Wheelchair Skateboarding...

Apparently it is the new craze sweeping the nation. At least according to the trailer I saw for my ITV regional news programme this evening. This pronouncement was accompanied by footage of a wheelchair doing the blunt on a half-pipe (yes folks, I'm down with the kids and know the terminology) by its user. After this tantalising glimpse of a bizarre new world, I decided that the news item itself could only disappoint me. So I didn't bother to watch it. Of course, my imagination immediately set to work and just wouldn't leave the subject alone.

The question which bothered me most was: are the wheelchairs being used for skateboarding by their rightful disabled owners, or are they being commandeered by able-bodied skateboarders? The former possibility conjures up the image of Professor Stephen Hawking using his electric wheelchair to hit the half-pipe and do the equarial or the drop-in, his electronic voice, all the while, shouting such things as "Whooo!" or "Radical, dude". From there, it is a short jump to imagining the disabled participating in other extreme sports - guys on crutches balancing on surf boards as they do a tube; some guy with cerebral palsy BMXing; or maybe quadraplegic inline skating. The mind boggles. Not that I'm saying that the disabled shouldn't try any of this (maybe we could set up the 'para x-games?) - it's just an amazing set of mental images!

Personally, though, I prefer the second explanation for the item: that wheelchairs are being stolen by able-bodied extreme sports fanatics in search of new thrills. The thought of Tony Hawks doing an acid drop in the average wheelchair is just wonderful! Or how about taking the wheels off and going snowboarding? Could this indeed become the next youth craze? Will we see wheelchairs and invalid carriages hijacked by marauding gangs of youths, who then go joy-riding in them? I can see it now: sink estates all over Britain littered with the burnt-out hulks of abandoned stolen wheelchairs. Perhaps instead of burning them, stolen wheelchairs will be sent to 'chop shops', resprayed and customised with alloy wheels and spoilers for the 'boy racers'. It must surely be only a matter of time before someone turns up on Pimp My Ride UK asking Westwood to turn their invalid carriage into what looks like a glittering electric-powered brothelon wheels...