I’m walking, using Reading YMCA’s football pitch, to raise funds for my wife, in order that we can upgrade her mobility scooter to something a bit whizzy, the couple picture is her trialing an Omeo.

She’s written about why she’s using a scooter and why an upgrade would be beneficial below:

“Thank you for the opportunities you are potentially giving our family, here’s some background:

Neither of us expected, when we trusted a surgeon in 2016, that I’d be like this, reliant on mobility aids both inside the house and outside, every activity exhausting me.

In 2016, I sought a surgeon’s help with a long-standing (ironic choice of words!) in both feet. A combination of genetics and the cheap market stall shoes from childhood, meant that I needed an operation on both feet to try and rectify skeletal issues. When we saw the surgeon, he said that he’d operate then or I’d be facing mobility issues in the next ten years…

Nine years later and the irony isn’t lost.

The operations on both feet in 2016 didn’t work, the skeletal issues were still there and as nerve endings had needed to be cut to insert metal into my feet, I was in pain.

Two more operations followed, one in 2017 and one in 2018, which left me in more pain and more skeletal issues. The forms you sign before an operation stating that you know the risks…they stood by them.

I’m left in more pain, the pain has a diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, something that has stages when you google it, something that isn’t going to get better, only worse.

Because my skeletal issues in my feet have been left worse - I have only two toes on each foot that touch the floor when standing - I now have extreme balance issues.

The pain clinic told me not to have any more operations as the pain will increase, the surgeon tells me he will not operate further unless the pain is under control, nothing more can be done…

Apart from putting me on very strong medication, medication that had I been a driver, I’d have needed to stop and also inform the DVLA.

I’d always thought that when reached a certain age and I could access a pension pot, I’d have qualified and be driving a mini countryman, things change.

You adapt to a new “normal” and - thanks Trump - get told it can’t be accessed for a few more years.

I get so, so tired now. Just doing the simplest thing, like chopping vegetables for tea, wears me out. I don’t have the energy to wash my own hair, our daughter does it.

I’m a fall risk, I wear a panic alarm, it’s soul-destroying. I experience all the being-talked-down to when out, as I’m no longer person-height, I’m lower down, in a wheelchair.

There are some amazing mobility aids out there, I trialed an Omeo and the feeling of being at person-height, of controlling the scooter intuitively and of just whizzing around a field was amazing, I smiled until my facial muscles ached.

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t need any mobility help, I’d have run that marathon for the National Autistic Society (our household is 75% autistic) and I’d be walking through the woods near our house, headphones on, getting that Vitamin D, the reality well…we’ve adapted.”