Weirwolf Read online

  I didn’t mind that too much. It was a great place to play around and explore and every day seemed to bring a different adventure. I was also lucky to have such a tight group of friends, and two brothers who were handy in the boxing ring. Without that it might have been different but whenever I got into fights they stepped in to sort it out. It was only when I ventured off the estate that I encountered problems.

  Most of the time, I just ignored the abuse. Kids can be cruel and my parents always told me to be strong and that other people would try and wind me up and make me feel bad. But occasionally the abuse would hurt. It would hit home.

  When I was about fifteen I started seeing a girl in Croydon. She went to a school a couple of miles away and moved in totally different circles. For reasons I will never understand, her friends obviously saw me as a threat. One day I got a call from her number. But it wasn’t her. A few of her schoolmates had got hold of her phone and rung my number. I answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Dave?’

  ‘Yeah, what do you want?’

  ‘If you keep hanging around, we are going to take you out to the desert and leave you there without your crutches or your chair.’

  Then they just hung up. How vicious is that? What sort of nasty person would dream of saying that sort of thing?

  I cried a lot after that. But as time went on and I grew older I realised it was exactly that sort of cruelty that made me even more determined to prove that I wasn’t going to be held back. That I couldn’t just be equal to other people. I could be even better.

  CHAPTER 3

  I DON’T FEEL DISABLED

  School should have felt like home. After all, every kid at Bedelsford, a special school for children with disabilities in Kingston upon Thames, had one kind of problem or another. Whether it was mental or physical, we were all lumped together, the outcasts, all of us trying to make the best of it. I suppose it should have created a greater sense of togetherness, a closer bond brought about by bad luck. Whatever insults you got from people on the outside, Bedelsford was a sanctuary, a place where we all could stick together.

  The problem was, I didn’t feel like the others. I didn’t feel disabled. I know that will sound weird to people who are able bodied. I can hear them asking themselves whether I have looked in the mirror lately. But I have never really accepted it.

  Maybe it’s because I grew up on the Roundshaw Estate, where all my mates treated me as one of them. Maybe it’s because my mum and dad never made excuses for me. They expected me to fend for myself as much as possible, even from an early age. I always tried to think as an able-bodied person would. I have never had any changes made to the houses or flats I have lived in to accommodate my chair. I have adapted to the houses, not the other way around. It has always been about creating a sense of normality. And I think that’s what has made me so strong – so determined to prove people wrong.

  But at school, that just made me feel more alone. I tried to talk to the other kids but I felt distant from them. And maybe that’s why, when I look back, school didn’t feel like a happy experience for me. I never told my mum how I felt. I didn’t have the bottle. By the time I plucked up the courage to say something to her it was almost time to leave. All I wanted was to go to a mainstream school with my friends. But she knew I would just get into trouble. All I know is that I would have been much happier. I don’t blame my parents for that – they were just looking after me. Trying to do their best.

  As I got a bit older I did get a taste of what it might be like in a ‘normal’ school. A group of five or six of us were taken for lessons at Tolworth Girls’ School, a mainstream comprehensive just up the road from Kingston. That made me feel a little less cut off. But in another sense it also reminded me of what I wasn’t able to do. It was a terrible system for mildly disabled people like me.

  Had I been going to school today I would have had a very different experience. Thanks to the Equality Act I would be integrated into a mainstream school. There would be no feeling of segregation, of being shut away from the rest of society. Having separate schools, well meaning though they might have been at the time, only reinforced the differences. Is it any wonder it’s so hard to close the gap in the workplace once disabled children leave school and go out into the real world?

  There’s no doubt things have changed. Kids don’t stare at you now. Whenever I left the refuge of Roundshaw I would have the piss taken out of me. I tried to put it out of my mind, to channel it in a way that made me stronger. I was always trying to test myself, to prove I was normal. About two miles down the road from my house there’s a leisure centre called Westcroft. It’s a decent walk for most people but for someone on callipers it’s like a marathon. Not for me. After a few years of getting around on these things I had developed quite a technique and it didn’t take me long to cover those two miles. I would get some very strange looks from people as I trundled along, slamming the crutches down and then pivoting my legs and body through the middle, a bit like a gymnast on the parallel bars. But by that point I didn’t give a stuff about what people thought. This was how I got around and they should just mind their own business.

