If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Either wheelchairs take a lot more maintenance than I ever expected, or I’m particularly rough on mine. I suspect it’s both.

On the way home from the hospital the other day I was forced to go through a pretty deep puddle. This is always annoying because my gloves are instantly soaked. It’s quite unpleasant and would probably lead to blisters if my hands weren’t already basically like hooves.

The main problem, though, was that a couple of miles down the road, my chair started grinding. By the time I got home, it was really loud and I could feel the vibration through my hands. Since I’m me, I became convinced that I’d somehow caused irreparable damage when I put on some new rear wheels recently, even though that would be more or less impossible. But when I got home, and with impressively slip-shod diagnostic technique, I worked out that the problem was the castors. Presumably, water got into the bearings.

As they dried out over the next few days, things have improved. I bought some new castors anyway, fitted them today and relegated the old ones to spares. The good news is that the new ones are a lot lighter. Every ounce counts.

So don’t go through puddles, whatever you do. I’m going to order a set of bearings to keep as spares too, because it’s bound to happen again at some point.

Of course, I should have got these: