Paralympics 2016 - Cheating Death And Parahoneys

Look I know I’m behind. I don’t need you to tell me this. But you try sifting your way through three lengthy Paralympic broadcasts a day, all the while making notes on your phone but making sure that you don’t commit the appalling sin of missing Only Connect. There isn’t much time left to write them all up. But we’ll press on, eh?

Jonathan Fox, last seen reeling from his defeat in the S7 100m backstroke, goes in the heats of the 50m and breezes through in first place, but in the women’s event Susie Rodgers has a nervous wait to see if she has made it through to the final after finishing second in her heat. Unlike in many other disciplines qualification is not decided by finishing positions but by the fastest times across all the heats. As it turns out she makes it through, which is just as well given the tendency of some of the female swimmers to become slightly emotional.

Outside at the track Mickey Bushell is going in the men’s T53 100m. Bushell has recovered from a urine infection which led to blood poisoning and was, we are told, just 12 hours away from death before pulling off a miraculous recovery. I’ve had water infections. Which is a bit like saying I’ve had strawberries. I’ve had lots of the bloody things. Probably three or four a year at the current rate which continues to perplex the experts charged with keeping me alive. I have also lost people. Friends that is, who have suffered complications from various biff related problems and illnesses. Shit like this gets real. However, I have never had a water infection that has left me 12 hours from death so I can’t imagine the world of pain that Bushell must have been in at that point. For me it’s a week off work, a course of leeches from the GP and back to it. I’m touching wood as I say that. I’ve lost too many friends to be completely certain that I will still be here next week.

Bushell’s presence in Rio is remarkable enough then, and he continues to confound all sense and reason by qualifying for the final in second place home favourite Arisosvaldo Fernandes Silva. As if he hasn’t had enough problems, Bushell reveals that he suffered a flat tyre during his warm-up, and then ANOTHER one when he arrived at the start line. This is a man who shoves ice cubes down the back of adversity. When I suffer a flat tyre it involves a long and boring conversation with a wheelchair mechanic about why they haven’t got ‘the right parts’ to solve the problem. The right parts. It’s a fucking flat tyre. Oh yes but we have to order those tyres in from West Virginia and they are carried here on foot by a small child and oh fucking hell…..

In another heat Mo Jomni can only manage fourth place and so does not make it through to the final. No Mobot there, then.

You’re never far away from a hop to a different sport during Channel Four’s Paralympic coverage and so there’s a 30-second flit to the basketball court where Great Britain’s women are taking on Argentina. They are winning comfortably (finally sealing a whopping 79-20 victory but we don’t actually get to see that happen) so we’re off again, back to the swimming pool where Sascha Kindred goes in the 50m butterfly for S6 athletes. At 38 years of age Kindred is in the twilight of his career but became something of a household name after winning six gold medals across three Paralympics in Sydney, Athens and Beijing. He took as silver in London and although his star is fading somewhat he still manages to qualify in second place behind the splendidly monikered Colombian Nelson Crispin Corzo.

In the womens event Ellie Robinson, 15 year-old Ellie Robinson, storms to victory to book her place in the final. What is it with Paralympians called Ellie. Robinson is short in stature, called Ellie, and extremely fast in the water. Reminds me of someone…..What it actually reminds me of is that advert in which Ms Simmonds tells Jack Whitehall not to come near her in his Speedos. And who can blame her? Speedos are a blemish.

Next there is another gold for GB in the velodrome where Sophie Thornhill and her pilot Helen Scott smash the Paralympic record in the Class B tandem 1000m time trial. It’s a ride which gives them the lead at the expense of the Australians. Always nice to get one over on the Australians whatever the sport. Only the Dutch can stop Scott and Thornill now but they fail to do so as GB secure yet more cycling success. It’s what we do, isn’t it?

The news isn’t so good for T35 100m sprinter Jordan Howe who is disqualified from his heat for a false start. He’s disconsolate and why wouldn’t you be if after four years of hard work you’d lost it all from being a little over eager? In years gone by he would have been given a second chance but the rules are pretty ruthless now. One false move and you are gone. If Howe can take anything from this it is that is probably unlikely to happen to him again. Once bitten….

Stef Reid jumps 5.64 in the women’s T44 long jump. It puts her into the lead but her mark is eclipsed by France’s Marie-Amelie Le Fur who lands a mark of 5.75. She betters that to 5.83 and Reid cannot respond and has to settle for silver. Commentator Katherine Merry tells us how good the competition has been but we’ve been bouncing around between the track, the pool and the velodrome so much that we have only seen four jumps in the entire final. Reid’s interview reveals a distinctly Canadian accent. She’s the wife of Canada’s T54 sprinter Brent Lakatos and moved to Canada at the age of four. She qualifies to represent Great Britain by virtue of her English mother and Scottish father and well, we’ll take medal contending athletes where we can get them. Does anyone think Mo Farah was born in London? Does anyone think he even lives there?

What do we think of the term parahoney? I see it used on Twitter by former Lancashire and England batsman Graeme Fowler (ha, the people I follow….) and I’m not sure what to make of it. It is meant as a compliment to Reid and Fowler adds the caveat that if you are offended you have missed the point. I get where he is coming from but if he has taken a fancy to her (and why not, she’s a bit of alright you’d probably say) why can he not just say that? Why isn’t she just a honey, if indeed the term ‘honey’ is still acceptable in a modern, pc-gone-bonkers type of society? It’s almost as if the inclusion of the prefix ‘para’ devalues her honeydom in some way. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe I myself am revealing my lazy prejudices by pointing this out. Either way it just troubles me a tad that a has-been international cricketer can’t express a liking for a female athlete without making it at least partly about her disability.

We go back to the pool where the one-armed marvel that is Stephanie Slater qualifies in second place for the final of the S8 100m butterfly behind Ukraine’s Kateryna Istomina. We are only offered the last length or two of the 400m S9 heats in both the men’s and women’s event, but we get to see Lewis White finish second behind Italian Federico Morlacchi and the 18-year-old Jonathan Booth get through as runner up to Australia’s Brenden Hall. Amy Marren had two fourth-placed finishes in London 2012 and starts her bid to put that right by winning her heat to make it through to the final of the women’s event.

We finish on the track where Libby Clegg sets a new world record in the T11 100m of 11.92 seconds in qualifying for the final. She’s only the second female athlete ever to go under 12.00 in this classification. How fast is she going to run when she gets there? Will she even get there? As she crosses the line there is no sign yet of the controversy to come which threatens to leave Clegg’s Paralympic bid in tatters.

Paralympics 2016 - Putting The Cat Out

Since the injection of ludicrous amounts of lottery cash Great Britain has become very good at cycling. Peddling knights Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Bradley Wiggins have a cupboard full of Olympic medals between them while others like Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott and Jason Kenny each have impressive collections also. No surprise then to see that GB are almost as strong in Paralympic cycling, or paracycling as it is known.

First to prove the point is Megan Giglia. She cruises to gold in the women’s 3000m pursuit for C1-C3 athletes. Giglia suffered a stroke which led to a bleed on her brain and left her with paralysis down one side of her body. In the final she catches the USA’s Jamie Whitmore barely half way into the race. This kind of thing is unheard of in the Olympic games, with athletes usually finishing a couple of second apart at the most. There’s a part of me that thinks that Giglia’s margin of victory speaks to a lack of depth in the event. This is the final, don’t forget. Whitmore is the next best athlete in the field and she can’t get near Giglia. Now Giglia could be just that good. Every once in a while an athlete comes around who is so utterly dominant that even those who would consider themselves world class in any other era are made to look ordinary. Michael Johnson and Usain Bolt in athletics, for example, or Michael Jordan in basketball or Muhammad Ali in boxing. I remain firmly sceptical about whether Giglia belongs in that company but she can only beat what is put in front of her. She’s a Paralympic champion. Perhaps we shouldn’t quibble.

However good Giglia is she’s got a long way to go before she matches the achievements of Sarah Storey. She’s going in the women’s C4 300m pursuit final against fellow Brit (I told you we were good at this) Crystal Lane. Her victory lands her a record 12th gold medal, making her the most decorated female Paralympian in British history as she goes past the mark set by Paralympic poster girl turned House Of Lords representative Tanni Grey-Thompson. When I started playing basketball Sarah Storey was called Sarah Bailey and was not a paracyclist but a swimmer. The first five of her gold medals were won in the pool across the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona and the 1996 event in Atlanta.

I’m not sure how I feel about this business of Paralympic athletes excelling at two disciplines. It has happened occasionally in the Olympic Games recently, witness Rebecca Romero’s conversion from rowing to cycling, but in general success in two sports seems to somehow belong to a bygone era. Except in rugby, where players switch codes as often as they change their pants. Or more often in the case of Sonny Bill Williams. But those two sports do at least require a similar skill set so you can see how a transition can be made. Unless your name is Sam Burgess. On the other hand Cycling and swimming have about as much in common as I do with Tom Hardy. Again I can’t shake the feeling that Storey’s ability to conquer both of these sports at Paralympic level could be seen as indicative of a lack of depth. However, the fact that she has represented England at the Commonwealth Games against non-disabled athletes tells you everything you need to know about Storey’s undoubted class.

Storey’s absence from the pool is more than compensated for in this session. First Ollie Hynd breaks the world record for the 400m freestyle in the S8 category for athletes who have lost one arm or both hands, or else have lower limb restrictions. There's catharsis in that for Hynd who missed out on a medal after finishing fourth in London 2012. His success is followed swiftly in the same event for women, where Stephanie Millward takes the bronze medal behind Australia’s Lakeisha Patterson and Jessica Long of the USA. Following them Harriet Lee takes silver in the women’s 100m breaststroke for SB9 athletes, those with minimal physical impairments. Holland’s Lisa Kruger takes the gold. Lee’s swim is a personal best, which is just about all you can ask for from any athlete competing at this level.

From the pool it is back out to the track where one of the Paralympics’ biggest names is about to enter the fray. Jonnie Peacock was a star of London 2012, winning gold in the men’s T44 100m. T44’s have a single leg amputation below the knee or else they have the ability to walk but with moderately reduced function in one or both legs. Peacock is in the former camp (yes, they all sit around lighting fires and singing boy scout songs) and he’s back to defend his title. He first needs to negotiate the qualification heat, which he does in a time of 10.81 seconds. It’s a Paralympic record but Jonnie’s not getting carried away, declaring himself ‘reasonably happy’ with his run. All of which may seem a little understated but I can relate to it. I’ve never felt more than ‘reasonably happy’ with anything in my life. Mostly I veer between absolutely bloody outraged and utterly defeated. There again, I’ve never broken a Paralympic record. Nor, presumably has Sammi Kingman who we last saw trailing in the wake of China’s Zhou on her way to a world record in qualification for the women’s T53 100m final. The final is a similar story, only Sammi doesn’t trail in second behind Zhou and instead is beaten into a quite medal-less fifth place. Disappointing perhaps, but you get the feeling that Sammi’s time is coming.

Channel 4 are like my cat. They are never happy in one place. Just when you think they have settled on something they are metaphorically waiting by the back door for you to let them outside for a metaphorical dump. And so it is with great swiftness that they again leave the track and drag us back into the pool for the denouement of the Bethany Firth/Jessica Applegate story we started to sit in on yesterday. To recap, Firth won the heat comfortably while Applegate became a little tearful at her performance despite having qualified for the final easily enough. The final goes the way we expect it to for Firth as she takes the gold in this 100m backstroke for S14 athletes with intellectual impairments which cause difficulty assessing patterns or sequences. Happily there is some relief in Applegate’s achievement as she picks up the bronze medal that will hopefully obliterate her earlier disappointment and so spare her from becoming over-emotional in her post-swim interview. Phil Jones will have to save the popcorn for another day.

There’s time to see another swimming medal as Andrew Mullen takes bronze in the 200m freestyle for S5 athletes, those with short stature or paraplegia. He’s beaten by the impressive Brazilian Daniel Dias much to the delight of the Rio crowd, and the American Roy Perkins much to the chagrin of much of the rest of the world. We don’t stick around because the cat wants letting outside again, taking us back to the track where Georgina Hermitage goes in the T37 100m heats. This category is for athletes with coordination impairments, but there seems little wrong with Georgina’s as she romps through to the final by equalling the world record of 13.39. Her start seems suspiciously false but none of the officials seem in any way alarmed by it.

T38 athletes are slightly different again in that they may have cerebral palsy in addition to further coordination problems. In this class Olivia Breen finishes 4th in her 100m heat, but makes it through as a fastest loser after a nervous wait. While Breen is waiting, Sophie Hahn and Kadeena Cox make it through to the final for GB, Hahn by winning the heat in yet another Paralympic record and Cox as the runner-up. Cox is another athlete who excels at two Paralympic sports and will spend large parts of the following day at the velodrome trying to add to GB’s gold rush. Cox explains her decision to compete in two sports in quite sobering terms, telling us that her multiple sclerosis could prevent her from participating in any sport at any level four years from now, so why not cash in now while the going is good? Well, when you put it like that, Kadeena.

We end in the pool and rather shockingly on this day of so much success for British athletes with a surprise defeat. We are all but promised that Jonathan Fox will carry off the gold medal in the men’s 100m for S7 athletes with limited leg function or who are missing a leg or parts of both legs. Fox broke the world record a month ago but it holds no truck with Ukraine’s Ievgenii Bogodaiko who snatches gold by a margin of 0.23 seconds;

“I wasn’t really expecting to come second in that event.” Observes a clearly shaken Fox, although suggestions that he will now turn his attentions to paracycling appear premature.

Paralympics 2016 - Day 1 Continues

In my last look at all things Paralympic I complained about the lack of coverage given to the women's wheelchair basketball game between Great Britain and Canada. Channel 4 go some way to atoning for this by showing far more of the GB Men's opener against Algeria. Well, either they are atoning for it or they are displaying blatant sexism by affording the men more coverage. You pays your money.....

Whatever the gender of the players our commentary team of Ronald MacIntosh and Dan Johnson are having trouble identifying the Algerian players. The scoreboards displayed in the arena do not match the names printed on the backs of the Algerian shirts, in particular the number seven. To avoid anything embarrassing like looking like they don't know what they are doing, MacIntosh and Johnson refer to him only as 'number seven'. This makes him sound like a character in a remake of The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. I am not a number. The mix-up is constantly referred to throughout the coverage, which is interrupted midway through the third quarter and resumed with around five minutes to play in the fourth. Unlike the women's game this isn't a close affair. There's no doubt about the outcome so it's slightly less annoying when the coverage is halted. Before we leave GB's 60-odd point victory we learn that Simon Munn is competing in his seventh Paralympics, having been selected for every one since the 1992 event in Barcelona. That's a phenomenal record by anyone's standards. In 1992 I was struggling to find the motivation to turn up for a 12-hour week at Carmel College and was about to meet my first proper girlfriend. There may or may not be a direct correlation between this and my eventual failure to join Munn in a GB squad. But that's pure speculation...

You won't be surprised at this point to learn that Munn is another former team-mate of mine. I don't know if he ever learned my name. He used to call me 'little un' which, while factually difficult to dispute, is not the most respectful of monikers. Yet not as bad as an old coach I had when I moved on to Sheffield (I spread my failure across the north of England) who insisted on calling me Pete. He still did when our paths crossed again years later. I didn't get on all that well with Terry Bywater either when we were together at those 1997 World Junior Championships I might have mentioned once or twice. I realise I could be the common denominator here but he really was a pain in the arse. To be fair to him he was only 14 years old at the time. He's come a long way since then, not only developing into one of GB's key players but also someone able to articulate his and his team's efforts in a highly impressive post-match interview. He also looks older than Munn! He's mature and knowledgable now, whereas if he'd been interviewed after one of our games in Toronto he'd have just quoted Chubby Brown.

Away from my angst and back in Rio we are taken to the stadium where Sammi Kinghorn goes for Great Britain in the women's T53 100m heats. Kinghorn finishes a long way behind the winner but there's no shame in that given that the victorious Chinese athlete smashes the world record. Kinghorn is good enough to qualify for the final in second place in this category for wheelchair users with full use of their arms but with limited or no trunk function. I'd probably be a T53 if I was a track athlete rather than a university administrator and pretend writer.

Following Sammi we get a more extended version of that GB v Canada game in the women's game. It's a reasonable highlights edit which just leaves me wondering why, if they planned on showing it at this point, did they give away the result in the earlier broadcast which featured so little of the action? For those who missed it the Canadians won it 43-36 which represents a more than decent effort by the GB side against the current world champions. It's a losing start but there is much to be optimistic about for the remainder of the group games.

The broadcast finishes with a spot of table tennis as GB's Ashley Facey-Thompson takes on Spaniard Juan Bautista Perez Gonzalez in the SM9 category for athletes with weakness or immobility in one leg. Appearing in his first Paralympics after missing out on selection for London 2012 Facey-Thompson endures a chastening debut as Perez Gonzalez wins it by three games to nil. Yet the 21-year old will no doubt have learned much from this group opener and have gained valuable experience from it.

