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

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      ‘So that everyone can hear about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it,’ I explained to her. ‘To spread the word, and I hope raise money for CMT.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but why do they want a picture of me?’

      ‘Because you’re one of the main reasons Dad wants to do it,’ explained Lisa. She was brandishing a duster with an expression of mild fanaticism. She had been all morning. Where dust was concerned, she’d be taking no prisoners. There was no way her living room would be featured in the local paper looking anything less than squeaky clean and perfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised to be given a quick buff and polish myself. She’d already given the dog the once-over.

      ‘But you don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ I added quickly. Although I was doing this to inspire my youngest daughter, there was no way I was going to make her do something she didn’t want to do. So if she didn’t want to do it, then so be it. Ellie is feisty and self-possessed, but she is also quite shy. And the last thing I wanted was for any of this to make her stressed, or for her to feel that she was being pushed into the limelight.

      But she surprised me. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind. It might be cool.’ Then she hurried off upstairs to get changed into her favourite Minnie Mouse T-shirt.

      Then, as they probably became sick and tired of saying in the papers that particular winter, the whole thing, to our amazement, snowballed. The piece appeared in the paper the next day – it even had its own front-page intro – and the phone, as a consequence, began ringing.

      First it was a news agency, SWNS, who expressed great enthusiasm for handling my ‘story’, which was something I’d never even thought of it as. It was a project, my project, that was all. But they disagreed. It was very much a story, they told me, and one they were keen to put out to the nationals, to see what they might make of it, too.

      So they did, and they came back to me the following morning to tell me that it had also now been published in Metro, the Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph. Not huge pieces – only a few column inches in most cases – but I was flabbergasted, as was Lisa, and all the kids.

      The days that followed were no less surreal. In fact, they rank among the craziest and most overwhelming I’ve ever experienced.

      Next came the calls from various radio stations. Would I be prepared to talk about The 50 List on air? Absolutely.

      Then magazines. Would I be prepared to do interviews with them? Naturally. Then TV – 5 News, to be precise. Would I be prepared to travel down to London to be on their programme and tell the world how the idea of The 50 List had come about?

      By now the phone was ringing almost constantly. No sooner had I hung up on yet another enthused researcher, and gone into the kitchen to give Lisa the latest update, than – brinngg brinnggg! – straight away it rang again.

      ‘Can you believe this?’ I asked Lisa every time it started up again. ‘So this is what 15 minutes of fame feels like, is it?’ I’d never dealt with anything quite so manic in my life.

      Happily, the news agency stepped in to help us out, and became the contact to whom I could direct all the callers. This left me and Lisa free to think about what we could and couldn’t do.

      The reality was that going down to London, to Channel 5, would be something of a mission. It would mean an incredibly early start and a complex journey via public transport; and both the prospect and the expense were a bit daunting. But it would potentially be a brilliant way to help my cause – and, I hoped, help me reach my fundraising target. Should I go?

      I was still dithering when the email came in this morning – the email that topped them all. The big one.

      Hi Nigel,

      I’m a director working for The One Show at the BBC. I read an article about you and your daughter Eleanor in today’s Metro. I was sorry to read about your daughter’s diagnosis but it sounds like you are doing something really amazing to inspire her.

      I wondered if I might be able to find out more about your challenges with the view of possibly helping you set up and complete some of them and film a piece about it for The One Show? If this sounds like something you might be interested in please feel free to get in touch. I’ll be happy to answer any questions and we can discuss what is possible and what is not.

      Thanks for your time and hope to hear from you soon.

      Best,

      Karolina

      I got straight on the phone, which was how I got to talk to Matt Ralph. And though I still can’t quite believe it, it’s all fixed. On 23 February I get to complete not one but three of my challenges: I’m going to do an indoor skydive, take a 4x4 off road and go powerboating as well. Now we’re not only talking the talk, as they say, we’re walking the walk, too. Well, sort of.

      * * *

      Not every test I had during my childhood involved needles and pain. Sometimes the tests were just very odd. One time, when I was around 14, I was summoned back to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London, where they wanted to glue a load of electrodes to my head, which would then be connected to a large machine. Naturally, by now, I was wary of anything that anyone in a white coat did, so it took the doctor some time to convince me not only that he wasn’t going to kill me but also that there wouldn’t be any pain involved.

      ‘You won’t feel a thing,’ he kept telling me. ‘You can’t. Because brains can’t feel pain – did you know that? All that’s going to happen is that the machine is going to read all the messages that your optic nerve sends to it.’

      Which sounded worrying in itself, but I had no choice other than to go along with it, and sat patiently while he prepared me for his investigations. First he used a chinagraph pencil and a tape measure to make marks on my scalp where the electrodes needed to go. He followed this up with globs of glue, to which he stuck small white discs, to which he then connected a load of wires. These wires, around a dozen of them (one for every disc), were connected to a large (and I do mean large) metal cabinet, the front of which was a sea of lights, dials, switches and oscilloscopes, none of which, he hastened to add – once I was finally connected to it, and frankly terrified – were out to do me any harm.

      The only harm done that day was to my sanity. I had to stare at a moving dot in the middle of a chequered board, and that was it. Nothing else. For an hour. I’ve never sat and watched paint dry, but I imagine the two are similar. Certainly my dad, who was supposed to be there for moral support, soon closed his eyes and had a sneaky 40 winks.

      But as with any kid, there was a feeling that was much worse than boredom, and I was about to have my first taste of it: acute embarrassment. With the first test done and my cables detached from the machine, we were instructed to go off and get some lunch, before returning for some more tests in the afternoon. It was summer, I recall, and with no facilities on the premises, Dad decided the best thing would be to go and get something to eat at the pub on the nearby square and, as the sun was shining, to sit outside. Which was all well and good, except that with my bunch of cables – temporarily bound and now neatly taped to my shoulder – I still looked like something from a science fiction movie. And a scary one, if the stares I attracted were anything to go by, which seems a bit harsh, in hindsight, considering they were probably all nurses and doctors СКАЧАТЬ