Author: Nicola Golding

My name is Nic, I'm 26 and just happen to have Cerebral Palsy that I've had since birth. It mostly impacts on my legs and my left arm and so I use a walking frame. When I'm not blogging I can usually be found making YouTube videos, reading or trying to write a novel.

My walking frame and the beach

Summer is well underway here in the UK (apparently), and slowly my Facebook Timeline is featuring more and more pictures of my friends enjoying their holidays. Some jet off to far off places and taunt me with the photos of places I’d love to go. Others stay closer home which makes me equally jealous. It has been way too long since my last one, but that’s not the point I’m going to make here. Today, I want to talk about the beach.

Sand, it seems to me, divides people into two camps: those who love nothing more than lounging on the beach all day (and why not – you’re on holiday after all), and the people like me, who can’t stand it

I dislike sand for all the obvious reasons – it gets it your shoes, sticks to your skin after you’ve been in the sea, and blocks up the plug hole when you take a shower. However, it irritates me most of all because my walking frame just doesn’t like it. Place Martha (or any of my other frames, for that matter) on the beach and they just won’t move. The wheels simply aren’t big enough to plough through the stuff, and my wheelchair isn’t much better either. My family have figured out that if they pull it backwards on two wheels then it will move, but it’s very tiring for them so I feel really guilty, especially as the beach isn’t my favourite place to be anyway.

Then I have the option of walking along the shore, but I don’t find that great either. I can do it if I have a couple of people to hold me up, but the thing about sand is that it moves underfoot so I often end up hitting the deck anyway and getting covered in the stuff.  I don’t think I need to tell you how unappealing I find that. I still think I’d dislike beaches even if I didn’t have Cerebral Palsy because I suppose you could say they’re just not my scene, but I think that just makes me even less approve of sand.

Don’t get me wrong, I have played on the beach as a kid, and have some great memories (my personal highlight was the time that a seagull decided to follow my sister). I’ve played in the sea, built sandcastles, and collected my fair share of shells but that was a long time ago. These days, I find that I’d much rather sit by the pool with a good book (or four) and do the odd bit of swimming. The irony is I’d probably get a far better workout trying to stroll along the shore, but hey ho.

The Liebster Award

imagesSo, I’ve been nominated for another award. This time it’s the Libester Award and I’ve been nominated for it by Ali over my My (Dis)abled Life. Thank you for thinking of me Ali!

So, as always, there’s a list of rules that I have to follow now. This time, there are:

1. When you receive the award, thank the person that gave it to you and post a link to their blog in your post. (Yep!)

2. Post 11 random facts about yourself.

3. Answer the 11 questions set for you.

4. Choose 11 blogs that inspire you with under 200 followers and link their pages to your post.

5. Create 11 questions for them.

6. Go to your nominees page and let them know you have nominated them.

So, let’s get started!

My 11 facts

  1. I think I may be addicted to peanut butter
  2. I watch way too many TV Boxsets
  3. After all this time I still love to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  4. My favourite film is Juno
  5. I would rather be too hot that too cold
  6. I say sorry way too much
  7. I have had five walking frames throughout my life (including Martha).
  8. I am really, really scared of spiders
  9. I want to write a book one day
  10. People always say I apologise too much
  11. I hate coffee

Answer the 11 questions set for you:

1.Why do you blog?

There are a few reasons. The main one though is that I enjoy it. The other big one is that lots of people kept encouraging me to share my stories about growing up with Cerebral Palsy with others in the hopes that I’ll be able to help or inspire them. At first I was reluctant because I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested, but in the end I decided to do it anyway. I’m very glad I did.

2.What are your challenges with blogging?

Coming up with ideas.

3. What is your biggest inspiration?

My parents. Without them I would probably have given up long ago.

4.When was your last Random Act of Kindness?

Last week probably

5. What is your dream career?

Journalism

6. What’s a cause that’s important to you?

Any form of Cancer research

7. Your favourite quote?

I have too many to pick just one.

8. A quote you are known for saying?

I’m sorry

9. Sneakers or something fancy?

Sneakers

10. Favorite store?

Oh, um, probably Waterstones

11. Favourite activity?

Reading

My 11 questions for my nominees are:

1. What do you enjoy most about blogging?

2.If you could swap lives with another blogger for a day, who would it be?

3. What was the last book you read?

4. What was the last film that made you cry?

5. Ice cream or chocolate?

6. What do you enjoy most about blogging?

7. Pop or Hip-Hop?

8. The pool or the beach?

9. Jeans or trousers?

10. What are your hobbies?

11. If you could play any instrument, what would it be?

So, nominees are:

Whitter Strong 

As someone who enjoys writing I like to read Whitter Strong’s posts.

Creative Ability

I love reading Maria’s posts about how to gets creative when it comes to managing every day tasks with her disability. She’s given me a couple of tips.

Dead Men Don’t Snore

I like to read Sarah’s blog about living with ME. I feel like I’ve learned so much about it already and I haven’t been reading for very long.

Ann Kilter 

I enjoy Ann’s posts about raising her three kids.

Okay, I know that’s not 11 but all the others had more than 200 followers. Sorry.