Paralympics 2016 - The Action Begins

As is my duty, and despite the nauseating dead-rubberdom of the Super League Super 8s, I went to see Saints last night. That, and the fact that I was working all day means that I have been a bit slow to catch up on events at the Paralympic Games in Rio.

Bravely, like a half-stunned elephant, I staggered in from 80 minutes of The Grind at Langtree Park to catch up on the Paralympic action I had recorded from earlier in the day. Turns out there had been three quite lengthy broadcasts throughout Channel 4’s first day of live coverage. I was only able to catch up with one due to my propensity to turn into a pumpkin should I stay up later than midnight on any night during the working week. Nevertheless there was enough in this three hours of coverage to set pulses racing and spleens venting in equal measure.

Now if you read yesterday’s column (September 8) or if you are a regular visitor to Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard you will know that my particular game is or at least was wheelchair basketball. How thrilled I was then despite the post-Saints fug, to sit down to what I thought would be full coverage of the Great Britain Women’s team’s opening group game against world champions Canada. I’d discovered the result of the men’s opener against Algeria on social media (91 to not quite so many, in favour of GB for the record) but had not heard anything about how the women had got on. Ranked fifth in the world, they had it all on to beat a Canadian side which is quite fancied to add the Paraylmpic title to its world crown.

All was well and good for a while. GB started like the proverbial, with Helen Freeman pushing them out into a 4-0 lead. Commentary was provided by Ronald McIntosh, last heard breathlessly chunnering his way through the BBC’s Olympic boxing coverage alongside Richie Woodhall. Here, McIntosh was joined by Dan Johnson, former GB Men’s international and….yes….wait for the clanging sound of names dropping, a former team-mate of mine from my time at Oldham. The duo work quite well together. McIntosh’s enthusiasm and Kamara-like ability to make a pound of lard sound like a royal banquet is embellished by Johnson’s deep knowledge of the game both in terms of the players involved and the tactics and strategies they employ. Some players of his quality (and he was different class) can’t translate that to the ability to provide insight into how it’s done but Johnson is not one of those people.

It was at this point that I started to wonder whether I had developed an inappropriate crush on Freeman, rather like the one I had on Ann Wild when she was the star of the GB Women’s team. I hadn’t had time to quite decide on the matter when to my horror, with Canada having forged a comeback to tie the game at 4-4 with just about four minutes gone, we were whisked back to the studio where Ade Adepitan calmly informed us that we could continue to watch the basketball online but that now it was time for some swimming. By the way, just as an aside I’ve played against Ade many times too, although never with him on the same team. We were once photographed on the front of the Great Britain Wheelchair Basketball Association Handbook, moments before I lifted the ball over his head and executed a barely credible half court dribble and lay-up. No, really.

Clang.

Anyway Ade is very much a television presenter these days and so for that I am cursing him at this moment. It is not his decision, I know that, but I need someone to vent at for this injustice. You can’t continue watching the basketball online when you are watching a recording some 12 hours later. Given the hours they keep in Rio (four hours behind the UK so this game was taking place at around 1.30 in the afternoon BST) I would argue that the vast majority of people would be unable to follow the whole of the live broadcast on Channel 4. But for those who were, and who may not have access to the internet (do those people still exist?) what is the point of showing them the opening four minutes of a wheelchair basketball game before cutting away to a man talking a lot about swimming for several minutes before we actually see any swimming? This approach takes all of the context away from the game, as if we are just being invited to a demonstration of a whacky, crazy new sport in which the result is academic. It’s the fucking Paralympics! The result is all that matters, the only thing that provides the drama and the only reason that anybody watches sport.

There’s nothing that can be done now. I’m faced with the choice of sticking with whatever it is they are going to show after the swimming or else going to bed. But I’m still a bit all over the place, still wound up about the whole sorry wheelchair basketball affair, and still a little stultified by the lack of a credible three-quarter line at St Helens RLFC. There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep so I plod on and am taken to the stadium for the athletics. In the Olympic Games you have to wait a full week for anyone to take to the track, but there is no messing about in the Paralympics. At 11 days in length it is a much shorter affair than the Olympic Games despite the fact that there are far more medals to be handed out due to a quite bewildering array of classifications within the same basic events. They don’t have a week to play with so they get things under way quick-smart.

The first notable competitor is partially sighted sprinter Libby Clegg, going in the 100m. With her guide runner (whose name escapes me as is the way it should be) she looks to have been ousted at the line by the Chinese athlete Zhou. Yet on further inspection we are informed that the officials have somehow seen fit to rule the race as a dead heat between the two. It’s a heat, a qualifier, for which originally the plan was for only the winner to progress while the runner-up sweated it out to find out if they have secured a fastest loser berth. Yet unable to separate the two of them, that idea is dispensed with by the powers that be and both make it through. We’ll be seeing Libby again then, which if her bland interview is anything to go by is not a pulse racer even if it does prove that just like in the Olympics, Paralympic athletes say a lot without saying much at all in the immediate aftermath of their endeavours.

Commentary, and not interviews, comes from John Rawling. The name will mean something to regular listeners of Five Live’s Fighting Talk programme which airs on Saturday mornings and on which Rawling is a regular panellist. The idea is points for punditry, so guests are asked questions based on the week’s sporting news and get points for coming up with the best answers. Kind of like a sporting QI but it isn’t ruined by Alan Davies. Anyway Rawling proves himself more than adept in the commentary box too, refreshingly treating the action like the sport that it is and not like a year 7 sports day. He’s probably helped by the fact that 100m races like Clegg’s are short enough to swerve the indignity of being pulled off the air mid-way through, and it helps that he’s supported by sound studio analysis from former Olympic 400m man Iwan Thomas and ex-Paralympic athlete Danny Cates.

Also covering 100m are swimmers Bethany Firth and Jessica Applegate, as we are dragged back into the pool by our televisual masters. Firth sails through her heat (if indeed one can sail in a swimming pool, there might be rules against that) while Applegate trails in second and looks more than a little disappointed by it as she gives her thoughts to poolside question poser Rachel Latham. Applegate has the final to look forward to but still seems close to tears following her performance in the heat, all of which feels like shades of Phil Jones doing his level best to make Jessica Ennis-Hill cry following her unsuccessful bid to retain her Olympic heptathlon title just a month or so ago. Latham isn’t really to blame this time in the way that Jones was. He appeared hell-bent on making himself a moment in television history on that occasion, while Latham seems more of an unsuspecting victim as Applegate wells up alarmingly while still maintaining the resolve to promise to do better in the final. I really hope she does or it could get ugly.

When we left the basketball Ade had assured me that we would be returning later, which raised hopes that I might get to see the denouement of what promised to be a cracker between GB and Canada in the Women’s competition. True to his word, they do return, just in time to see the players on both sides shaking hands at the end of the game. There’s no sign of Freeman as Ade informs us that our girls have fallen to what sounds like a valiant 43-36 defeat. The closeness of the game only adds to my fury at having missed out on it but I’ve learned a harsh lesson. I’m not going to get very much of the content I really want from these games simply by recording what is on offer on the Channel 4 broadcasts throughout the working day. The laptop may see some action over the weekend.

Finally we are flitting again, this time to the 7-a-side football where GB are 2-0 down to Brazil with just a few minutes of the game remaining. They pull a goal back but the hosts cling on throughout three minutes of injury time for an opening day win. Again it is disappointing to see so little of the action but at least this time we are offered an opportunity to see how it all turned out in the end, rather than a pointless taster followed by a manic hop across to the track and the pool and back again.

So that’s the first afternoon done and dusted. A pang of terror strikes as I head towards my bed and realise that I still have two broadcasts to catch up on from Thursday’s action, as well as a re-run of Saints’ dirge-fest with Castleford ahead of my weekly scribblings on redvee. Whose idea was it to blog about the Paralympics again?

Paralympics 2016 - The Opening Salvos

So this is it. The wait is over. Four years on from the last time the general population developed an interest in disability sport they get the chance to do it all over again as the 2016 Paralympic Games get under way in Rio.

The Maracana Stadium played host to the opening ceremony last night (September 7), thus beginning 11 days of intense competition which, if nothing else, will leave those of us with boring, proper jobs trying to avoid being badgered by strangers wanting to know why we are not out there competing also. As if it is the St Helens fucking Parkrun and you just sign up on the day. I knew there was something I had forgotten to do. You know that feeling you get when you leave the house for something important? You know there’s something vital you’ve left on the coffee table or in a drawer in your bedroom, you just can’t put your finger on what it is. I’m glad it’s been cleared up now.

To make things easier for the hard of thinking to understand, let me outline exactly the reasons why I wasn’t pushing around the Maracana waving my union flag with all the other basically professional athletes who have devoted the last four years of their lives or longer to it……(hint).

