Michael…2

So he could probably see that the game would soon be up for him, after the circulation failed in his legs and they were both amputated he knew that dialysis wouldn’t keep him alive for ever, he was already the longest serving patient on his dialysis ward and the failure of the CAPD method to cope with his illness meant that he was now confined to a hospital bed three times a week.

I’d recently reached an agreement with him to purchase his share of the business and so with his new found wealth he set in process his divorce from his wife and took a holiday to Teneriffe, the first time in his life that he had ever been abroad.

A reciprocal agreement with our NHS meant that dialysis would be available to him in a Tenerife hospital and upon arrival at his hotel he hired for himself an electric scooter with which to transport himself around the resort.

A couple of days into his sojourn and he was loving the lifestyle, alone on the island and yet mobile he soon realised that the world was his lobster and so took off one day with a fully charged scooter battery to ascend one of the rather large volcanic mountains that Tenerife is constructed of.

A mornings ascending into the clouds on the only road up the mountain found him far, far out of reach of civilisation, far too far for a man with no legs but Michael was nothing if not stubborn and he was determined to reach the top of the mountain, or die in the process, Livingston, Hilary and Cook would have been proud of this monoped minus one (can’t be arsed looking up the Latin for a no-legged man).

Unfortunately whilst Michael was made of stern stuff his scooter battery wasn’t and somewhere up the mountain it finally expired. Still in cloud and not having been passed either way for a couple of hours Michael suddenly realised that he had not the first idea of where he was, so even had he had a mobile phone – he hadn’t – and even if the mobile phone could have picked up a signal – it couldn’t – then he would still have been unable to summon help, what with him not even knowing the name of the mountain or which of several behind the hotel that it could have been – in short he was up shit creek without a paddle, or a battery.

But of course our man was not going to let a mild inconvenience like that put him off, why he simply stepped off the scooter onto his plastic legs, turned said chariot around, sat back on it and rolled it back down the mountain, a good plan if it were not for the fact that the road was undulating and there were almost as many bits that needed him to get off and push uphill on false legs as there were freewheeling downhill bits – he also forgot that without battery power the brakes on his scooter were about as good as throwing a brick on a piece of string behind him so some of the hairpin bends on the way down were taken on two of the three wheels and a lot of prayers and good fortune.

He finally arrived back at the hotel after dark, twelve hours after he had set off, hungry, tired, burnt raw in the sun, filthy from the road, and the hotel manager gave him a bollacking for having them mount a rescue party before putting his scooter on an all night booster charge.

The next morning Michael decided that a day along the beach would be a good idea, mountaineering with no legs having been relegated to the “not good idea” drawer, and it was while perambulating along the promenade that he spotted a shop selling electrical goods, cheaply.

With the new fangled digital video 8 (tape) cameras lining the shelves inside the shop Michael soon struck up a deal with the shop manager and became a film director, what a shame he hadn’t had it for the ascent of Everest the day before, still..

It only took him a few hours fill the two Digital 8 tapes that he had been sold with the camera but with each of them only costing a few hundred pesetas he thought nothing of the matter and returned to the shop to purchase a whole bundle of them, Hollywood film makers don’t get anywhere without lots of tape you know.

The shop manager welcomed him like an old friend, the legless man on the electric scooter was back to spend more holiday money and the new price for the Video 8 tapes was several thousand peseta.

Michael was not a one to be so easily conned, he stood his ground as best a man can stand his ground with no legs and refused to pay any more than the couple of hundred peseta that he’d paid earlier that day despite the manager claiming that “it was spezial off-ar”

A long and bitter row developed as the morning progressed, the shop manager couldn’t possibly know of course but he had picked the wrong man to have a long and bitter row with, there were people in his own family who he had not spoken to for decades because of long and bitter rows, Michael excelled at long and bitter rows, this argument was not going to die peacefully.

When forcibly removed from the shop still sitting on his electric scooter Michale parked it on the pavement outside right across the doorway and picketed the shop – anyone who tried to enter was told that the manager had tried to con him, and him a disabled man with no legs, look, no legs, and people shook their heads, said it was awful, and walked away.

After an hour of no customers the shop manager called the police and for his troubles Michael received attention not just from the local town police but the Spanish National Police, the ones who are more often seen asleep in their cars at the side of main roads, the ones who carry big guns, those ones.

He explained to the policeman with the big gun how he, a man with no legs, a disabled man with no legs, a disabled man with no legs who’s only form of propulsion was this here electric scooter, this here electric scooter that was blocking the doorway, this poor disabled no-legged man on his first trip to your fine island sir, has been ripped off royally by this shop-keeping-bastard, its all wrong and you should do something about it.

And the policeman agreed, he spent a long time inside the shop explaining to the shopkeeper what a bastard he was to try and con a no-legged disabled man in a scooter who only wanted to buy some tapes at the same price as he had done yesterday, you bastard you, but still the shopkeeper was having none of it, insisting that the tapes had been heavily discounted that morning because he’d bought the camera as well – and he probably had a point but by now a large crowd had gathered outside the shop to see why the National Police were here with their big guns and Michael filled them all in with the details, showing them how his legs came off and everything, adding what a dastardly bastard the shopkeeper was to try and con a no-legged man etc etc etc.

The Police were growing more concerned as the angry crowd grew and so they offered to give Michael a lift to his hotel, they too had obviously not heard of Michael and his bloody-minded long and bitter rows and he refused to leave, even under threat of arrest, so they arrested him.

Another van full of National Policemen arrived on the scene and while some held the crowd at bay four others picked Michael and his electric scooter up off the floor and placed him in the back of the van, well it wasn’t like he could run away was it ?

They took him back to his hotel where the manager stood waiting, shaking his head, this crazy stubborn Englishman with no legs had got himself and his electric scooter in trouble two days running now, and they hadn’t even reached the end of the second day yet.

He wasn’t charged with anything and one of the policemen bought him a beer, but they did warn him not to picket the shop anymore and suggested that maybe tomorrow he could just lie in the sun like all the rest of the English holidaymakers usually did ?