Southend U3A

May 2023

Friend Or Foe - Avril McOwen

We just looked at each other; nothing was said. It didn't move, it couldn't move unless I allowed it. ‘It’ is a royal blue mobility scooter with a smart black leather upholstered chair with fold-up arms. I was too shocked to say anything, then after what seemed an interminable silence my daughter Helen said to me, ‘Mum, are you alright? Please say something, anything will do.’ I slowly sat down on the wooden garden bench behind me, still too shocked to say anything. This was a surprise birthday present my lovely daughter had bought for me in lieu of my birthday in four months’ time. When she had asked me to come out into our back garden to see something she had bought I never guessed in a million years it would be a mobility scooter. I thought it would be new plants; we are enthusiastic gardeners, every year we always go to The Chelsea Flower Show. But to me a mobility scooter stamps the label on me of being old and arthritic and no longer able to walk unaided. Helen, my loving and generous daughter, sat down beside me, put her arm around me and said ‘Mum, please say something, I thought that this would please you, but I can see that it doesn’t.’

I am Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Betty, and Helen is a physiotherapist with her own practice. We were a family of three until my, now ex-husband, strayed once too often and I divorced him after the umpteenth girlfriend and I received a very handsome divorce settlement. However, he frequently comes stumbling back, very contrite, begging for forgiveness but it is too late, the damage has been done. But he will not take No for an answer and insists on staying on the periphery of our lives helping us whenever we allow him.

After the dust had settled, I opened a travel agency which was very successful for many years until I had to retire due to increasing hip problems after a fall in our own back garden. All my life I have enjoyed taking holidays to many countries and found out I was a born traveller, enjoying new foods, customs, people, historic sights wherever I went. Suddenly all that is now on hold and I now have to use a walking stick – under sufferance I may add – which means less walking to so many interesting places. Naturally, Helen used all her physiotherapist skills on me which has improved my condition marginally but it is still frustrating having to accept that I can no longer be as independent as I once was and now have to accept the help of others to move short distances. For me it is a hard pill to swallow. So, Helen decided, without consulting me, to buy this piece of machinery behind my back because she knew I would reject it if she suggested it to me. How well she knows me.

So here we are, the two of us, staring at each other, saying nothing, but thinking plenty, at least I was. I looked at my daughter's concerned face, I just could not upset her so I gave her a big hug and, ‘Thank you my darling girl, it's a good idea, I have just got to get used to it.’ She smiled at me. She led me to the scooter and began showing me where the battery was, then got me to sit on the black leather seat, with arms. The chair back was comfortable and supportive. I tried the handlebars and rang the bell on the right-hand handlebar. The next day the man from the mobility scooter shop came to give me a tutorial about how to steer it, recharge the battery and handed me the all-important instruction manual. He wheeled it into our garage where it has remained ever since and Helen has said nothing, just waiting for me to decide what I wanted to do. I carried on as usual using my walking stick, desperately clinging to my treasured independence. Then ‘life’ intervened and I twisted my left ankle and could not put any pressure on it for 2 weeks.

That was the turning point. Now to discover whether it was my Friend or Foe. How to make friends with a piece of machinery that just stares at me. I swear it had a grin on its chassis and it said, ‘l won, now you cannot ignore me anymore, as you and I are going to become great friends. ‘Prove it!’ I replied.

It was a warm, dry Saturday afternoon as we sat in our shared garden. I had better explain. Helen and I moved into a nice little bungalow with a Granny flat attached to it, plus a lovely medium size back garden and a paved front garden. We have a neighbour, Reg Forester, he and his family live across the road, he is a gardener, who looks after our garden. Helen had waited patiently for me to begin to use the mobility scooter and I knew it would be unfair to keep her waiting any longer.

It reminded me of the Hollywood film ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ where the sheriff and the outlaws were waiting to see who would make the first move! Well, it had to be me, as the mobile scooter was not blessed with a tongue, thank goodness. However, from what my friends with mobility scooters had told me, these machines definitely had their own agenda. It had been in our garage plugged into the battery charger fixed on the garage wall so I knew it was fully charged. Helen took it out of the garage and moved it to the lawn and I sat in the seat, twiddled with the handlebars, prayed to God to walk alongside me and switched it on.

I began by travelling around the circular flower bed in the centre of the lawn, getting used to steering it going forward. Then I wanted to reverse the machine and began to turn when I unexpectedly found myself in the flower bed at an angle and totally stuck. I felt so helpless stranded in that flower bed that, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, I had been well and truly ‘hoisted by my own petard’. Helen quickly came to my aid. She helped me out of the seat and I stood on the lawn as she moved it back onto the grass. I got straight back on, turned on the engine and practised for the next hour going forwards, backwards, reversing and circling until I felt very confident.

There and then I decided to start to enjoy having a partnership with this machine, as I was the intelligent one in this partnership, I told myself. I used to be an efficient, innovative business woman so I applied all those skills to my new best friend, who I had named Hercules. I let Helen help me improve my reversing skills, so I took several circular trips backwards around the central circular flower bed and, delighted with my success, we treated ourselves to cream cakes and tea, after which she escorted me outside and I slowly rode past my neighbours houses, past the local parade of shops where we met friends shopping who admired my dexterity using the scooter while Helen stood on the side-lines chuckling to herself, no doubt thinking to herself, ‘You should have seen mum 2 hours ago in our back garden.’

From that time on I became more confident using the scooter and read the instruction manual thoroughly. 4 weeks later Hercules and I are now great friends and I have now bought a much lighter portable scooter which can be folded down into a car boot, perfect for holidays or day trips on a coach. Once a travel agent, always a travel agent, opening up new roads for me to travel along. The moral of this story is to make friends with your foes and enjoy the journey.