Firstly, I’m 40. This is no barrier in itself. I’m sure there are many athletes older than I am in sports like archery, shooting, boccia and equestrian. But I have only ever played wheelchair basketball, a sport in which being 40 is a significant barrier unless you are Simon Munn, who will doubtless continue to be named in the GB Men’s Wheelchair Basketball squad until he’s so old that someone has to push him around on the court during the game. Which is probably exactly how many of you thought wheelchair basketball worked in any case.

So I’m not good enough, we’ve established that. Just like you are not good enough to play for Manchester United or sell out Wembley Arena with your power ballads. I did play for Great Britain at under-23 level but the coach of that team, who is now the coach of the GB Men’s team, decided during the 1997 World Junior Men’s Championships that he would rather have an untrained monkey take to the court than yours truly. At which point the dream died and the apathy for all things GB set in. I’ll be watching their games (or recording them given the time difference and the minor inconvenience that is having to work for a living) but will not be polluting my social media feeds with ‘Go GB’ nonsense. Indeed, I’ll allow myself a small chuckle should they suffer a spate of injuries and punctures which causes them to lose to Iran.

Back at the ranch, Channel Four’s coverage of the opening ceremony was fronted by the always willing and well respected Claire Balding alongside Aussie amputee, funnyman and political rantmeister Adam Hills. They’re a sound combination in as far as they understand between them the two most fundamental issues here which are sport and disability. However, the whole shebang is destroyed by some executive producer’s insistence on turning what should be an adult discussion about a major sporting event into a really bad instalment of Soccer AM. Said excuse for a television show has been doing the same joke since 1994, so to see C4 take leaves from their book with their cringeworthy voice-over audition sketch was particularly galling. In a roundabout sort of way they were trying to educate us about Lexi, the channel’s graphical system which, it says, goes about ‘debunking the often confusing classification that govern Paralympic sport’. Along with the graphics Lexi needs a voice, hence the sketch. Hence my cringing on the couch as if I’ve been forced to watch David Brent’s dance on a constant loop for 13 hours solid.

You’ll have to forgive my disparaging tone about all of this. I’m conflicted. On the one hand I am delighted to see the Paralympics given the amount of coverage that it deserves as a major world class sporting event, but on the other I can’t help but loathe the way that the broadcasters go about it. The whole ‘Superhumans’ hashtag makes my eyes bleed, so reeking is it with the smell of inspiration porn and didn’t they do well. Can we clarify this right now, from the start? These are not superhumans. These are elite athletes who want nothing other than to be given the same respect afforded to their able bodied counterparts. It is not Superhuman to scorch around an athletics track in a wheelchair faster than others who are also using wheelchairs, or to smash a tennis ball perfectly down the line to the bewilderment of your opponent. It’s extraordinary in as far as very few people can do it to this level, and in as far as it takes dizzying amounts of skill, hard work and dedication. But somebody has to win. They're athletes. It’s sport. Can we leave it at that, please?

Before the sport, there’s a show to put on. Even the Olympic Games can’t resist the chance to get their pretentious art on at the opening ceremony, and the Paralympics is no different. It all begins with a short video starring Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee and one-time wheelchair basketball legend. I have a great deal of respect for Sir Phil. He was one of the best players of his classification that I ever saw in 20 years playing the game (ask Lexi, I can’t even begin to explain it to you here) and he must be a fine administrator to have reached his lofty position. But bugger me if he was chocolate he would devour himself. As the film ends we cut to Sir Phil inside the stadium, atop a large platform accepting the adoration of the crowd. As if he’s fucking Beyonce.

As an introduction we are assured by commentator Krisnan Guru-Murthy that ‘whatever our differences, we all have a heart’. Well, that’s good to know, but for me he goes too far when relaying the creative director’s message that they ‘regard the beach as the ultimate democratic place where everybody is equal’. I’m sorry, but anyone who believes that obviously hasn’t tried to push a wheelchair through wet sand just go for a dip in the sea. Is Copacabana Beach even accessible? I’ve just come back from Nice and I can confirm that the beach there is not. It’s all pebbles, for one thing, and for another it is situated at the bottom of an enormous flight of very steep stairs with no lift and no ramp.

The art of the whole thing passes me by somewhat. I’m barely paying attention until the athletes’ parade starts. This is why we watch opening ceremonies isn’t it, if indeed we do still watch them? To find out how many countries we have never heard of have actually sent teams to the event. Afghanistan are up early and helpfully we are informed that the teams will emerge in Portuguese alphabetical order, with none of the traditional deference afforded to Greece for inventing the Olympic thing in the first place. Krisnan tells us that Afghanistan have never won a Paralympic medal. This seems a fairly shameful stat to me. With all the conflict they have had endure, all the times they have had the living shit bombed out of them by the allied forces, they can’t produce one single champion disabled athlete? It is to be hoped they get something this time around and so make a start on addressing this abysmal record. Mind, with the financial difficulties faced by the IPC just before the games began they may consider themselves lucky to have been able to afford to attend at all.

We get to Bermuda and I spend a moment contemplating whether or not I’ve had that girl carrying their flag. Not really. It’s just something my more ignorant acquaintances used to say when we were teenagers. It became a running joke that I knew every disabled person and that I had engaged in relations with every female disabled person that we encountered. Of course I was no more successful at womanising among the disabled community as I was among the able bodied community. It’s not all about the wheelchair.

We hardly get past the Bs, which by now are being welcomed in by the versatile Alan Partridge-lite presence of Rob Walker on commentary, when Channel 4 commit a dreadful yet entirely predictable sin. They go to a commercial break. Someone has to pay for these television rights. No amount of hysterical ranting about how the BBC should have forked out for the rights to the Paralympics (they had the Olympics, you see, so it follows) is going to change the fact that when it comes to the rights to televised sport the highest bidder gets the gig. Even if it is Dave or Channel 5. In this case it is Channel 4 and they do not consider anyone placed alphabetically between China and Estonia to be worth their time and therefore your time. You could write and complain, but you’re unlikely to unless you’re the kind of person who believes Paralympic sport justifies the blanket coverage afforded to Premier League football. You might be right if you do, but even you only care once every four years so lift your game or shut up, ok?

Returning to the parade, in a brilliant twist the organisers have decided to have each team carry in a piece of a giant jigsaw. On the front of the piece is the name of the country being represented, and on the reverse parts of a giant collage which will eventually, once the parade is complete, contain the image of all of the competing athletes from all of the nations. While this is a fascinating concept I am reliably informed by Partridge Walker that the parade will not be complete until around 1.30am UK time. Remember that boring job of mine? It’s about to get in the way again. No doubt some time after the time of writing this I will get a chance to see how it all turned out in the end, but as I watch I can’t help but imagine that it will look like a giant game of Guess Who? Does he have spectacles? A moustache? What colour hair? Is it Wilbur? Or whatever his name was….

He may be a proper sports commentator with experience of covering football, snooker and Kabbadi (possibly) but that doesn’t stop Walker slipping momentarily into Inspiration Porn Mode at one point during the parade when he declares that it is ‘brilliant to see them all (the athletes, presumably) smiling’, as if they are a class of sick children on holiday to DisneyLand Florida. Remember the sport, Rob, remember the sport. It’s not brilliant to see them all smiling. It’s intensely annoying to see the loud-attired Americans and Australians belching at the camera at every opportunity with their stupid hats and their stupid loud American-Australianism. It’s not even brilliant to see Team GB (you have to call them that otherwise Phil Craven comes around to your house on a Sunday and lectures you on what it is to be a patriot in the 21st century). Time was when I would watch a Paralympic opening ceremony parade and recognise 10 or 20 of the athletes whom I had met down at Stoke Mandeville or on the wheelchair basketball circuit from Barrow to Bristol. Not anymore. I’m so old now that I don’t know any of these faceless people, while the more marketable individuals like David Weir and Ellie Simmons seem strangely absent. I still know two or three lads in the Men’s Wheelchair Basketball squad but to call them friends would be stretching it. Either way they don’t show as far as I can see, and neither does the head coach which if nothing else at least prevents me from throwing my television into the front garden. Ah, those lost years. There’s absolutely no bitterness here.

Walker also takes time to announce to us the ‘wonderful’ news that tennis superstar Rafa Nadal has taken to his Twitter account to wish every member of the Spanish team (Team Spain?, Team Espana? Equipo Espana?) good luck for the games. While it is undoubtedly a nice touch to see one of Spain’s sporting legends egging on those aspiring to follow his lead especially in a society which now seems to constantly resent the success of others (who, me?), ‘wonderful’ is perhaps not the right adjective, not the right note to strike. It’s A Good Thing. A Nice Touch. Nothing more, nothing less. Besides, you may be forgiven for thinking that Rafa might want to spend a bit more time looking after his own game, such has been his Leeds United-like decline over recent years.

Before I hit the sack for the night at something close to midnight UK time, there is one more cruel twist of fate for the athletes to endure. The able bodied community isn’t satisfied unless it is offering some assistance to those with mobility problems, so they have decided that the flags of each nation shall be carried up a large flight of steps where they are held aloft. For that you need someone who is capable enough of doing so. All of which is probably quite practical given that it allows those inside the stadium a better view of the colour and diversity on show. It just nags at me a little that they couldn’t find some way of leaving it all to the crips, and that the able bodied had to geg their way in somewhere. But that’s inclusivity, isn’t it?

And so we are under way, despite all the financial problems, all the rumours of potential disaster, and the absence of the barred Russian dopers. It’s been a spectacular opening despite Channel 4’s best efforts to tamper with it and the action, when it begins on Thursday, should be every bit as exciting as was seen in London in 2012. If you can stomach it, come back to these pages for more sideways glances at the event, by which I mean a sneering, sardonic trawl through the epic tragi-comedy that is my attempts to follow the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.

Transfer Deadline Day And Rocky Dennis

This past Wednesday was Transfer Deadline Day in the UK. The capitalisation is apt because it has now become the single biggest event in sport if such a thing is to be judged by the levels of hyperbole afforded to it. I can remember when the biggest event in football was the FA Cup final, but that competition has now been rendered so irrelevant that the winning manager cannot even be expected to keep his job for the rest of the day. In fact, Louis Van Gaal was sacked at least partly because of his consistent failure to shine on Transfer Deadline Day.

Of course, the reason that Transfer Deadline Day has overtaken actual sporting events in the public consciousness is television. Its insatiable appetite for bringing you round-the-clock 'news' has turned Transfer Deadline Day into a yellow-themed telethon as a succession of besuited clowns and their absolutely-not-there-for-their-looks companions bellow at the camera like children's television presenters in response to Walsall loaning a left-back from Dagenham. Telethons are at least vindicated by the fact that they almost exclusively exist to raise money for some deserving charity or cause. Transfer Deadline Day benefits nobody but an already bloated pair of television companies and the all-conquering behemoth that is the Premier League which swims around in insulting amounts of cash yet still expects you to hang on its every word, for 24-hours solid twice a year.

None of this disapproval of the concept stopped me from attempting to join in with the joviality on social media. What can I tell you? I'm a conundrum. Or a twat, whichever you prefer. Some time ago I took a photograph of myself. A selfie, leaning out of the car window on the driver's side. Shades on, crap stubble. I posted it on Facebook but it was a bloody joke, because I have a friend who went through a phase of posting this type of car-selfie and I wasn't altogether sure whether he was joking or not. I know, I know....top bantz. Either way, it should not be misconstrued as an attempt at self-promotion. I hate all that. People who carry selfie sticks around just make me want to leave this world for good. Anyway, more on self-promotion later.

For now I want to explain that this 'pose', if you must insist on calling it that, was similar to the standard shots you see of players and managers leaving training grounds on Transfer Deadline Day. Harry Redknapp was the number one exponent of this kind of thing. I'm sure he would just spend the whole day driving in and out of his club's training ground in the knowledge that the idiot press would follow him and ask him to please elaborate on the future of Peter Odemwingie. The similarity between The Redknapp and my own shot inspired me, if that is the right word, to recycle my photograph on social media along with what I thought was a brilliant joke about disability. As a wheelchair user I'm allowed to make jokes about disability, right? Wrong, but I do it anyway. Alongside my recycled car-selfie I wrote that I was just leaving QPR's training ground after completing my medical on Transfer Deadline Day, but that I was worried about failing the medical. I can't walk, ho ho ho.

Lots of people agreed that this was funny in a childish, stupid sort of way. Or at least I thought they had agreed judging from the response it received. Yet I turned up for work the next day and was grilled about the post by my female colleagues in particular. I'd reckoned without the non-football fans who have somehow managed to stay unaware of the enormity of Transfer Deadline Day. They went ahead and accused me of vanity and self-promotion. Of being the type of piss-hat who posts pictures of himself that he has actually posed for in a doomed and quite desperate attempt to get the female population to 'like' it on various social media platforms. All of which works for some people and good luck to them, even if I wish they would fuck the fuck right off with their relentless positivity. I know one guy who is attempting to make a living out of his pure loveliness. He's great and he should inspire me, but he doesn't. He makes me want to stick forks in my eyes.

The point is that self-promotion was not my intention. My only intention was humour. Even down to the minute detail of choosing QPR over any other club because they were most recently managed by Redknapp and were also the club to which Odemwingie drove in a bid to get himself signed without invitation one Transfer Deadline Day, an act that defines desperation and which has assured his place on TDD folklore as well as his interminable lampooning. The idea that my motive was my vanity or that I think anything of myself as a physical entity is beyond risible. When I look in the mirror in the morning I see Rocky Dennis, the boy who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia and died in 1978 before his 17th birthday. They made a film about his life which starred Cher. It was the weepie to end all weepies and you do not want to put yourself through it if you haven't already. All you need to know, and as you can see from his photograph below, looking like Rocky cannot in any way be considered a plus and is not the sort of thing that would inspire you to start hoiking your image around social media looking for approval.

My malaise has worsened since. While I was sat at my desk contemplating my error in my Rocky-esque fug one of my female colleagues made a derogatory remark about my appearance. It was a joke, and it doesn't even matter what she or anyone else thinks. It's more about what I think, but when you think like I do you don't need people's honesty even if it is offered in jest. And it can be. Just because she was joking doesn't mean she doesn't mean it.

And so that is how Transfer Deadline Day can lead you down a dark path. You just have to be pre-disposed to that kind of thinking in the first place. Jim Fucking White has much to answer for, and not just that appalling yellow tie or the wearing way he bawls down the camera about Grimsby.

Antibes

We'd planned a trip to Ventimiglia, which is in Italy. A work colleague had told me that it is only a 35-minute train ride from Nice, which is less time than it takes to get to either Toulon or Cannes. Why not take in a different country and a different culture when you get the opportunity. I could go to the border and be like Homer Simpson hopping in and out of the Australian embassy in America and so managing to be in two different countries in one step. Or one push.

No I couldn't. As we've established if you want to use a train in France as a wheelchair user you have to buy your ticket before you can organise the assistance you'll need. Or you may need. Sometimes the train is low enough to the platform to render the whole thing unnecessary, but that won't stop the staff fussing over you and insisting you wait for them to produce the ramp. So we buy a ticket only to be told by the man booking our assistance with us that we cannot travel to Ventimiglia. It's not surprising to learn that the station there has some access problems but it is rather more perplexing to find out that to overcome said problems you need to give the Italian rail services at least 48 hours notice before travelling if you are using a wheelchair. And there's me whining on and on about how bad the French service has been these last 12 days.

I can't fathom this. How is it possible in the 21st century for a service to be so ill equipped for disabled users that it takes a full two days to organise a solution? Frankly, it is a flagrant breach of our human rights. Which may sound dramatic to you but then you take this sort of thing for granted. Naively, I had thought that Italy might be subject to the European laws which have done so much to improve access in the UK. Apparently not. Quite where this will leave us if Tory Theresa implements Brexit I just don't know. Probably back to the days of my childhood when I couldn't do something as routine as going to the cinema. Still, at least we won't have as many of those foreigners, coming over here performing life saving surgery and what not.

When you meet with outrageous injustices like this on holiday, where you have a limited amount of time in which to make the most of things, you have to be prepared to let it go pretty quickly. We had another option, after all. If Ventimiglia was off the table then we would go to Antibes, another of this area's beautiful port towns. A return ticket to Antibes is a little cheaper than one to Ventimiglia (€18 as opposed to €31), so we are taken through to the ticket office and given a refund of the difference between the two as well as our tickets to Antibes.

After the traditional French lunch of cheese and ham baguettes we stroll around the narrow, cobbled streets where I miraculously avoid vacating my seat. I don't get on so well with cobbles. I don't think many wheelchair users do. I have landed face first in both Stratford and Bath to name but two, probably York as well now I think about it. And Swansea, although that was less due to cobbled streets than it was to trying to stop too quickly while carrying a huge overnight bag on my knee. I had the strap wrapped around my back and so when I started my inevitable descent towards the tarmac the bag came with me. At least it cushioned my landing a bit.

