Yesterday I met an engaging and inspiring young teenager, Henry Pickering, packing purchases for customers at the farm shop in Market Harborough, as part of a fund raising initiative for CP Sport. He has cerebral palsy, but I discovered in conversation that he is a dedicated, ambitious, swimmer. I suspect he is as talented as he was modest. I asked him if he was any good, and learned that he aims to compete in the paralympics in eight or even possibly four years time. An adult from CP Sport endorsed how realistic at least the eight year aim was. Henry made it very easy and very enjoyable to put some money in the collecting bucket. But he also set me thinking about transcending ‘disability’, and thus of course about Rosemary Sutcliff. She would have urged Henry on, although I got the strong feeling that he needed no urging!
I recall that she wrote in the catalogue for an exhibition some thirty years ago: “Dear (Able-Bodied) Reader, if ever in Athens or Tooting or Timbuktu, you find yourself about to take refuge in the ‘does he take sugar’ approach to someone disabled, do think again”.
Career-wise, I’m one of the lucky ones. My job, as a writer of books, is one of the few in which physical disability presents hardly any problems. I would claim that it presents no problems at all but my kind of book needs research, and research is more difficult for a disabled person. (more…)
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