My Travels with Wheely

Day Fifty Nine

Today was the first time in many a year that a shower was definitely not going to happen for me. The faded Suffolk pink plastic shower cubicle with its slippery sides had absolutely nothing to hold on to, assuming I was actually able to get into it in the first place. Although we made a valiant effort to get my legs over the massive lip to get me in the shower it began to look increasingly unlikely that we would accomplish our challenge. My legs, had gone off on one again, they were completely stiff and weren't going anywhere. Zapped of all strength we had to admit defeat, the drain had reared its ugly head again, and defeat is not something that comes easily to me. I was sure I could manage one day without a shower, it was going to be hard though better make sure I used double the amount of deodorant. So with David clean and fresh, and smelly old me, we headed for the roads and left the picturesque Lake Tekapo behind us.

The day was really taken up by driving and believe me in New Zealand it was pleasurable, although we were getting slightly more used to our beautiful surroundings, we still found ourselves expressing an ah or oh every few minutes. We stopped for a coffee and lunch on the edge of what looked like a forest bit hard to tell here, as all the vegetation was enormous.

I haven't mentioned this before but I had developed a new past time and it's called, “let's see how many drinks you can throw over yourself in one day”. Not only was it a bit frustrating but I was worried that I might become dehydrated, as I am sure I read somewhere that you needed to swallow liquid, as opposed to letting it seep through your clothes to your skin to be of any benefit. Anyway, there we were sitting and just enjoying the day and woops the next thing I knew I was wearing my coffee, oh well it might help me not to smell so much.

We arrived on the outskirts of Christchurch and stopped at a campsite in a place called Silverton and David did his usual routine of checking out the rooms on offer. I remained on the bus and watched him go into the first room to investigate it; shortly he emerged wearing a sort of grimace on his face and a slightly upturned nose, interesting I thought to myself. I watched him go into the second room and once more he emerged wearing pretty much the same expression, not looking good I reckoned. “Well Nick there's not much in it, they're both tragic”, crikey I knew he was a pessimist, but surely they weren’t that bad. He informed me that one of them was just ever so slightly more disabled friendly than the other, so we decided to take that one. David pushed me into the room and ran away laughing. I gazed around the room and firmly believed I had stepped back in time to how I imagined a holiday camp would be back in the 1960’s.

Yes it was truly hideous inside but hey we were only here for one night, oh dam, I had just remembered, we had booked in for two nights, how the mighty had fallen. So we stepped inside the room a little further, David had returned and fortunately he had recovered from his mass hysteria. Right now, we appeared to be in a kitchen come dining room come sitting room, anyway a room clearly serving many functions. Running along the back wall was a curtain did we think there could be nice room concealed behind it I thought not, David giggled and re-appeared. He drew back one curtain whilst making a fanfare noise there was a bed and that was it. Well to be honest what more did you need, other than a small amount of room to be able to move around the room in. Silly me what was I thinking, hardly important when one was agile enough and could leap across the bed just so that one was able to get into it, the one referred to, obviously didn't include me.

There was also a partition wall, which was not presumably ever intended to be solid by the look of it, it was made of hardboard and fell somewhat short of the top by a foot or so. This “palatial” bedroom was adjacent to the second bedroom which was nowhere near as grand as our room, the rooms indicated to me that there was a strictly, no privacy policy, to be adhered to.

Now our attention turned to the bathroom, oh boy this was hideous beyond belief, but I mustn't complain at least they had a walk in shower, although as you can see that was not quite enough to prevent me from going on about it. Then there was the toilet, shall we say this could be described as interesting, why on earth was there a sawn off banister rail by the side of the toilet? I remembered now this was a disabled room why bother with the expense of buying a securely fitted steel handrail when you could just make do with remnants?

I now needed to go to the toilet, somewhat reluctantly I rested my hand on the rail, naturally it wobbled and nearly fell off, but that's not the best bit. Because I can't stand for long I invariably crash down onto the pan and this time was no different, blimey the toilet moved and I had unintentionally managed to relocate it, by an inch or so. Picture this if you can, I am still sat down and David has rushed in because of the noise and gets down to the base of the toilet and grovels between my legs to see that there are no screws holding it in place ......