The sea front at Antibes is spectacular. If we are being picky then the wall around it is a little too high for someone of my height to get the very best out of the experience. But there are enough points where the wall is low enough to that you can see out to sea, and to the stunning landscape around the port. On the way you pass through the impressive marina, which looks a little something like this;

Like most places in the south of France that we have visited Antibes has its share of hills. At the top of one is the cathedral. Unfortunately it is not accessible but as I've said before if a building's main selling point is its history then I don't have any real problems with this. As an atheist I'm not that enamoured with churches, but where there is access I would usually have a look around because I enjoy the history and the architecture. I felt the same way about the palace in Monaco and Buckingham Palace during our trip to London last year. Sack them all and keep their castles and palaces for tourists I say.

Emma goes in to have a look around which is unusual for her. Usually she doesn't bother going anywhere that doesn't have access for me but as cathedrals go it is a relatively small one. A look around shouldn't take that long. I wait outside and take a few photographs and 10 minutes or so later the doors to the cathedral close. There's obviously someone inside trying to prise them open again to get out but they are locked. The thought crosses my mind that Emma is now stuck in the cathedral for the rest of the day and that we are going to have to spend the rest of our time in Antibes waiting for some kind of emergency service to turn up and free her. Just then, a group of people start funnelling out of a side door, and at the back of the group is Emma. She thinks they must be closing up. It's obviously not just my kind that they don't want in there.

After the cathedral we turn down another cobbled street towards the shops. Our path is blocked by a car but before I can manoeuvre my way into position the lady in the driver's seat gets out and says something to us in French. Our looks could not have been any more blank had they been a question on Blankety Blank. She realises, and then repeats it to us in the perfect English of someone born and bred in the UK. I can't even remember what she asked now, something about whether the car was ok where it was (which it wasn't, not really). She is however very helpful in helping direct us back to the square where we had lunch so that we can visit a tasty looking ice cream place we had noticed earlier. It's still above 30 degrees so a bit of ice cream would go down a treat at this point.

We make our way down the cobbled street back towards the square. Suddenly Emma stops in her tracks and makes a face like she has just eaten a Fisherman's Friend. She doesn't speak, instead just pointing to something near the wall. At first I don't see it, but then, metaphorically speaking, it whacks me right across the chops. There, doing not much of anything to the point where you might wonder what possible reason there could be for its existence, is a large, bright red beetle-like creature. I can't tell you exactly what it is but it looks like the sort of thing you don't want to be getting all that close to. Its colouring seems to serve as a clear warning. If this thing bit you or something you could very well start foaming at the mouth before all of your main organs start oozing out of your orifices. Take a look, it's not pretty. Click on it and enjoy...;

It all reminds me of when I was in Australia in 1993. I was out there for 10 days with the Great Britain Under-18s wheelchair basketball team. We were taking part in the Australian national junior championships. Junior wheelchair basketball has come a long way since then. There's World and European championships at under-23 level now. I'm just about young enough to have been involved in the first World event in Toronto in 1997. It was the beginning and the end of my Paralympic ambitions as I am sure I will mention 438 times on these pages once the Rio Paralympics get underway next week. Back to Australia, where bright red, often luminous and ominous creatures regularly fastened themselves to walls, lying there perfectly still yet somehow remaining demonstrably threatening. Emma has a friend at work who has an interest in insects and various other things that can kill you as soon as look at you, but he is yet to come up with an identification for this unattractive grub. If you have any knowledge on the subject please feel free to get in touch and let me know what you think it might be.

The ice cream parlour was lovely, thanks for asking, except for a noisy American family on the table behind us droning on and on about the various amounts of tat they had purchased from the many shops which line the streets. Yet if you can shut the world out then it's a pretty idyllic spot to pass the time just watching the world go by. Nowhere on Earth seems so peaceful despite the recent troubles in France.

Back in Nice the evening's entertainment is at a bar named De Klop. This may sound like someone who played right-back for Liverpool under Rafa Benitez, or a Dutch relative of their current manager, but is actually quite a nice looking if small bar off a side-street in the centre of Nice by the main square. Our Tahitian friend from Akathor had tipped us off that he would be playing here tonight, so faced with that prospect versus taking our chances at Akathor again we decided to plump for De Klop. We knew what we were going to get. He has a different playing partner tonight, a guitarist as opposed to the percussionist who joined him on Monday but the music is still hugely enjoyable. A waitress helpfully visits our table at regular intervals to make sure we are topped up on lager and cocktails. With our flight home not scheduled until 7.20 the following evening we are able to stay long into the night and enjoy the merriment on our last night in France. It seems a fitting way to end a fantastic 12 days that, while it has not been without its difficulties and problems, has been extremely memorable.

Left: The Tahitian musician and his bandmate entertaining the drunks.....

Nice - Lightweight Gambling And The Super 8s

Wednesday night we returned to Akathor. For once the journey back to Nice had been straightforward. No delays, no unhelpful railway staff, no incredible disappearing stations.

There's no sign of Danger Joe tonight. The two large tv screens either side of the main entrance at Akathor are showing Monaco's Champions League Qualifier with Galatasaray. This is the game the Monaco players were preparing for when we weren't able to take the tour at Stade Louis II a couple of days ago. Not that anybody here seems to care. Nice has its own top flight football team and if you're not from Nice then chances are you support Manchester United or Liverpool. So why do you give a shit about the Champions League?

There is a band on. Another duo, but these lads look a bit younger than our Tahitian friend and his percussionist. Several centuries younger than Danger Joe. The singer and guitarist has long hair, held back at the front so that it doesn't get in his eyes. He looks like a low ranked European tennis player. He plays and sings with the kind of anguish you'd expect to feel if you kept getting bounced out of tennis tournaments in the early rounds. Whereas Monday's band were much more upbeat and made you want to drink more and sing along, this pair wear you down a bit. Even when they play something we know and like they do it with an air of outright agony and despair. They start to play Oasis' 'Don't Look Back In Anger' but they're not so much looking back in anger as they are in pained, irredeemable melancholy.

It's not that late when we leave. Along with the misery they take breaks every 20 minutes during which they sit at the table next to us and leave us in no doubt that the downbeat mood is just for the show. They're joined by a young girl and though we have no idea what they are saying they are no less annoying for it. I'm happy that they're not really that miserable, especially at their tender age before they've even had a chance to find out about water bills and pubs on Duke Street. But as they're not even entertaining us when they are playing it's time for us to try and find somebody who will.
We fail to do this. To equal measures of surprise and dismay we find that most if not all of the bars around Nice are shutting down for the night. But we both agree that going back to the hotel now, before 1.00am, is still a better option than going back to Akathor as long as it's tortured soul night. We still have two more nights after this one before we fly home. We'll make up for it.

On Thursday afternoon we visit the casino. It's next door to the hotel but we somehow haven't got around to popping in until now. When we were in Las Vegas in 2011 we did little else but visit casinos, most of which you can read about in the archives of this disreputable collection of tales and opinions. No really, please do go and have a look if you haven't already. But this is not Las Vegas so this particular Casino on Promenade des Anglais is a little more modest than the huge behemoths that dominate the strip on Las Vegas Boulevard. The casino here looks fancy, it's just a little scaled down.

Size isn't the only difference. In Vegas general practise is that you sign up to the Players' Club and they give you an amount of what is called free play. That's pretty much what it says on the tin, but instead of actual cash or tokens, you have a card with credit on. Via free play it is possible, as we proved often, to have a few drinks and still leave the casino with a few dollars more than you came in with. They're basically letting you have a small win while waitresses come around plying you with alcohol. It's customary to give a small tip for this but if you wanted to be really tight about it you could give nothing and the girls would still bring you drinks provided you are engaged in some form of gambling. They're banking on you being unable to stop gambling even when you start to lose which must work if they are prepared to take a small financial hit from the likes of us whom even after several whiskies, know when to stop.

There's none of that generosity here. Instead we spend what change we have (about €13) and play the electronic poker machines for a while. We build up a small profit at one stage as the winnings go up to €17, but since we've only been playing for 10 minutes at that stage we don't cash out. There aren't many other casinos to take our winnings to and there aren't any cocktail waitresses walking around encouraging you to get drunk. So we play on until the money is lost which, unsurprisingly, happens as quickly as it had been accumulated. Though there are no cocktail waitresses there is a bar, so it would be rude not to pay a short visit. Especially since it's no more expensive than any of the other ludicrously priced bars in Nice.

We visit many of said bars on Thursday evening. Saints are playing their first Super 8s fixture at Warrington tonight and so the task is to hopefully find a bar that might not mind putting it on for us. If you are not a rugby league follower then I'd probably need a whole new blog entry to explain the mechanics of the Super 8s. They are more complex than the lucky loser permutations on Only Connect. It's sufficient to say that the Super 8s are important. As season ticket holders we have had a stroke of luck in having our first game scheduled away from home. I'm hoping that luck extends to enable us to see it in a bar.

