Disabled mountaineer and writer John Hawkridge was one of the people with cerebral palsy who contributed to the Speaking for Ourselves collection at the British Library Sound Archive.
In these excerpts, John remembers when he could run as a child and how in later life he tackled Ben Nevis.
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When Bill Hargreaves was born 2 months prematurely in Australia in 1919, he weighed just 2 and a half pounds. His parents were told that, because he had cerebral palsy, he would “never walk or work or wed”.
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When we created the Speaking for Ourselves oral history project, one of the disabled volunteers, Anne Pridmore, asked why we were focusing on people with cerebral palsy.
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Another COP, another New Year. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of climate change. As the late, great comedian Sean Locke said, sometimes it feels like turning up at the scene of an earthquake with a dustpan and brush. But it is better to do something than nothing. These what we can do may seem like small beans, but a lot of beans make a hill of beans.
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On Saturday, Norwich City will play Brighton and Hove Albion in the FA Cup. Born and bred in Brighton with roots in Sussex going back hundreds of years, I will, of course, be supporting Norwich.
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It sounds very grand but I am about to donate my papers to the University of York Student Life Collection. Not my dissertation on George Orwell and the English class system (they do not keep these), but my letters home, cuttings from Nouse, the student newspaper, and, more importantly to me, Yarboo.
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Jonathan Roberts has written a storybook about his daughter, Kya, who was diagnosed with autism. After a great reaction to his book from Kya’s family and the professionals who work with her, Jon’s book was published by Graffeg.
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Alex White writes 