The 50 List – A Father’s Heartfelt Message to his Daughter: Anything Is Possible. Nigel Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘What’s in this bucket?’ and then fall forward and do a headstand inside it.

      There was to be only one performance, so there was no room for error, and I took my responsibility correspondingly seriously. And I came good, saying my line loud and proud before doing the headstand, to a delighted whoop from a clearly impressed audience. The only thing was that in rehearsals the bucket had been placed centre stage, whereas on the night it was placed at the back of the stage, up against the wall, home to the school’s highly polished set of wooden slats. Up I went – bash! – and down I came again, perturbed. Up I went again – bash, rattle! – and once again, down. Finally, the third time, I decided to stay put, my lower legs, as I tried to balance, drumming out a military tattoo, while the other children tried to perform their own lines over the din. When I finally came down – after however many noisy minutes with my shins rattling against them – the wooden slats that had long been the caretaker’s prized equipment were so scratched and battered by my calipers that they looked as though they’d been set about by a man with a serious grudge. By the time I left the school they still hadn’t had them replaced. Perhaps they are still there. I’d like to think so.

      By the age of ten, fatigue had become an issue. I had always had a little trouble walking to and from infant school, and when I went to the juniors, though I walked around while there, my parents began to push me to school and back in an adult buggy. The thinking was that if I didn’t tire myself out on the journeys, I would be less tired both while in school and when I got home.

      Though not as big a thing as the calipers, the buggy ride to school was still an issue, as it made me an obvious target for bullies. Most of the time I did my best to ignore them. I had no choice. If I went after the bullies in school, I’d only fall over, which would naturally encourage them even more. Luckily, I had a good friend – with whom I am still in touch today – called Andrew Russell, who helped me out of scrapes quite a few times. But there was one boy who was my nemesis. He was fast and he was mean and he was stronger than I was, and since I had spent so long falling over and knew exactly how much it hurt, I didn’t want to be pushed over by him. In fact, ‘didn’t want’ is perhaps understating my feelings about this boy: I could never get away from him quickly enough, and I would feel physically sick if I was in a situation where I knew it would be impossible to avoid him – not to mention his equally nasty sidekick.

      Most of the name-calling I attracted was unimaginative and predictable – cripple-features, stick legs and so on. But one taunt was worse than others: spindle legs. ‘There goes spindle legs!’ they’d yell, whenever I came into view, and there was something about that one, particularly, that really upset me. I don’t know why, but the picture it evoked really hurt.

      Looking back it seems the easiest thing in the world to shrug such a taunt off, but at the time, as any child who’s been bullied knows, it eats away at you, particularly if your self-esteem’s already fragile because of standing out in the way that I did. It’s a feeling I’m glad I remember in some ways, because it reminds me how far society has travelled in the interim. There will always be bullies, of course, and they will always find victims, but things are so much better, in that regard, for Ellie. Not only does she attend schools (specialist in the morning and mainstream in the afternoon) where she receives physio, support and all the help she needs to thrive, but there is also much wider acceptance of people with disabilities.

      I was lucky, though, in that, like Ellie, I had brilliantly supportive siblings. Mark was in high school, of course, and Gary soon went to join him, but while he was still in primary school he always looked out for me. Though our paths didn’t generally cross during the school day, he’d always make sure he was there beside me at going-home time, to tell anyone who dared bully me to back off.

      But my best support was Nicola, my little sister. She may have been small but she was feisty and was my number one protector. Mess with me and you messed with her – and she was a force to be reckoned with. Still is.

      Which is not to say I was a pitiable figure in school – quite the contrary. Once I got to junior school, I increased in confidence daily. By then, I think I’d learned to play to my strengths, one of which was being in the right place at the right time, which suddenly stood me in good stead on the football field. I couldn’t easily run after the ball, so I would goal-hang instead, and if the ball came my way I would just kick it wildly, in the hope that it might hit the spot. And the first time it did, there was a sea change in how my peers viewed me. No longer was I Mr Last-pick when teams were chosen.

      I was also treated differently by the teachers once I hit junior school: while they still stopped me from doing things I felt perfectly able to do, they didn’t seem to patronize me as much. Quite the contrary, in some cases, which was probably vital to my development; it wouldn’t have done me any favours to become someone who thought he could get away with not doing things he didn’t want to do, after all.

      And I did my fair share of transgressing, like any other kid. A favourite transgression was not going straight inside after the bell had rung for the end of playtime, the punishment for which was having to stand on a black spot. I don’t know who thought up this particular punishment, but it was a sound one, in that it was so public. There were six black floor tiles, altogether measuring about 20 inches square, which formed a pattern underneath the main school staircase. If you were naughty, you would be made to go and stand on one of these – a kind of 20th-century equivalent, I guess, of committing an act of treason and having your head stuck on a pole, for all to see, on London Bridge.

      But standing anywhere for long was an issue for me. Though the calipers corrected my foot drop, they did nothing to aid my balance, so remaining stationary was a challenge. So it was odds on, I reckoned, that when a passing teacher noticed my plight, I’d be excused an extended spell in position. But it wasn’t to be.

      ‘Here we are,’ she said, grabbing a chair from down the corridor. ‘Sit on that.’

      It was probably a useful life lesson, that one.

      Another was more gradual but equally enlightening: how the world views you when you’re long out of nappies but are still wheeled to school by your mother. Being in my adult buggy was an eye-opener from day one: a window on the world I would take my place in as an adult – a world that would see the wheels and treat me differently. I remember being pushed home by my mother one afternoon, and how the mother of a friend of mine stopped to speak to her. My father was unwell at that time, and had been home from work, so when the lady, looking concerned, asked Mum, ‘How is he today?’ we both naturally assumed she was talking about Dad.

      ‘Oh, he’s much better, thank you,’ Mum replied.

      It was only then, as the woman looked solicitously at me, that we realized she actually meant me. I was old enough to speak, intelligent enough to speak and, to cap it all, her son’s school friend, yet because I was being wheeled home in a giant buggy, she assumed the correct approach was to talk about me rather than to me.

      Looking back, I wish I’d mumbled and drooled all over her shoes.

      But my time in mainstream school was fast coming to an end anyway. In 1974, when I was 12, it was decided I should be moved. Not to the local high school my brothers now attended, but to a state school called Martindale, in Hounslow, west London, which would be more suited to my needs.

      Though a part of me really wanted to join my brothers at Harlington Secondary, in retrospect it would probably have been a nightmare. It had a lot of stairs, for one thing, and was quite a bus ride away, and having got there I don’t doubt I would have encountered as many bullies as I’d left behind in primary school.

      I was also, at СКАЧАТЬ