The biggest stumbling block to this is, as ever, football. It's the beginning of August so there isn't any domestic football. The Euros finished three weeks ago which helps, but there is still the small matter of the Olympic Games to consider. The opening ceremony isn't until Friday but the football tournament flouts such convention and gets underway early. Tonight's offering sees host nation Brazil taking on South Africa.
A few hundred yards from the hotel is a sports bar. It has four or five televisions dotted around, all of which are showing the build-up to the Brazil game when we arrive about half an hour before Saints are due to kick-off. The waitress comes over to take our order and before she turns to leave I ask if she can put Sky Sports on for the rugby league. There are very few people here and none of them are paying any attention to the Brazil game. She flatly refuses, telling me in her limited English that she's not allowed to change the channel on the tv.

I'm on holiday so I probably shouldn't be worrying about Saints and the Super 8s. I'm about to let it go and concentrate fully on lager consumption when I see a man pottering around behind the bar. He seems to have no intention of serving anyone, a suspicion confirmed when he takes his paper and his pint to a quiet corner of the bar. I seize my opportunity.

Fully expecting him to have trouble understanding English I tentatively enquire as to whether he wouldn't mind changing the channel. He answers in a broad northern English accent, possibly Yorkshire but certainly somewhere where rugby league is not an undiscovered mystery.

"Rugby league." he says with what I now think is a fair degree of suspicion..

"No problem."

And it's that easy. As I watch the pre-game bile from the likes of Stevo and the other clowns I think of the lady I met on the train back from Monaco the other day. I wonder if she's been as lucky? I hope so, although if the truth be told all 80 minutes are fairly agonising. It's a really tight game and as my alcohol consumption increases my ability to stay calm rescinds in direct proportion. Midway through the second half Emma decides she's had enough and shushes me. She actually shushes me. She points out that I don't get like this when we go to the home games which is true, but then I drive to the home games straight from work on a Friday night. As such I don't drink, and in any case I don't normally have the energy to call LMS a bellend at the end of another mentally taxing week in our office.

I'm outraged at the shushing and spend the rest of the game in mortified silence. With two minutes left and with Saints holding a slender two-point lead Warrington's Rhys Evans looks to have scored the winning try for the Wolves. Yet with video replays in use for all televised games it is rare for a referee to give a try these days without sending it up to the video referee to have at least one look at the slow-mo. This one is no different. The replays show that Evans' toe has brushed the side-line before he grounds the ball. There's inches in it, but it's clear. Remembering the shushing and still feeling suitably peeved by it I offer no celebration. Not so much as a fist pump or an exuberant clap. I simply turn around and leave the bar without a word, a probably slightly perplexed Emma following on.

The next time I speak it's Friday morning.

Cannes

As predicted Tuesday was a write-off. We'd drunk far too much on Monday night at Akathor to even consider getting up early and battling it out with the French rail service. There's no pool at Hotel Mercure so after a quick visit to La Boulingerie and the Spar (really) we spend much of the day in the room recovering. Even the maid can't get in to change the sheets. There's something on the telly. A film, in French, but to be honest I'm drifting in and out of consciousness so much that I can barely make out any of the images on the screen. For all I know it could be hardcore pornography or, worse still, The God Channel.

I remember hitting one or two bars along the prom in the evening, and eating chicken and chips at a restaurant out that way. It's one of the best meals we have while we're out here. But we keep the other, wetter excesses to a minimum so we can be up early on Wednesday to go to Cannes. Like Monte Carlo it's all about the glitz and glamour in Cannes. The glitz and glamour of the film festival and, if the rest of the south of France is anything to by, it'll also be about some absurdly steep hills that no wheelchair user in his right mind would go near. You're ahead of me.

Regulars will know that, in the spirit of various Sean Bean internet memes, one does not simply go on a train in France with a wheelchair under one's arse. Our trip to Cannes introduces us to a whole new world of railway pain. We'd arrived at the station just after 9.00am, fully expecting to be made to wait until nearer to 10.00 before departing. To our amazement the lady at the information desk had told us that actually she could arrange to get us on the 9.30. We'd be in Cannes just after 10.00 and even have a couple of hours before lunch to mooch around buying mugs and looking at tat.

Would we shite.

We crossed the track at 9.20, I with the latest red t-shirted buffoon on the railway staff and Emma by the staircased subway. All seemed well when Red T-Shirt Man began fiddling around with the lift and invited me to roll on to it in preparation for boarding the train. He wound the lift to train height and told us that the train would arrive in just a few minutes. Then he noncholantly walked away without explanation, crossing the track the same way we had earlier before disappearing into the crowds shuffling around the opposite platform.

Nine-thirty comes and goes and I'm still parked on top of a portable lift. There's no way off without help from Red T-Shirt Man and it's especially comforting to know that if this mobile lift should roll off the edge of the platform and on to the track then I'll be joining it. It's perhaps an irrational fear but there is something intensely disconcerting about being left on a busy platform on top of a mobile lift without explanation by strangely absent railway staff intent on doing whatever the fuck they like.

Finally he returns. It's about 9.50 by now and he manages to blurt out that the train has been delayed and so won't arrive until after 10.00. Still he does not release me from my steel prison. Not that is until 10.00 passes and he informs us that due to some unscheduled tomfoolery on the railway line the train will not be arriving until 10.30. Even then he just winds down the ramp, opens it out at the front and invites me to vacate the lift despite the fact that he has moved it to a position from which I would, if I were to roll straight off, very probably come to a halt a few inches from the edge of the platform. I'm obviously not comfortable with that but it takes a while for this particular penny to drop for him. Eventually he closes the lift again and turns it so that I can roll off without ending up on the line. Not that there is much chance of a train coming along to run me down.

Eventually we board the train, some 75 minutes after first being invited to cross the track. The train still doesn't leave because first the guard needs to wait for his mate's girl to turn up. They hold the doors for fully three minutes for her and then the lot of them go and sit up front away from the less important passengers.

By the time we arrive in Cannes it is around 11.15. Again we've skipped breakfast to get to the station early, a cruel irony since we could have eaten three square meals in the time we spent on that pissing platform. So the first thing we do is address our peckishness. There's a small but attractive cafe on the front by the sea, next to a children's fairground area. Toddlers pretend to drive fire engines and helicopters while I put away beefburgers on a whopping baguette and Emma tucks in to the biggest fish I've seen outside of the Sharknado franchise. No really. Get on to the Syfy Channel.

After lunch we visit the tourist information centre and are told that there is no tour bus, but that the petit train de touristique is accessible and is probably the best way to take in the sights of the city. As we head back to buy our tickets for the train tour we stop to view the handprints in the Cannes version of Hollywood's Hall Of Fame. I take a photograph of Paul McCartney's just because I'm amused by how much my mum loathes him. I resolve that this will be the first photo I show her when I get home, but unfortunately the joke's on me because the camera doesn't show his signature below the handprints all that well.

The train tour is not accessible. Not by any sane person's definition. The man selling tickets tells us that it is, and when the time comes to board he purposefully fiddles with panels and seats to make space for me. I'm expecting some wondrously clever lift to jut out from somewhere, but instead the ticket seller and his mate physically scoop me up and plonk me on to the train. Access south of France style.

The tour takes you around the city to view all the posh hotels and casinos, all with an in-depth commentary in several languages via your own personal headset. The problem is that it's not loud enough once the engine starts running so you only catch some of what is being said. Still Cannes is fabulously picturesque so you get plenty out of the one-hour ride whether you listen to the commentary or not. There's an awkward moment for wheelchair users when the train stops at one of the highest points to allow the passengers to get off and enjoy the views. But not you Wheelie Steve as my uni mates used to call me. The driver hasn't brought his mate with him and it clearly takes two out of shape, middle aged men to haul your arse off this thing.

Tour done and dusted, we decide to find out whether the city's big wheel is accessible. Think the London Eye. It's a sightseeing thing. I only have one rule with these things, provided they are accessible, which is that they need to be enclosed. I can't be going up that high and be exposed to the elements. I'll vomit. And what if my shoes fall off and hit a passing child beneath? I could be done for manslaughter.

As we make our way to the wheel we pass the Grand Theatre. This is where the slebs and stars flock to during the festival. A place where world premieres are aired but mostly a place to be seen for the rich and famous. There's nobody famous here today but I took a photograph which I include for your viewing pleasure below.

The wheel has a ramp leading up to the ticket kiosk. That has to be a good sign, right? We approach....

