to them that I later regretted slightly was a trip to Slough ice rink – a reward for good behaviour. On the big night we piled the kids into two minibuses and drove down the A4. We left the kids to it and then swiftly retired to the bar.
Not long after we had settled down an announcement came on the PA system:
“Could the teachers from QM School make themselves known to a member of staff as we have to close the rink?”
What had happened was mass pileup that made a hole in the ice which had to be repaired by the ice machine that was duly rolled out.
Fortunately no was injured, but the cause of the crash was Celine Dion. Titanic was the blockbuster that year and when “My heart will go on” came on for the public to skate to one lad decided he was Leonardo DiCaprio and tried to hold his girlfriend up as if he was on the bows of the doomed ship.
His girlfriend was not going to have any of this, and when the boy did not put her down when she asked she decked him with a neat right hook.
Both of them came down in a heap causing complete carnage.
In 1984 – Talking Heads produced a concert movie called Stop Making Sense.
I was 17 when it finally hit the Watershed in Bristol. I got the bus into town to see it. Might even have gone on my own. The NME raved about it, and they were right. It was pretty ground breaking.
Now kids access music by standing in public car parks in the dark gawping over some uninsurable, souped up (ie new spark plugs) Mk2 Vauxhall Corsa with some crappy 2nd hand alloys and mean sub woofers in the boot. The ground shakes gently to the sound of some “West coast” whilst the man in the kebab van looks on glumly at the other end of parking area.
This lad was best described as a “Dandy” – one of his many nicknames was The Lion King, which helped paint the picture of this very self confident athlete with his mane of curly hair and wrap around shades. He oozed sauve style, posessed a real sense of arrogance and was a natural team leader.
Cipollini was a sprinter, a man who loved to be greeted by his adoring fans on the winner’s podium at the end of the race whilst looking like he had not even been down the paper shop and back on his bike. He was that good that he would turn up at the Tour de France win a few flat stages in the first week or so, and then give up and abandon the race when things got serious in the mountain stages. He would jump off his bike at the first sight of the Pyrenees or Alps and be down on the beach in Rimini quicker than you could say “lazy, arrogant, spineless superstar”
All in all he was a great athlete and a bit of a bully if truth be told. Still he made the Italian cycling fans proud in 2002 in a brutal finish to the World Championships…….
I met a bloke in the pub the other night; he is a friend of my builder mate Vince. I had gone down to have a quick drink with Vince, who has done a lot of work on our house. This buddy of Vince’s that I was introduced to is called John the Tree and as his name suggests he is a Tree surgeon and a good one too by all accounts.
We supped a few pints of ale that night and just chewed the fat. Random as they say. John’s dog was with us all evening. She is a 4 year old German Shepherd that has a lovely temperament. She sat at John’s feet all evening and got up once to greet him when he came back from the toilet by placing her paws on his shoulders and giving his face a good lick. It was only then that I realised how huge she was as John is a tall bloke and it is some reach for a dog to reach up that far to his face.
I saw the dog again last night in the door way of the Thai restaurant waiting patiently for John to pick up his take away. She really is huge. Seeing them again brought back a memory of a classic one liner that John said in the pub that first time we met.
Us three lads were at the bar and as we chatted over a beer a couple of girls came past on their way out. One of the ladies was immediately attracted to John’s dog. She bent down to give the dog a bit of fuss and asked
“He is a lovely dog. What breed is he?”
“She is a Fox Terrier cross” replied John, totally dead pan
“She is so well behaved” said the girl
“That is the Dalmatian in her” came the immediate reply.
It cracked me up and was so well timed, but was totally lost on the victim!
Next goal wins laaaaaaads! 