  Sometimes when I travel abroad I get that sort of attitude. There are some parts of the world where they are simply not used to seeing people with disabilities out in public doing everyday things. I have learned to expect it and now just turn the other cheek. In Britain these days, I rarely get that awful feeling that someone is shocked or scared by what they are seeing. People just accept it. I noticed things changing about a decade ago – the country seemed to be getting more open, more tolerant. Of course there are still idiots about. Take the shocking example of the parents who left abusive messages for the one-armed children’s TV presenter Cerrie Burnell on a BBC website. They complained to the BBC that she was scaring children with her appearance. I felt really sorry for her, she didn’t deserve that. But my experience of most kids now is that they aren’t as shocked or scared of people with disability as some adults are. Because schools are so integrated now, with disabled and able-bodied children grouped together, it’s not such a big deal. As a result there doesn’t seem to be the same vindictiveness. Of course children will always say nasty things to each other – they don’t understand what they are really saying. But when I speak to my ten-year-old daughter Ronie about it she says it just isn’t an issue and that her mates never take the mickey out of her because her dad’s in a chair. She might just be saying that to protect her dad, I suppose. But I don’t think so. I think it has changed dramatically. I just wish it had happened sooner, so I could have experienced school without that division.

  In the beginning, going to Bedelsford didn’t bother me. I didn’t know any different. It was only when I got a bit older and started to get a bit streetwise that I realised I shouldn’t be there. By the time I was eleven it really hit home, especially when my mates started going to big secondary schools. They seemed to be having such a laugh, meeting girls, making new friends. And there I was, being picked up and driven to my ‘special’ school in Kingston. When I look back now I think that’s probably one of the reasons why I just didn’t learn. It wasn’t the school’s fault. It was a good place and all the teachers there really helped me. And I never missed a day unless I was ill or had a hospital appointment. My mum wouldn’t have let me.

  Getting there was a bit of a drag. It’s a fair old journey to Kingston from Wallington in rush-hour traffic. Some days it could take almost an hour. In the early days I was picked up in a bus provided by the council. Then I had a driver of my own called George. He was a lovely man. We used to talk about the estate and all sorts of stuff. That always used to cheer me up. Having someone familiar and friendly to talk to was a bit of a release from home.

  But the truth is I just didn’t want to go there, and I couldn’t talk to my mum about things like that because she would have just batted it away, saying, ‘You have to go. It’s good for you.’

  She didn’t understand
back then that I just didn’t belong. That I was trapped in an awkward place – not so disabled that I needed 24-hour support and care but unable to get around without my chair or my callipers.

  I wasn’t very academic. I liked history – I loved learning about the kings and queens of England. I also liked geography and as I have got older I have become a bit of a map bore. I love nothing more than spending time studying Google Maps. I am just fascinated by them and can spend hours looking at different places. But the school stopped both history and geography for reasons I never did understand. As for everything else? I simply wasn’t interested. Religious education, I couldn’t stand. Maths, I was just about OK, while I only liked science if it was practical, which normally meant burning things. As for English, the less said about that, the better. How my teachers would laugh at the idea of me writing my own book. A lot of them thought I was good in class and worked hard but they would get frustrated because I didn’t do enough homework. I should have listened to them and knuckled down. It is one of my big regrets that I didn’t work harder at school and get a better education.

  Although Bedelsford is now mainly dedicated to disabled children with speech and severe learning difficulties, when I went it was a mix. That meant the school was dealing with a whole range of needs and challenges. A lot of the physically impaired kids were actually very brainy. In that sense it was just like any other school, with some kids brighter than others. I always felt the other children were a bit innocent, though – like they had been wrapped up in cotton wool by their parents. As a dad I now totally understand. But back then I couldn’t get my head around it at all. When I was fourteen or fifteen I started going to raves. When I went in on Monday morning and some of them asked what I had got up to over the weekend and I told them, a lot of them would look mystified.

  ‘What’s a rave, Dave?’

  They just didn’t know. They were a bit naive. One kid couldn’t even dress himself. But he was just like me. Why couldn’t he get himself ready in the morning?

  I don’t want to give the impression that my school days were all bad. They weren’t. And without Bedelsford I wouldn’t have got into sport and I wouldn’t have become a wheelchair racer. I might have hated going to school and studying, but I can’t thank them enough for helping put me on the path to a life in sport.

  While the rest of the lessons were a chore, I absolutely lived for PE. I couldn’t wait for Friday afternoons, when the classes were held. My PE teacher, Julie Wrathall, was a very good hockey player and used to encourage me to play as many sports as possible – hockey, rugby, different forms of athletics. I even played tennis against Sir Cliff Richard when he came to visit the school one day (he didn’t play in a wheelchair). Even when the PE lessons weren’t on I was always trying to organise the other kids to play some sport or other in the playground during breaks.