"Is this wheelchair accessible?" I ask. He doesn't seem to understand so I ask again, this time pointing helpfully at my chair. Finally he cottons on, as they where I come from.

"Oh!" he starts....

"Yes!"

Surprised but impressed we move on to the entrance, watching the pods go by, the people getting on and off. There's somebody supervising this so we wait patiently for him to give us the nod. Finally he stops the wheel again and beckons us towards the pod. Two things are immediately noticable. Firstly, there's a fairly sizeable step up to the pod. Secondly, the pod is about the width of a toilet door in a Spanish bar. A little less roomy, perhaps. By now the ticket seller has got involved. The two of them are trying to pick my chair up to lift it on, blissfully ignoring the minor detail of its width. It takes what seems like several days to explain to them that the pod isn't wide enough and that I'm not going to develop the ability to stand in this lifetime. I know, I'm so negative.

We soon give up and go for a beer instead. After all, it's about a 15-minute walk back to the station and we might have a long train journey ahead of us.

Nice - A Familiar Accent, Danger Joe, Joe Brown And A Right Good Knees-Up

Meltdown narrowly averted, let's go back to the France story shall we? I know, I know it is a frightful bore having someone go on and on about how they went to a lovely paradise destination and you didn't but for once in my blogging life I would very much like to finish the story of one of my travelling escapades.

We left me arriving back at the port at Nice after a quite ridiculous journey back from Monaco. On that train back to Nice I met a woman from Eccleston. That's Eccleston in St.Helens just for clarification. The train was absolutely jam packed, probably dangerously so. A group of young Americans got on board and rudely stomped their way through everyone to find space. This had led to Emma ending up at the top of a flight of about three steps leading up to another seated area. She was soon surrounded by bodies, American and otherwise, to the point where I could not see her at all much less talk to her.

I was wearing a Saints shirt circa 2009, a largely boring year for rugby league which involved everyone running from dummy half ad nauseam, Saints beating everyone heavily but then losing the Grand Final to Leeds in soppy conditions at Old Trafford. The queue for the tram back to the city centre in Manchester that night was about as busy as this train between Monaco and Nice. Thankfully, both journeys are fairly short.

"Nice shirt." said a female voice from over my shoulder in what appeared to be a familiar accent. When you have spent a week hearing nothing but French spoken for the majority of the time you tend to do a bit of a double-take when you hear someone speaking your language in an accent which sounds suspiciously like your own. She never actually tells me her name and I don't ask. She's travelling with her daughter who is demonstrably also a Saints fanatic. We talk about our chances this season (which at the time we met were significantly slimmer than they are at the time I write), and obviously about how mental it is to meet someone from your own home town for the first time while on a train between Monaco and Nice. It reminded me of my first night in the student bar at Barnsley all those years ago when I met a lad who lived in my street and who had done so for years without ever crossing my path. Whether or not that was a deliberate act on his part was never established, but we got on pretty well all the same.

We meet on Monday. Saints are playing their first Super 8s fixture on the forthcoming Thursday at Warrington. We both fret about how on Earth we are going to be able to see the game in Nice, a place that is about as synonymous with rugby league as I am with action movies and Olympic high jumping. As yet neither of us have found anywhere reliable and we face the unenticing prospect of spending Thursday evening constantly looking at our phones for updates while simultaneously trying to hold conversations with our significant others. Don't hate us. Fanatics should be pitied. Go and read Fever Pitch and then come back to me on that.

Our Monday evening is spent in Akathor, the live music bar I was telling you a little bit about in a blog which now seems to reside a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We get there about 9.15 to find that we are therefore 15 minutes too late to take advantage of happy hour. It's going to be another expensive one. Undeterred, we take a seat outside the bar on what is another spankingly wondrous evening weather-wise. If the weather was like this in Thatto Heath it wouldn't conjure up quite the same images of Shameless. The waitress, who must be over 18 but looks about 15, takes an eternity to get around to serving us but I don't mind so much. Outside the entrance to the pub we are being 'entertained' by a man calling himself Danger Joe. He's playing folk songs, Dylan and the like. But rather than Dylan, he physically reminds me of a crap 80's comedian called Joe Brown. I regret that I didn't take a photograph of Danger Joe now, but to give you an idea of the sort of thing we are dealing with here is a photograph of Joe Brown;

The weird thing about Akathor is that they don't serve halves. If you want lager then you have to have a full pint. For reasons that are not just financial I throw in a couple of cocktails in between pints. Four or five pints on the bounce will have my bladder screaming at me for a divorce and I am not hopeful that Akathor has a disabled toilet anywhere on the premises. Wherever we have been in Europe facilities for relieving my disabled bladder have always been notoriously poor. In much of Spain, for example, I can't even get my chair through the narrow toilet doors to even find out whether there are any steps or other inconveniences inside. The doors to public toilets in Spanish bars are, in my experience, so narrow that you don't even need to be a wheelchair user to have trouble using them. Anyone reasonably fat would also struggle to get through.

As 10.00 rolls around Danger Joe is replaced by a new musical act. This nameless duo take their talents inside, presumably due to some French law about noise pollution after a certain hour. We're curious to find out whether they are any better than Danger Joe, and we are sufficiently lubricated to fancy a bit of live music by now, so we take our drinks inside. It proves a wise choice. The set list is rather more modern and to our tastes. It's not that we don't like Dylan, although Emma does have trouble remembering his name, it's just that he's generally not much fun to listen to. He could be accused of being melancholy. Not these two, who strum and drum their way through several pearlers from Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" to Lukas Graham's "7 Years" and all points in between.

Before the end I'm singing at the top of my voice, and the only real singer in the house compliments me on my efforts. We get chatting and he tells us that he is from Australian Polynesia. Thinking he means Tonga, Fiji or Samoa or somewhere like that I ask him if he has any interest in rugby league but he just looks at me blankly as if I'd asked him if he has any interest in the history of pottery. As it turns out Australian Polynesia is his way of saying Tahiti, admittedly an island less well known for its blockbusting second rowers.

It gets late, and we are on the point of leaving when to my equal measures of surprise and delight I discover that there is a lift in the building which takes you to another floor where there is A Disabled Toilet. Wow. The Spanish can learn an awful lot from a place like Akathor. Bladder sorted, we order more beer and listen to our Tahitian friend some more. We stay so late that the 15 year-old who served us our first pint is sat next to us looking at her phone, having finished work and transformed herself into the young adult that she really is. The musicians try their luck but even our drinking powers have limits so we are not around long enough to find out how successful they have been.

A great night has been had by all, but Tuesday could be a slow day.

Once You Pop You Can't Stop

This is just a quick one for my Twitter followers. Anyone who has me on Facebook will already know about it as, during my blogging meltdown earlier in the week, I posted a status about it. A microblog if you will. Please yourself. Anyway the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter on its users meant that I couldn't do the story justice on that particular platform. So you get the extended version now.

I work at a well known university in Liverpool. I can't tell you which one it is because I never have anything nice to say about it and...well....saying nasty things about it apparently violates their social media policy. By which they mean their policy of controlling your thoughts. Across the road from said unnamed university is a small branch of Tesco's where most days I can be found purchasing my lunch. My last visit ended in the kind of ignominy that is reserved only for me, and here's why.

Having bought my lunch I was on my way out when my chair suddenly came to a complete stop. I pushed off again but it was going nowhere. Something was catching on my right hand side wheel. I looked down and noticed that my ruck sack, emblazoned with St Helens RLFC logo and available from the club store at a probably not very reasonable price (I wouldn't know, it was a present) had got tangled up in my wheel. One of the straps had got wrapped around the spindle to the point where it would be impossible to unwind it without removing the wheel. So in full view of Tesco's lunchtime customers I took the only course of action available to me and jumped out of my chair on to the shop floor. There I sat by the shelf stacked high with Pringles, unwinding my troublesome strap from my now one-wheeled chair.

I put the wheel back on and climbed back in. But not before two men asked me if they could help in any way. Usually, my misfortunes of this nature in the vicinity of work are witnessed only by female students under the age of 25, so it was a blessed relief to only get caught looking like a dickhead by two middle aged men. Still I declined their assistance. If you need help getting back into your chair then you should never get out of it on the shop floor at Tesco's by the Pringles or anywhere else. That's a basic rule among us Undateables.

The next day one of my colleagues, who had completely ignored the Facebook post on the subject, came back from her own visit to Tesco's and told me that she was considering buying me some Pringles. All of which caused her and other colleagues much merriment at my expense. But then what else is new in that barnyard? I wish she had bought me some Pringles anyway because a) I like Pringles and b) It would have been funny. What it does prove is that you never know who is reading the nonsense that you put out on social media, even if they don't join in with pillorying you for it online at the time.