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Lifestory Showcase - Chappell
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For many years before, we had been taking my weaving and knitting round to local flower shows, agriculture shows and our big annual Steam Rally. We went into the craft tents and set up a stall, and had many regular customers at all these events. I had accidentally started something when, twenty five years earlier at the Poole Annual Flower Show, I set up a small card-table with my weaving for sale. Other disabled groups, the blind, ex-servicemen, mentally handicapped, day centres and individuals like myself, working from home or workshop, gradually joined. The Disabled Exhibition Tent became the biggest marquee at the Poole Hospital Fete which had by now replaced the flower Show.
This last year I was missed at this Show and enquiries were being made as to where I was. At Poole Hospital Fete in 1977, someone worked out that I had been going there for 25 years, and a special bowl had been made at Poole pottery. This was to be presented to me on the day by His Worship the Mayor, Mr 3ohn Norman. I was not there for the first time but some of my work was, so learning of my circumstances the Mayor insisted on visiting me at home the next day to present it to me personally.
I was still in plaster then so it really was the highlight of that awful year I had to live through. It was the first and maybe the only time a Mayor had been chauffeur driven, wearing his Mayoral chain, out of the Borough of Poole. The sun was shining and he and others stayed to tea and he admired mother’s sweet-peas growing where I could see them. Whether the Hospital Fete with its craft stalls is still held, I do not know, I left Dorset and no longer weave, that part of my life ceased years ago.
It was now 1978 and I was beginning to get stronger and gradually putting on weight. We had a swivel-seat put in the car, so dear Mum began to take me further afield again. The first long journey was at the end of 1978 to visit an old friend who lived in the New Forest a really lovely journey as it was now autumn again. During that winter, the old knitting machines were set up again, to give us both something else to think about and to help get my very lazy body working again. Going back and forward on the machines got my arms moving for I had not even been able to hold a book for very long.
The following August I was back in business at the Hospital Fête where I had also won the Cup several years before, A month later mother and I were back at the biggest Steam Rally in the county, held annually at Stourpaine not far from home, selling my wares once more at this three day event. Here another big turning point in my life happened on the first day, Friday, which is the Schools Day.
A teacher who was at the Steam Rally, told me about the new local school for children aged from two to sixteen with all kinds of learning difficulties. I said, that one of my life long secret ambitions ever since I left school was to help others to read. I had realised from a very early age what being able to read had meant to me. I seem to have taught my brother, cousins and various local village children to read when I was a child.
This teacher told me, that this was a new school and as they were badly in need of volunteers, would I like to have a go. She would arrange for me to meet the Headmaster, teachers and children the following week. So after a chat with the Head and a quick tour round the school (which was wheelchair accessible) it was decided to try it out for two weeks and see how we all got on. So I became a voluntary school teacher and returned to school again. Operations and worrying about a crooked leg were over, behind me, there was work to be done helping others. God was with me as always and offering me yet another challenge.
I stayed there five years, mainly helping fourteen to sixteen year olds who could not even write their own names and addresses. Some were never be able to get it right, they could not write out the months of the year or days of the week etc. Most of them 'would try' just to please me, because I was helping them not as a paid teacher, but as their special friend.
It was that one-to-one basis that really meant something to a lot of them. They were often waiting for me to arrive, paper and pencil in their hand and looking forward to their turn to come to me. I was left to work out how to help each child in my own way and I like to think it worked well. Not able to write very well myself, and as they would never be able to write only print like a small child, it seemed as though we had something in common.. I soon found in a cupboard boxes of letters on little square cardboard pieces, with capitals on one side arid small letters on the other. They were just right for me and the children to work with.
I kept six letters (D.O.R.S.E.T.) separate in one box for all of them and I soon learnt what the term Dyslexic' meant. The sweat and some times tears to make these look anything like Dorset was really heartbreaking to see, especially from these big 'almost-men' boys.
Living in an area with names like Sturminster Newton (the school address), Gillingham, Shaftesbury and even Hazelbury Bryant, the reader can begin to visualise the literacy problems these pupils had. In addition there were addresses such as Newbarn Farm Cottage and Plumtree Cottage etc. Sometimes I was a bit weary at the end of the day going over the same old things with them, but I really loved helping these children.
