Alex: When Ric Cassell’s oldest daughter was two years old, she ran away.

Ric: We were down in the New Forest.

Alex: They were on holiday together, and had gone out for a walk.

Ric parked the car. Suddenly the little girl opened the door, and sprinted off, towards the main road.

Ric: It was rough ground, there's no way I would be able to catch her. And I shouted at a stop. And she didn't appear to listen. And it was the sort of first real time when I was hit by this feeling of panic

Alex: Ric did the only thing he could think of.

Ric: I'd got like a soft shoe on. And I ripped that off and threw it at her. And it hit her on the back of the head and made her stop. Which sounds an horrific thing to do. But you know, there was a road nearby and I had to react quickly. So that made her stop and look around – a startled look – and I said, can you bring me my shoe back, please?

Alex: Ric’s toddler fetched him his shoe. She was out of harm’s way.

Ric: I learned that if you're in a wheelchair, you just have to adapt and think of things quickly as to, you know, how you're going to manage.

Alex: Ric has been a wheelchair user for most of his life.

He has three daughters with his wife. When the girls were growing up, Ric was the stay at home parent, while his wife worked.

Ric: Which was interesting at times, to put it mildly. But the biggest challenge was changing their nappies.

Alex: That particular task required … a little creativity.

Ric: I got a drawer, and I put it on an old TV stand, so that I could sit in an armchair where I've got a side on either side of me, so I was balanced and secure. And this trolley with this drawer on the top of it, because it had little tiny sides being a drawer, you could fit the changing mat into it, and you could put them on it. And then underneath the trolley was a box, you could pull out which had absolutely everything that you would need to change them.

Alex: Of course, the babies wriggled around a bit.

Ric: And I discovered I could just pick up one of my legs and put my leg on top of them. And they just seemed to just lie there with the weight of my leg on them whilst you got yourself ready and changed them. And then when my wife changed them, they were totally different. They seemed to have this ability to realise that I had limitations. So when she changed them, they kicked and struggled. Whereas when I did it, they just were far more passive and far easier to manage as it were.

Alex: Ric found other ingenious solutions to the obstacle course that is caring for three kids alone.

Ric: If you're sitting in a wheelchair and you've got to propel the wheelchair, and you're trying to pick up a child the easiest thing is to plonk the child on your lap and then hold their clothing and your teeth. So it's a bit like you know, a dog or a cat. So you spent a lot of your time holding them with your teeth. And they just don't bat an eyelid at it and they just seem to sit far more relaxed in your lap.

Alex: Taking two children to school while looking after a baby was another hurdle.

Ric: Trying to push a pram with one hand whilst you're wheeling a chair is a bit of a dark art. It's very difficult and quite tiring. And I dreamt up a system of getting one of those backpacks that you put a kid in, and I fastened it onto the front of the chair, and just dropped them into that, so that I could still wheel the chair, and you know, be responsible for taking the other kids to school.

Alex: The girls travelled a lot with their dad – because Ric spent many years wheelchair racing, training and competing around the world.

Ric: Wheelchair racing is, you know, going fast in your wheelchair. So it's the equivalent of running. So initially, it was when the London Marathon started in this country, I just looked at it, I just thought, oo that looks like fun. And I had a friend who was interested in doing it. And we applied and was told by Chris Brasher “not in a month of Sundays, it's a running race”. And he was adamant that we weren't going to do it.

Alex: The comment – from the co-founder of the London marathon – it was like a red rag to Ric.

Ric: That just rubbed me up the wrong way. So that's what got me started doing it. I’m a bit bolshy at times, you know, don't tell me I can't do anything. You only have one life and you do have to live it, don't you?

Alex: Ric was two and a half when his father decided to take him swimming one afternoon.

Ric: I think he was trying to kill some time because my sister had just been born. And you know he had been left at home with me while she was in the hospital, and I think it was a distraction.

Alex: This innocent swimming trip turned out to be a sliding doors moment in Ric’s life. At the pool that day, something happened that would change his life forever.

Ric: It was a very big outbreak in the southeast of the country. And I know that the hospital in south end was swamped with them.

Alex: Ric was rushed to hospital. He had contracted polio.

Ric: I wasn't expected to survive. So I know my mother told me she was very, very cross with the hospital chaplain, who came round and wanted me to be christened that night, because they didn't expect me to be there in the morning, you know, alive. And that annoyed her.

