Walking Home
Page 25
At the medals ceremony, he was a different man. Superman had turned back into Clark Kent. Gone were the designer stubble, the sunglasses and the ruffled hair; here was a clean-shaven man in black-rimmed spectacles with slicked-down hair. He bowed his head throughout the ceremony, looking close to tears. If contrition had an image, this was it. Oscar has always known the power of a picture, and he did what he thought was the right thing to try to win back the public.
The heat haze of the loser’s interview I could forgive as a perfectly natural response (albeit a sore one) to a result he did not expect. The medals ceremony was a different thing altogether. I remember saying to Ade that I thought he’d either been told to appear as respectful and remorseful as he could, or he’d decided to himself.
On the final night of competition in the Olympic Stadium, the stubble and the sunglasses were back as Pistorius cruised to victory in the T44 400 metres, beating Oliveira easily. He stretched both arms out sideways like an albatross, pointing his fingers and looking defiant. I was pleased he had won, and so was the majority of the crowd. He may have offended our British sense of sportsmanship, but he was the big draw and had completed a historic double in running the 400 metres at the Olympics (where he reached the semi-finals) and the Paralympics. Pistorius has always promoted his ability above his disability: he is not defined by being a double amputee but by being a sportsman.
After the events of Valentine’s night 2013, Oscar Pistorius finds himself defined very differently.
Alice gets up earlier than me and listens to Radio 4. When she heard the news that he had shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, she came running upstairs.
‘You won’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Oscar has killed his girlfriend.’
‘Not Oscar. He couldn’t have,’ I replied. ‘Are you sure?’
Whatever he thought or intended, he shot and killed the woman he professed to love. Two lives were destroyed by those bullets: Reeva lost her life and Oscar shattered his own.
Those of us who admired his sporting achievements hope that there will be no more victims of that crime. The pin-up boy of the Paralympics has destroyed himself, but the organization and its members are bigger and stronger than just one man.
Since the first Paralympic Summer Games in Rome in 1960, Paralympic sport has grown in terms of the numbers competing in it and in profile. China has developed from a nation that hid disability into one that regularly tops the medals table, while Russia hosted the Winter Paralympics in Sochi to great commendation (they had refused to for Moscow 1980). Progress comes eventually.
My big hope is that the US will take more of an interest in the Games and start funding their own athletes. NBC invests millions of dollars in Olympic coverage but barely bothers with the Paralympics. It seems nonsensical to me; the Paralympics has the perfect blend of sporting achievement, personal stories, high drama and atmosphere. If only they would notice.
London 2012 was the coming of age of the Paralympic Games. At the closing ceremony, the president of the International Paralympic Committee called it ‘the greatest Paralympic Games ever’. He wasn’t exaggerating and, although there are still improvements to be made (including the woeful lack of commitment from US television), Rio promises much. Two new sports, para-canoe and para-triathlon, will make their debut.
Both the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics and Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics were nominated for BAFTAs at the glitzy awards ceremony the following May. I was in the weird position of having a foot in both camps; although I was disappointed for the BBC team, I was thrilled for Channel 4 when they won, because they had invested so much in new, disabled talent – people like Alex Brooker, Arthur Williams, Rachael Latham and Daráine Mulvihill, who had only had limited television experience before 2012.
I was sitting next to Ade in the front row of the Royal Festival Hall, and I cheered louder than anyone as the production team took to the stage to accept the award. There was no ramp, so Ade was taken backstage and lifted up (off screen) by two men. Ade never complained about the lack of a ramp, but it reminded me of how often in life he and every wheelchair user has to find a way to be where they want to be, even if it means arriving a little late.
Ade paid tribute to the London Organising Committee for giving Channel 4 the chance to cover the Paralympics and to the belief of the bosses who invested in the marketing of the Games, making heroes of athletes who had hardly enjoyed any profile beforehand. Finally, he said, ‘When I was growing up we used to say, “One day people are going to respect us Paralympians. They are going to look at us as athletes.” So thank you, Channel 4, for allowing us to be ourselves.’