Supermarket Shopping

There are times when I feel like I practically live in the supermarket. I know that I talk about it a lot in my posts, but there are times when trying to navigate the endless isles and trolleys almost reduces me to tears.

When I was at university, I had help from an outside care agency who would help me run my weekly errands, but every now and then I would run out of those odd little things like milk and bread that send you into meltdown as soon as you don’t have them in the house.

So I would grab my old Kaye Walker frame Betsy and head on out to the store. Thankfully I lived across the road from two little express branches of two big supermarket chains so at least getting there and back wasn’t too difficult.

The staff in both stores were usually pretty helpful and would offer to carry my basket of goods around the shop for me. As much as I would’ve loved to accept their help but I always had to decline. I liked to try and carry things for myself, or at least hook the basket over the side of the frame, because I didn’t want my shopping to get too heavy for me to carry home without me noticing. Sometimes, people would look a bit confused until I explained my logic and then they understood. A lot of them would still stand in the queue at the till for me when it got to the time for me to pay for things because the spaces are often narrow because of special offer displays. By that point my arms I usually so tired that I’m really grateful for the small rest before walking home again.

I always have to try and avoid using self-service checkouts no matter where I am. They get on my nerves because I often move too slowly for them and they end up asking me over and over about wanting to continue and sometimes I end up having to start all over again. I get really flustered and paranoid that everyone else in the shop will be looking at me, or waiting to use the machine.

Thankfully, while I live at home, my mum takes care of that kind of stuff at least, but I’ll always try and get a few things for her on my way home if I’m passing through town to try and help her out a bit. As much as I’m not a fan of going food shopping, I know it’s something that I should get as much practice as possible to get better at it.

In need of some TLC

My Nimbo Frame Martha
My Nimbo Frame Martha

Well, I think that my Nimbo walking frame Martha could be in need of a little TLC if our little trip out last week is anything to go by. We’ve had quite a bit of rain lately and now her seat doesn’t seem to be sliding up and down nearly as well as it was doing. In fact, at one point I popped the seat down while I was waiting to meet a friend, and when my pal arrived I found that I couldn’t tug it back into an upright position again. This hadn’t happened to me before so I was a little bit worried because when the seat is down it takes up most of the space in the centre of the frame. This makes walking slightly more uncomfortable and harder than usual. Thankfully, my mate must have had her Weetabix that morning because she did it for me. I’m not sure what I’d have done if I’d been on my own though. At least it should be fairly easy to sort out.

I like to think that I take pretty good care of my equipment that I get from the hospital. Yes, it’s always well-used by the time I give it back but there’s not very much I can do about that. I use it every day so it would be virtually impossible for there to be no signs of general wear and tear. I store it well and get it serviced when I need to. On the whole I’d say that I probably get my wheelchair looked at once a year, and I get a physiotherapist to look at my frame to see if there are an obvious problems that need addressing each time I start a new cycle of appointments.

Lately I’ve noticed that whenever I try to walk uphill, my frame sometimes makes a noise that I can only describe as a cross between a wheeze and a squeak. I’m hoping this is down to the wet weather.  I guess I just need to wait for a fine day so that I can go outside with the oil/WD40 can and hope that that should make Martha happier.

Disabled Toilets

First of all, I’d just like to say that I’m sorry about the lack of updates lately. My life has been a maze of appointments and the like. Ali who writes My (dis)abled Life nominated my blog for another award which I will be passing on next week when I’ve finished compiling my list of nominees.

So, today I’m going to talk (and possibly rant) about a subject close to my heart: disabled toilets. As far as I understand it now though, I think the politically correct term is ‘accessible  toilet’ these days.  I’ll probably use both during this post. Although. that will have more to do with the fact that I don’t want to use the phrase ‘disabled toilet’ over and over than anything else.

Now, given that I use my walking frame or my wheelchair when I’m out in public, I end up seeing rather a lot of these so-called accessible loos. The thing that I tend to find is that they’re either brilliant with tonnes of space and the sink and the toilet roll holder at the perfect height, or there are a lot that are quite the opposite. Well, with regards to my personal mobility issues anyway.

Often I find that a lot of them aren’t quite big enough and my wheelchair or walking frame take up most of the space inside and don’t give me a lot of room to move around it easily. As I’m sure you can imagine, this isn’t good if you’re trying to go in a hurry and I have to try and step over things. I find this quite hard and sometimes I trip over which really isn’t a good thing on a full bladder, trust me. It was even worse when I had my surgery a few years back and my mother had to come in a help me (I won’t go into details) but there was even less space then which made us both really, really stressed.

If I’m out and about on my own and I don’t have the option to leave Martha outside and just ask someone to help me walk in, I tend to have some loos that I try to avoid using for these reasons and try and remember where the roomiest (and also cleanest) ones are. I know that you’re all probably thinking that I spend way too much time thinking about toilets, and you’re probably right, but given that I don’t personally find many of them user-friendly I don’t really have much of a choice.

Don’t get me wrong I have seen my fair share of clean, spacious ones ( I even saw one with a hoist once,  but I really have only seen this  once in somewhere other than a hospital). I don’t feel that enough of them are up to scratch. It is because of this that I very rarely feel comfortable using the term ‘accessible’ toilet, when, in my view, many simply aren’t easily accessible to me without help.