  But by the time I was eight, sport had already become a central part of my life. Even at that stage I was training two or three times a week. It was around that time that the school offered me my first real taste of competition. One of the physios who worked at the school had seen how keen I was on sport and asked me if I would like to do the London Mini-Marathon. They explained it was like the London Marathon but over a much shorter distance. At that time the marathon was one of the only sporting events on TV where you could watch disabled people competing. It was only for a few moments every year but I remember watching it and thinking, ‘I would love to do that.’ Now I was being offered the chance to actually do it – although I had to get through the trials first. So, four months before the race I had to show I was good enough by doing a two-mile race in a crappy little hospital chair. It was a bit of a rough course – it took you along public paths and up and down kerbs. The target was to complete the course in less than thirty minutes. I scraped through. Just.

  At the same time as all this was happening, I was also playing basketball. I was just looking around to see which sport was best for me. Obviously I couldn’t play football or take up boxing so I had to find something that would stimulate me. Basketball was one of the first things I wanted to do. Gordon Perry, the first man to win the wheelchair marathon, was a coach for the under-18s Great Britain basketball team and he was always trying to convert me. I even competed for my country as a junior in a multi-sport event in Australia. Although I was there first and foremost as a wheelchair racer, Gordon asked me to step in for one match to give some of the other players a rest. I loved it and we won comfortably.

  But racing gave me that extra buzz. It might be because it’s an individual sport. I used to get frustrated on the basketball court if some players weren’t playing to their potential or pulling their weight. If I lose a race then it’s my fault – I can’t blame anyone else. So as time went on I devoted myself more and more to athletics.

  I don’t even recall where I finished in that first mini-marathon – it can’t have been anywhere near the front. But it gave me a real taste for the sport. It also helped me get picked for the London Youth Games – a competition which would come to be one of the defining moments of my young sporting life. Although Wallington is in the London Borough of Sutton I was actually approached by a coach and teacher from the neighbouring borough of Merton. It caused a bit of controversy at the time but the coach in question had spotted something special and wasn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers if it meant she got the best team. Her name was Jenny Archer.

  Jenny was in her early forties when we first met. Stocky, with short blonde hair brushed back, she was both friendly and imposing at the same time. She had a warm smile but when cross her eyes could narrow, sending a shiver down your spine. It was a look which told you: ‘Don’t even try it.’ Because of that, some people are scared of her and there’s no doubt she can be tough. But she can also be very soft and, for me, she is like a second mother. My mum has never minded me saying that – they get on so well and she knows that Jenny would do anything to help me. It’s weird but I probably see her more than I see my mum.

  I won the 100m at the London Games that year and I will always remember what Jenny told me afterwards: ‘You are a natural athlete,’ she said, my mum and dad beaming away behind me. ‘You’ve really got something. The way you move, the way you are built, the technique and power. It’s all there. I know you are really young, Dave, but I am sure you could go on and be really special.’

  My head was spinning. I could see my parents were struggling to take it all in.

  ‘But the most important thing you have got is determination. The will to win. I can see it on that start line. Beating everyone else is what drives you on and that is more important than technique or natural athletic ability. Without that desire it’s not even worth it. But you have got it. Now you have to work really hard to make sure you get the most out of your talent.’

  Most kids aged eight might have found that overwhelming. I didn’t. I felt special and it made me even more determined to compete and to keep getting better. People often talk about the moment they were inspired to go on and find the thing which defines them. For me, that was the moment.

  Ironically, after that initial meeting, it would be another seventeen years before Jenny really played a central part in my life. In those days she was too busy with her career in football to devote the time to young athletes like me. She set me off on the road to becoming an athlete by introducing me to a training group at the Tooting Bec athletics track in Wandsworth and then went off to pursue her own sporting dream.

  A decent athlete herself, Jenny ran the 400 metres and competed at international B level. But it was her time with Wimbledon Football Club that really made Jenny’s name. She spent ten years with the so-called ‘Crazy Gang’ as a physio and rehabilitation coach. At first you wouldn’t expect football hard men like Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise and John Fashanu to work with a woman. But they loved her. She took no nonsense from any of them and they really respected her. She helped so many of them get back to fitness and she was always finding innovative way
s to help them recover from injuries. Those players saw then what I would come to see much later on when I worked with her full time. She has a special aura about her. She can put her arm around you when you are down or if you have got problems at home. She gives you that confidence you need to keep pushing yourself.

  Even though she was too busy to coach me, Jenny and I stayed in touch and she often used to ask me down to Wimbledon. The players always used to make me feel really welcome. Sometimes I went to games and sat in the dressing room while Vinnie and Dennis were running around doing their mad stuff before matches. One time when I was about twelve and Wimbledon played Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park I remember being allowed to sit in the dugout. That was brilliant. Even though I’m an Arsenal fan it was very special to be given the privilege to see this fantastic club up close.