Barry West

I started my hobby by fate really; I had a computer given to me by an old customer I worked for as a gardener before my accident. I really was the biggest novice you could imagine. At first I used a voice recognition package but as I had so many visitors coming in and out, it made it very difficult and kept putting in the wrong words. I then started using a mouth stick with a piece of Velcro on the end and another piece of Velcro on the mouse button, so when I move my head the mouse follows me. I’m telling you, it took a lot of patience getting it right. Once I had my  idea in front of me I started tapping away like Woody the Woodpecker for hours on end, day in day out. My old customer arranged for a computer whizz kid to come round and show me the basics on my PC; how to find things and open up  programmes.

As time went on I realised that this is something I could do totally on my own with just the use of my head. I found a software package ‘print artist’, for designing signs, business cards, letter heads, and lots more. I started clicking away trying to put together some ideas for friends and family. I was surprisingly enjoying what I was doing, it was keeping my mind busy and that was helping me at a time when I didn’t know what direction my life was going to take after my spinal cord injury. It was good to get up in the morning again and have a new drive inside me to do something I could do myself.

I wanted to try designing T-shirts, so I saved really, really hard and after many, many months I treated myself to a second-hand T-shirt printing press. Wowee! I was like a pig in ** **** I was happy and keen to get printing and pressing as I had saved so hard for it. I designed a mouse mat while the man from the company was still there showing me how to use it properly. After a few hours we had made and designed mouse mats, coasters, jigsaw puzzles and T-shirts to very high quality. As you can imagine, I had loads of ideas running through my head of what I could do next. Over the next few months I got better and better with the new equipment and building up my reputation as a printer in my town. I also started getting more jobs for printing business cards. I used to get my Dad to sit down for hours on end cutting the  business cards out by hand with a mini guillotine that took two and a half hours to cut out 250 business cards. Poor Pa, if it wasn’t my mum I had pressing T-shirts, it was Dad cutting up cards! I started having PAs around about this time and I used to get my PA to help me by putting paper in my printer and getting equipment ready for me, as well as feeding me, dressing me, dealing with all my toileting needs and any other duties I had in mind for them! A friend of mine had heard of an embroidery machine that might be coming up for grabs at a cheap price, so I saved my money to buy this touch-screen embroidery machine. Ha-ha, if printing business cards and printing T-shirts wasn’t hard enough I wanted to try embroidering clothing as well! I didn’t have a clue what I was doing as I’m not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to reading the instruction book.

Luckily my mum knew a little about sewing machines, she sat for hours working it out properly. We started embroidering onto flannels at first – I did some for myself with ‘face’ written on one and ‘bottom’ on the other – just so my PA didn’t mix them up! My PA and I used to spend hours printing and embroidering and getting better and better, I remember watching my mum thread the needle and I decided that I was going to thread the whole machine up, including the needle, using my mouth stick. To get the cotton to stick to end of my mouth stick I made it a little wet so the cotton stuck and I could drag, wiggle and pull the cotton all round the embroidery machine; up and down and around in different directions, by then it had taken about one hour 20 minutes and a lot of patience, I was on the home stretch. I just had the needle to thread. I had to get my mum to cut the cotton again as the end got a bit wispy, but then yippee, I finally got the cotton through the needle in a finishing time of one hour 45 minutes! My mum takes about 10 seconds to do it but I can hold my head up high as I’ve tried it and succeeded.

I have now upgraded my laser printer, bought an automatic business card cutter (to please my Dad). Not everything you have to do independently, like ironing! I’m glad I can’t iron and I hope I never get a machine designed so I can do it with my head!

I now live independently in a bungalow with my PAs, my dog Sid and my fish. It’s great, I have a great life and I wouldn’t change a thing. I also have an amazing
girlfriend who I met after my injury. I am producing more and more T-shirts and business cards: my life is crazy, but I couldn’t be happier.

Barry West C4/5 complete