The Times Magazine 7Spinal column Melanie Reid
very day, in the
late afternoon,
there is a strange
sight to be seen on
the side of our hill.
It’s a deranged
woman on an
all-terrain mobility
scooter, her knees trussed under
the handlebars by a bungee cord
to stop her falling out, her face
grim with determination. She’s
lurching up across mud, stone
and grass, all on her own,
seeking freedom.
She follows a grass-covered
logging track for half a mile or so,
just a warm-up, then loops back
onto an earth path up the hill,
between towering thickets of
gorse bushes and through wild,
sodden woods towards the top.
In the beginning, she doesn’t
want to go. It’s like circuit
training. She loathes the thought
of it. She’s brain-dead, far too busy
and hurting all over, especially on
her seat bones, even though she’s
supposed not to be able to feel
anything. She’s got bruises on her
thighs from the awkward slide
onto the scooter; she’s defying her
husband, who thinks she’s mad;
she’s got a deadline to meet; she
knows it’s going to rain. But she
forces herself to go all the same.
But by the time she’s come
back, she’s a different person.
My daily adventure, which
I started about a month ago, has
quite simply become my salvation.
It is now an iron routine. It sets
me free as nothing else has done
since I lost my body, and it’s
revolutionised my declining
mental health.
This year has been very tough
for millions of people, and for
me it coincided with the tenth
anniversary of my accident,
a milestone that flattened me.I fought the sentiment with every
bit of hard, cold logic I could
muster. But depression doesn’t
obey logic.
My burning need was to
escape the prison of my body in
some way, to run away from my
glum thoughts and my cooped-up,
sludgy, static, housebound life.
But I had to be able to do it by
myself. I didn’t want to have to
ask for help, or to plan anything
in advance, or seek permission
from anyone. I just wanted to
go out of the door and take off- the way normal people can
spontaneously decide to go
for a run, or a walk, or a cycle
whenever it pleases them, without
imposing on anyone or anything.
So I got Dave to dig out
my Tramper, lying increasingly
underused in recent years as I had
retreated into myself, and I asked
someone to smooth a little path
up the hill behind our house,
putting pipes in the boggy bits,
and winding a route through
the trees. Just for me, out in a
miniature private wilderness
where nobody else goes.
My friend’s not finished yet,
but he’s done enough for me to
yearn to do the full circuit and
get to the top for a view over the
MURDO MACLEOD world, and imagine I can throw
E
pebbles down our chimney pots
like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
I used to do the circuit on
horseback, pausing on the skyline
like a cowboy surveying the range.
If exercise were a drug, they
say, we’d all be prescribed it.
Twice a day, 10mg of solitude in
nature. Well, this is the nearest
I can get to exerting myself,
jolting around over tussocks,
feeling the frisson of fear on the
gradients. I come home shaken
and tingling, like a cocktail ready
to drink.
It’s the sense of transgression
I love. The fresh air blasts me,
I stop where and when I want,
and I am, briefly, a free agent,
a jail-breaker.
About two weeks ago I was
caught by a cloud burst about
a kilometre from home and
although I trundled to the shelter
of a giant oak I was drenched.
The smells, the rain, they were
intoxicating after years of being
protected and cosseted. I’ve not
felt more alive in ten years. Or
more happy to be alive.
Now, if there are dark clouds,
I just put on a rain cape in
case. I still go. I see strange,
unfathomable tracks worn in
the ungrazed grass. Glimpse birds
I don’t recognise. I cope with
Dog (we’re going to change his
name to Biscuit, incidentally; it’s
the only thing he responds to)
whose hill trophies include a
deer skull plus ghastly, still-
attached spinal column, which
he dragged proudly, tail wagging,
all the way home.
And I’ve reclaimed a bit of
old me. n@Mel_ReidTimes
Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after
breaking her neck and back in
a riding accident in April 2010‘I have escaped the prison of my body.
And I’ve not felt more alive in ten years’