The day after the closing ceremony of the Paralympics, there was a parade through the streets of London. I was working for Channel 4 as a roving reporter, which meant I got to hop from bus to bus. It was the perfect job for me, as it meant I could roam around, talking to athletes.
The satellite system was under pressure from the demands of all the various news outlets, so the radio microphones were working only intermittently. There was a whole hour when I couldn’t do any broadcasting because the kit wasn’t working; I just went with the flow and enjoyed being part of the parade.
I was shattered, having been on the go since the Boat Race on 7 April. I could see how an exhausted athlete can be lifted by the crowd: the noise and the numbers gave me the biggest boost imaginable.
I felt like a balloon, floating above all this mayhem, looking down on someone who looked like me doing the Mobot with Mo Farah (he thanked me for inventing it, by the way), taking photos of Tom Daley and Zara Phillips, hugging Chris Hoy, waving with David Weir and marathon runner Richard Whitehead at the thousands and thousands of people.
When we got to Trafalgar Square, I thought of the countdown clock that had stopped, the one I’d helped to unveil in March 2011. I tried to take a mental picture, to hold this moment for ever. I looked at that mass of people, all of them cheering the athletes who had brought them hope and joy through the summer of 2012. I looked at the athletes, waving back at them and thanking them. I looked at big, strong Chris Hoy, and his bottom lip was wobbling. That’s when I went. I started to cry proper tears.
A voice said, ‘Oi, Balding, are you getting a bit wobbly?’
It was Zara Phillips, who has a wonderful ability to make people laugh, even when they’re on the verge of meltdown. I pulled myself together and got off the bus as we went under Admiralty Arch. The satellite signal was still intermittent, so I ran down the Mall, body-surfed into a bunch of schoolchildren and high-fived them all the way along. The cameras covered what they covered but I didn’t really notice. I just did what I would do whether they were filming or not.
When it was all over, I took off my microphone, said thanks to the outside-broadcast team and left. I had been offered transport, but I didn’t want to get into a car. I needed to walk.
I wanted time to gather my thoughts. I needed to find a last bit of energy, because that evening was the launch party for My Animals and Other Family. I had to be bright and sparkly for that. So I walked past Clarence House and St James’s Palace, down Pall Mall and round the back of Trafalgar Square, up St Martin’s Place and Charing Cross Road.
As I walked, I tried to remember moments, to recall what people had said. But all I felt was a surge of love: the love that had come from everyone on those streets and the love that had been shown back to them from the men and women in the parade. I was neither a participant nor an observer: I was right in the middle. That seemed the one place I wanted to be.
Athletes often say that, when they win, they just want to win again. But I don’t want ever to try to repeat what happened in London 2012. I may do versions of the same thing, but the alchemy of time, place and people will never be re-created. And that’s just fine by me.
LADLE HILL–WATERSHIP DOWN–KINGSCLERE
When she died, Grandma left the contents of her house to my mother, my brother and me. I suspect she laughed writing her
will, imagining the rows as we tried to sort out what we each wanted. She’d have laughed even harder if she’d seen Uncle Willie trying to organize what he needed to keep, then piling up the remainder into the rooms he was meant to be preparing for his new bed and breakfast.
As it happens, we all wanted slightly different things. My brother needed furniture and likes art, my mother wanted the desk and some of the pictures, and I wanted a bowl of glass eggs that was always in the hall, and the books. Grandma had rather a fine collection of hardbacks, including a specially bound limited edition of Watership Down. It is encased in a marbled box, the inside sleeves have the same marbled paper, the pages are gilt edged and it is signed in red ink by Richard Adams. It is a beautiful book: the outside is lovely to look at, but the inside is even more precious to me.