I always got on well with all the teachers who never resented me being there. I went for two a days each week arid gave myself great satisfaction. Some days I would spend the whole afternoon with these real empty vessels and I was able to spend a very happy arid satisfactory six years at Yewstock School, before leaving Dorset to start a new life for myself and mother in the new city of Milton Keynes.
It was now 1981 not only the International Year for Disabled People (IYDP) but my year towards future independence, still a long way off, but a lot of things were starting to happen during this year. In January, I was still helping at the school with Roger, the new Head-teacher, a dark, dapper little man, bright arid breezy.
This was his first head-ship and it was a really lovely term. By Easter I knew I was to go to the Queen’s Garden Party in aid of the IYDP at Buckingham Palace in July. Over three thousand disabled people were to be invited and the Spastic Society had only twelve places. I knew the then chairman Joyce Smith quite well, arid she thought I should have one of the places, for the criteria was that we had all done something for the community in spite of our own handicaps.
I knew all this in March and Roger and all the children were thrilled that their Marjorie was to have tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. I said goodbye to Roger the day before my birthday, but not before we had, had a very long conversation about me organising a school newsletter for the next term after Easter. But during the school holiday we heard Roger had committed suicide down by the river in his car, a terrible shock to us all and we went back with the deputy Head in charge.
Before the Garden Parry it was arranged by the Social Services for me to spend two weeks in June at Odstock Hospital near Salisbury. I had asked if I could go to the Rehabilitation Bungalow there, for I was anxious to find out if there was any possibility of me living an independent life. The only future that the Social Services could see for me was to put me in a home, but I think they thought they would humour me and let me find this out for myself. I went to the bungalow with a very understanding Occupational Therapist, Miss Fielding, (Kathy). I spent the first week there with Kathy going through everything to do with daily living, returning to sleep in the hospital ward.
Not being able to bend at the hips putting on socks and shoes was and still is impossible, but for the first morning I was given all the gadgets ever made to try to do this. By the time Kathy came to work I was very tired and worn out trying to get the first sock on and it was still dangling in front of me. For the rest of that week we were working in the kitchen which was the main object.
I had never done as much as to make a cup of tea or cook anything for the obvious reasons of not burning or scalding myself. Mother had always done it as hot water and food was out of bounds to me for fifty years. The month before I had tried to use a Microwave after a friend told me I would not burn or hurt myself with it. I tried and bought one and at the same time we discovered a ‘Creda’ hot water heater to use over the draining board instead of using a kettle. Mother had spent a week in London visiting all the large stores finding out what there was to make the job easier, and had brought back all sorts of useful kitchen utensils.
Since I was going home at the weekend, Kathy asked if we could bring the Microwave and all these things, and anything else I found useful back with me. She also asked how I felt about spending the rest of my stay in the bungalow alone at night and looking after my own meals, There would be others around all day, just to see what I could and could not manage to do alone. This all worked so well, that at the end of those few days, Kathy said, they had learnt more from me than the other way around. It had all gone so well, I could not wait to have a real go at home, perhaps cooking a meal for mother for the first time in my life.
During that wonderful week for me, they took at least fifty transparency photographs, of me doing everything including going to the loo, all to be used in training Q.T. Students of the future. On the last afternoon. Kathy asked me to join her in the office, where we wrote her report together. This was to go back to Dorset Social Services, to my Social Worker in particular whom we knew thought it would all be a waste of time.
When mother saw my social worker a week later after going to Odstock in town, she stopped mother to say how surprised they had all been to get such a good report from Miss Fielding. (Miss had to be used in Dorset, never Kathy) When Mother asked if we could see the Report, she was very quickly told that 'It was Confidential to them alone’. As mother walked away, she explained that it did not matter as Marjorie had not only seen it, but had helped Miss Fielding write it for them. The look on that Woman's face was worth seeing, as mother left her riveted to the footpath.
This is when ‘The Great Sink War’ broke out and it was to last for the next eighteen months or more. We, Kathy and I, worked out exactly what was needed in our kitchen. All that was needed, we thought, was to lower the working tops and the ‘sink’ for me to become independent. You would have thought this a simple matters as all that was necessary was to lower it from thirty-three to twenty-six inches. No problem any reader would think but the next few months were to prove otherwise.
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