Busyknitter

My bike, my beautiful, beautiful bike is critically damaged, possibly beyond repair and I am finding it incredibly hard to deal with.

We’ve had our bikes for nearly 20 years now. Mr. BK and I had them handbuilt by Witcomb Cycles in SouthEast London the same year we were married. We’ve cycled halfway round Europe on them, including Iceland. Over the years I’ve must have commuted thousands of miles on my bike. Latterly, it’s proved to be a mobility lifesaver, enabling me and T to get around town with relative ease.

It’s a specialist touring bike; lightweight Reynolds frame, 10-speed derrailleur with mountain-climbing gear ratios, drop handlebars, high pressure tyres and a girl’s saddle. Over the years, all I’ve had to replace are the brake blocks and cables, a few spokes, the tyres and the freewheel. It’s even got the original chain.

But on Saturday, driving out of a service station on the M40, my car was rear-ended (by a bloody Bentley no less). And my bike was racked on the back and took the full force of the impact. The rear forks are completely warped and the rear axle doesn’t look too great either.

A bike shop in Brighton is going over it tomorrow to see if anything can be done for it.

Update Tuesday evening 30th May Well, shows how much I don’t watch Top Gear. Turns out I added 2+2 and assumed it was a Bentley. Actually turned out to be a Jag. Whatever.

The shop in Brighton reckons the bike is a write-off However, I wasn’t too impressed with their assessment of the replacement value of a handbuilt bike. So I did a bit of research and found out that Witcomb is still open and is now the only remaining frame builder in London and the South East. I phoned Mr. Witcomb up and have arranged to drop by the shop with the patient on our way back up North on Friday. He reckons there’s a good chance he can knock the bike back into reasonable shape. And if he can’t, he’ll be able to give me a proper quote for it’s replacement.

Update 5th June Nope, it’s a write-off.

What is PECs? A communication system using picture symbols, devised by Pyramid Educational Consultants

Why did you go on a course to learn how to implement it? Because it is a very detailed, specific programme and I wanted to learn how to do it properly. PECs is not touted as a miracle cure or anything like that. It has a strong evidence base behind it, but so do lots of other approached. But you’ve got to choose something and the basis of the programme is essentially behaviour modification. And if you are going to do this with an ASD child, you have to take it in very small steps and address errors precisely along the way. So I needed to be taught.

How long was the course? 2 days

Was it fun? Yes, the presenters very very professional and humorous in the way they delivered the material. I also met lots of nice people.

How much did it cost? Well, the cost of the course itself for a parent is £140, which is half what they charge professionals. To implement PECs, you also need a certain amount of resources; folders with velcro and a good range of picture cards as a minimum. Pyramid market lots of this stuff and it ain’t particularly cheap. However, they were very careful to stress that there are lots of cheaper ways to make all the stuff that you need and that you don’t have to buy theirs. But I’m rubbish at making stuffand don’t have much time for messing about with things like that. So I spent about £50 on materials as well.

Did you learn much Oh my goodness, yes. I hardly know where to begin. We started to implement PECs a year ago, guided by T’s speech therapist. He learnt the concept of exchange quite easily, but somehow never got past first base. To be honest, at home we let the whole thing fizzle out. But now I think I know why we failed. We didn’t do sufficient preparation in terms of observing T and identifying the things he would be most likely to respond to (reinforcers). We were only taught how to implement stage 1, so no wonder that’s where he’s stuck. It’s almost as if Stages 2 and 3 ( which incidentally I think will be very hard work) were expected to happen all by themselves. We didn’t know how vital it is to avoid “prompt dependency”, which in English means we have to make T take the initiative. And we weren’t taught how to spot and correct errors in the PECs procedure. And most important, we jsut didn’t do enough. Somehow, i have to find a way to get T to initiate up to 50 exchanges a day. That’s a lot of hula-hoops!

Do you feel ready to have another go at PECs Raring to go !

Was there anything you didn’t like about the course Well, the food wasn’t great

Also, it was a bit disheartening to be one of only two parents in a group of over 50 students. it seems that in the UK, the schools and NHS services take the initiative and somehow parents take a back seat. This is not the case in the US. I was told by the course leader that the same course Stateside would consist of about two-thirds parents. And the average age of their children would probably be under 3.

I have two sons. One is unsporty, computer-games obsessed and does anything he can to get out of PE. The other doesn’t even know what football is. But they are both currently sat glued to the Cup Final. Anyone care to hazard a unifying theory on the common characteristics of the male chromosonal profile?

Me: So what lessons are you missing for your Occupational Therapy Sessions then?

S: RE

Me: So do you have to catch up with extra homework?

S: No, I get two lessons a week and I’m only missing one.

Me: Oh. So what are they doing that you’re missing then?

S: Mysteries of Life and Death.

Me: And meanwhile you’re learning how to tie shoelaces?

S: Same difference really.

Mind, they used to say that about French novels.

S, my nearly 12-year old son and I have been watching Band of Brothers over the past few weeks. He’s always been interested in WWII and this is a well-made and thought provoking series. Tonight we watched the episode where the American soldiers liberate a concentration camp. It was very hard-hitting indeed and came as a complete shock to my poor boy. I must admit I assumed he would have come across The Holocaust either in his reading, at school or in a movie. He had, but he hadn’t really taken on board what it was and tonight’s episode upset him terribly.

It’s odd; I want him to know about this kind of thing. It’s important to understand history and I think he’s old enough. But when he told me that he hadn’t known that human beings could be capable of such awful things I felt like I’d opened Pandora’s box for him. Can’t close it again.