To most people, Watership Down is a book about rabbits. To me, it’s a book about home. In the Foreword to the Special Edition, Richard Adams wrote:
I was born in Watership Down country – copse and ploughland, streams and hills, chicory, cowslips and harebells. If the book has a theme apart from the story, that is it … the story became an excuse for writing with affection about the country I have always loved. It’s still there at the moment, thank God. May it always remain.
That was written in 1976, when I was five and living a few miles away, in Kingsclere. When I was a child I rode along Watership Down in search of rabbits, but I had never walked it. We had missed that section of the Wayfarer’s Walk when Alice, Mum and I had been diverted to Litchfield and then got lost. It meant that there was one more walk home from the west.
Aunt Gail is over from America for Easter. She is my father’s youngest sister and (entirely independently) my mother’s best friend. They went to prep school together, until Aunt Gail got expelled for bringing her pony into the dormitory. They, probably sensibly, went to different boarding schools but remained close friends. Aunt Gail used to come and stay for the summer holidays and, when my mother went to America after she left school, she of course went to see Aunt Gail.
That she ended up marrying her best friend’s brother was sort of a coincidence. Dad had come to work at the stables, and although they’d met as children, the age gap of ten years meant that at first my mother was just one of his sister’s squitty little friends. Things changed, obviously, as my mother grew up, and Aunt Gail was probably the happiest person at my parents’ wedding. She was certainly happier than my grandmother.
Aunt Gail adores my father. I don’t really know why, as he was beastly to her when she was little and all he does now is tease her about her strangely shaped thumbs and tell her she’s bow-legged. Her thumbs do look as if they’ve been squashed in a press and her legs are a little bandy, but there are many other qualities that are more worthy of note. She takes her brother’s jibes with remarkable grace and seems pleased just to spend time with him. I can’t fathom why.
I suggest that Aunt Gail come with Mum, Alice and me for the last section of the Wayfarer’s Walk. She has been visiting Kingsclere for nearly fifty years but has never walked from Ladle Hill to home. I think she’d enjoy it. I also ask our nephews along. Both of them, to my surprise, say yes.
So off we drive to Sydmonton and park up outside the Lloyd Webbers’ ornate black gates, behind which stretches a perfect avenue leading to their house.
‘Hide your bag,’ my mother warns Aunt Gail.
‘Mum, we’re in the middle of the country. I don’t think thieves are going to smash your car windows in and nick her bag, I really don’t. And I’m pretty sure Andrew Lloyd Webber won’t take it either.’
My mother raises her eyebrow at me. God, I wish I could do that.
‘Just hide the bag.’
I once walked with a man in Cornwall who, immediately afterwards, ordered Doom at the pub. I thought he couldn’t abide my company, but it turned out that it’s a type of ale: Doom Bar. My mother would order a pint of that. She’s like an insurance broker, who always sees the worst possible outcome. Sometimes it’s quite useful: for example, if you’re planning a sophisticated crime she can work out exactly where you’re going to slip up. If you’re not planning a sophisticated crime, it can be quite depressing.
Aunt Gail hides her bag. She finds it easier to go with the flow. I have yet to learn this art.
We have Boris (on the lead) and Archie (off the lead), Jonno and Toby (both off the lead) and four vaguely sentient women to keep the boys in order. The ground is wet and sticky from more rain, so I’m wearing wellington boots. For once, my mother has not foreseen the worst-case scenario and is wearing trainers.
‘Bollocks,’ she says loudly as we get to the first puddle. The boys laugh.
‘It’s OK, Nini,’ says Jonno. ‘There’s a way round here.’
(My nephews and my niece, Flora, all call my mother Nini, pronounced ‘Nee-nee’ rather than ‘Ninny’; although if she’s been listening to rap music or watching American cartoons, Flora calls her Neens. Mum didn’t want to be ‘Grandma’ or ‘Granny’, so Nini just sort of happened. My father is ‘Grumpy’, which is easier to explain.)
