Column, May 2008.
Having spent the last week adopting the at-ease stance of a stout moth and the walking style of one John Wayne, nothing would please me more than 15 minutes in a sound-proofed room with the smug bastard responsible for coining the glib onomatopoeia ‘snip’ to describe the hilariously unpleasant experience of a vasectomy.
The truth, for those of you who don’t particularly enjoy chewing the toffee with the wrapper on yet intend to breed no more, is rather more akin to ‘stab, stab, stab, slice, tug, haul, clamp, clamp, snip, snip, garrotte, garrotte, cauterise, cauterise (pass the soldering iron), tuck, tuck, sew… “There. Now for the other side…”’ Next time, I’ll insist on a general anaesthetic and, with a gentle prayer that April’s Playmate of the Month doesn’t monopolise my dreams, sleep through the whole sorry ordeal.
Now, I mention this not because I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself, but because there’s nothing quite like having one’s mobility curtailed to the level of a space suit-clad octogenarian entering a curling tournament to focus the mind on automotive ergonomics.
For once entirely content to be branded ‘numb nuts’ by my wife, the journey home from the hospital was a doddle. However, since the Novocain wore off, getting in and out of any car has ranked right up there with making love standing up in a hammock in the impossibility stakes. Mercifully, current family transport takes the form of a Mondeo Estate, and the reason that this has so far proved easily the kindest automotive entry and egress cut for my creaking frame is that Ford’s Old Person Suit played a prominent part in the ergonomic design process.
Product Ergonomists at Ford constructed the Old Person Suit to help them adopt a slightly more octogenarian outlook on automotive ergonomics. The object being to produce a garment that allows a sprightly, 30 year old design group to actually experience what their bodies have in store for them. Today, moving with the grace and poise of a lithe Panzer, I’m reminded, somewhat forcibly, of the time I tried it on…
Proceedings start with a stiffening cummerbund round the waist to inhibit bending, under a one piece boiler-suit boasting more Velcro than a quick-change artist’s wardrobe. Stiff rubber clamps fasten round neck, elbows, wrists, knees, ankles and feet. Hands sport surgical gloves to reduce touch sensitivity, over bulky, palm deadening pads.
The final touch is a pair of badly Brillo’ed yellow goggles that reduce the world to a vicious, yellow smear and increase glare to Gestapo interrogation levels. Glare is, I’m told, the old person’s biggest enemy, and that’s why they hate driving at night. Yellow, moreover, is the compulsory colour of the elderly. Not simply because incontinence will inadvertently imbue everything around us with said hue as we crumble into the cosy comfort of Ammonia Lodge nursing home. Rather, because our vision actually takes on a yellow patina as we grow old…
Thus attired, getting into a car (once you’ve found it with your knees) is the easy bit, if a tad undignified. Just point your rump at the velour and fall in. That, truly, is all the control you have, arriving on board at colostomy bag popping velocity. Then comes the agony of seat and steering adjustment, followed by the impossibility of grabbing the seat belt with a right arm that gave up bending that far backwards in 1857.
Driving was nightmare. I managed a top speed of 19mph and didn’t even realise I was on the wrong side of the road. Even with those yellow peril goggles off, my aching limbs couldn’t keep up with the controls at speeds greater than 30mph. And it’s absolutely knackering. After just five minutes of this, Keira Knightley could have done a naked handstand in front of me and somehow all I’d have wanted was a nice cup of tea and a bit of a lie down.
And the hardest part of the whole exercise? Getting out of the damned car.
It’s impossible. Swing legs out onto road… Left hand on wheel ready for the lift… Right hand… Right hand where exactly? Creak it behind you to push off the B pillar if you can. If not, you’re stuck. Fast.
There appears to be no design solution to this final hurdle. And then, only yesterday, wincing at the prospect of once more being yanked free of the car by a wife currently delighting in belting out maliciously adapted Elvis lyrics (‘Return to tender… Sperm count unknown…’), it struck me.
The elderly (and recent vasectomy victims) should be issued with stocky, medium sized dogs fitted with a grab handle mid-spine. This new breed, the Zimmer spaniel, would be trained to walk away from the car once you’d grabbed hold with the right hand, thus pulling you free of the seat. Furthermore, such a dog could then be easily carried home when worn out by excessive walkies.
Why not? After all, they’ve grown giant ears on mice. Besides grafting handles on dogs would give all those surgeons something better to do than…. Oh, never mind.