Thoughts of a carer

Viv and I have a subscription to The Radio Times: we like to know what's on TV. There’s so much rubbish on that we don’t like to miss the one or two good programs, like Secrets of the London Underground or reruns of Ever Decreasing Circles .   But like much of the mainstream media it has got caught up in peddling liberal ideas. The 21-27 May issue landed on our doormat on Tuesday, I flicked through it and as soon as I saw the article on page 9 my blood pressure shot up: ‘ Enough Tudors and Stuarts ’, I read, ‘by Troy Deeney’ . ‘Let's  teach all our children about black history’,  it starts. Troy is a career footballer, I believe. I’ve sent off an email to the Feedback pages of RT: Hi Troy Deeney (RT, 21-27 May)  has missed the point about the study of history in schools. History is taught because it explains the way things are in the UK: our language, our customs, our laws. It is not about us as individuals. The Tudor and Stuart period tells us, among othe...

  Introduction Prior to March 2017 I would walk the footpaths, pavements and other routes around my home town, and elsewhere, without thinking that there was any kind of problem with them. If there was an obstruction, I’d walk around it. It took a major ‘life event’ for me to see things differently. It was in that year that my partner, Viv, was struck down by a mystery neurological condition, one symptom of which was that she was unable to balance or control her legs. Following a spell in hospital she was discharged, and, after some rehab, by June that year we were equipped with a wheelchair; I could take her out to enjoy some aspects of everyday life that we both had previously taken for granted: the fresh air, shopping, going to friends’ houses, even the odd trip away, with the wheelchair folded up and fitting well in the boot of our small hatchback car. Prior to receiving the wheelchair, my only experience of ‘pushing’ another human in a wheeled conveyance had been some twenty-f...