Jonno leads us through the trees on a curving path and then decides that we should get right out the other side and walk along the edge of the field, where it is drier. We march up the side of Ladle Hill, where the tumuli reveal the remains of an unfinished Iron Age hill fort that has never been excavated. Jonno tells me that the army based on Ladle Hill used to fight the army based on Beacon Hill, which we can see on the other side of the A34.
‘He remembers so much,’ says my mother. ‘It’ll get him into terrible trouble, you know.’
Andrew said he might join us for some of the walk, but I know he won’t. He has a meeting with the accountant at 12.30 p.m. and Mum is due to meet the same accountant at 2.30 p.m. She looks at her watch as we get to the top of Ladle Hill and says, ‘Do you think I’ll make it back in time?’
‘Absolutely. I think the walk is just short of six miles, and we’ll do it in well under two hours, even with the boys,’ I say, without factoring in the worst-case scenario of one of us breaking a leg and having to hop the whole way home.
It’s a fresh day, not warm enough to encourage Easter-holiday families out into the open, so we have the place to ourselves. Toby explains earnestly that there are coins under the ground and so we should bring up metal detectors and find them all – then we could buy a new car. He finds a flint that he is convinced was a tooth from an enormous animal. I say it was probably a mammoth and it might still be around. His eyes turn wide as saucers and he starts to scan the fields.
I love being an aunt. You get all the fun with none of the responsibility. It’s even better than being a grandparent, because you haven’t had to give birth to anyone and you don’t have a view on parenting. Alice and I were born to be aunts. We can read to the children, play with them, tease them, advise them, teach them stuff that may or not be strictly true or useful, and love them unconditionally. I never knew it could be so satisfying.
Jonno is very tall for his age, with great long legs that stride over the ground. Toby is much smaller, but he’s tough and he’s fit, so he keeps up as best he can. He has decided he wants to wear a visor for the walk; he fancies himself as a tennis player for the day. They mainly wear football kit, and I am riding sky high in their estimation because I’ve brought them each a Liverpool football shirt with ‘Balding’ written on the back of it. I was working there the day before and I took two penalties in front of the Kop.
Yes, I did. I really did. Alice has told me to point out that the mascot was in goal, but I would like to counter that by saying that the mascot, Mighty Red, is over six foot tall and very wide. He fills up a lot of the goal. He might not be able to bend down or move easily, but he is mighty. And red.
I was at Anfield to do my sports chatshow, and I’d agreed to take penalties with comedian John Bishop and a few others at half-time in the charity match to commemorate the lives of the ninety-six fans killed at Hillsborough in 1989.
I explained to the boys all about the day and who was playing for the Liverpool Legends – Kenny Dalglish, Michael Owen, Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Jan Mølby and John Barnes were on the pitch.
‘Yes, but what happened when you took your penalty?’ Toby asked.
‘Yes, talk us through it, Auntie Clare. Did you go top left or top right?’ added Jonno.
A week before, when the boys heard I was to take penalties at Anfield, they had looked at my brother with solemn faces.
‘We think Auntie Clare needs some coaching,’ they said.
So they had coached me, with the help of Dwayne, who works in the yard and is a mean footballer. He told me to put my left foot level with the ball, sweep through with my right, connect with my laces and keep my head down. Other people told me to pick my corner and stick with it. This assumed I could control the direction of the ball, which was ambitious. Alice told me to remember to look happy.
‘Just keep smiling, whatever happens. You know how you can look when you’re concentrating, and that wouldn’t be good. Just smile.’
I bought myself my first-ever pair of football boots in Canterbury on Easter Saturday. I was there for Radio 2 live from Canterbury Cathedral, so I thought I’d better invest in the local economy. They were fluorescent green but they were reduced to £25, so who was I to quibble with the colour?
‘Are you planning to blind the goalkeeper?’ asked Alice, when I proudly showed them to the family.
I did not sleep well on Sunday night. I kept having visions of coming off a long run towards the penalty spot and slipping on my backside in front of the Kop, the most revered and famous stadium end in England. My lovely BT producer was worried on my behalf.