Alex: Ric’s mum pulled some strings and got him moved to a better hospital, in north London.

Ric: It was fairly horrendous. They didn't have enough ventilators there. So people were actually having to share iron lungs.

I tell people now that you know, I've already survived a pandemic, because that's basically what it was polio back then.

Alex: These days polio has been wiped out in many countries. But when Ric got sick in the 1970s, the consequences were dire. Ric became quadraplegic, with the virus affecting all four of his limbs.

Ric was in hospital … for five years.

Ric: Sometimes doctors… you make medical advances through experimenting a bit. And I was the age where a lot of this stuff was going on. They were learning. Things move on and you do just have to accept that.

Alex: He had to endure all sorts of unimaginable procedures. He was suspended from pins in his ankles, and had a spinal fusion using a steel rod.

Ric: Back then, I think there was just this idea that anybody who was going to recover needed to be able to get back on their feet and walk. And you know, that took years for them to realise that actually, walking isn't all it's cracked up to be. If you have to stagger with full length callipers and a brace coming up to your chin, in metal and leather, on to full length crutches that you can't carry anything or do anything. And I used to be able to stagger maybe 100 yards and be totally exhausted and lose all feeling in my hands because of the pressure under my armpits. Whereas put me in a wheelchair and I can whizz over 100 yards and do stuff you know, you can become functional.

Alex: In reality, Ric didn’t get a wheelchair until he was seven years old.

Ric: Somewhere along the line in the hospital system, no one ever told my parents Oh, you could get a wheelchair for him. So I used to be pushed around in like a buggy till I went to, well until I went to boarding school, really. I never really thought too much about it, because it was just normal. So I learned how to crawl and get around on the floor. I have no bad memories about it. It was just… you know, that was life.

Alex: Whatever Ric wanted to do, his dad was there to encourage him.

Ric: I had a little pedal go kart. But this was before I had the wheelchair. And he managed to put some handles on to the foot mechanisms, so that you could pedal it using your arms. Some people would say he was a bit harsh, in that he didn't agree in making life too easy for you. Because I think he realised that actually, life was always going to be a bit of a struggle.

Alex: Boarding school was good for Ric. He was friends with other children who had disabilities. Having limitations was, crucially for Ric, normalised.

Ric: The school motto was ‘no such word as can’t’. And that's what was drummed into me right from the beginning.

Alex: While in his early years there, Ric left the school grounds with a friend who had muscular dystrophy.

Ric: He was quite severely disabled in a power chair, and the battery had run flat, because we were miles away from the school. But I just towed him back. And the easiest method to tow a heavy power chair was down the white line of this country lane. So when we got back to the school, we were met by the police, because they’d had this report of someone who was just going down the middle of the road and cars having to go off to the side.

Alex: But Ric’s dad was proud … he could see Ric’s resourceful and kind nature in what he’d done.

Ric: He obviously thought, Well, you did the right thing there, you know, because it's the sort of attitude that he would have done.

Alex: Ric’s father served in world war two.

Ric: He was in Bomber Command. What he had to perform in Lancaster bombers weighed very heavily on him, because he knew he was dropping bombs on totally innocent people. He hated Remembrance Day. I can always remember him saying to me, there's nothing glorious about being dead.

It wasn't until much, much later, when he was probably retirement age, that he really even started to speak about his experiences during the war. When I was growing up, there were just the odd mention.

But he was a… a very strong individual. And I think he just compartmentalised it.

Alex: Though he rarely talked about the polio, Ric also believed his father carried a lot of guilt about what had happened to Ric.

When Ric was older, there was one day that he got into an argument with his dad.

Ric: And I just flippantly said to him, You know well you were the one that took me to the swimming pool and gave me polio. I’d snapped and just said something spiteful.

Alex: Ric’s father looked crushed. He immediately got up and walked out of the house.

Ric: And I just thought Shit, you know, I shouldn't have said that. And I went and stuck my head out of the door, and looked at him and he was crying. And I just, you know, I was mortified. I realised that, you know, I totally and utterly overstepped things.

Alex: Ric felt terrible.

Ric: The look on his face… He was choked, to be honest. And I just had to say that I'm really sorry Dad. You know, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. And he just held his hand up, and he just wanted to walk off down the garden. Because we had got a big step at the back of the house where I couldn't follow. And I realised he just needed to go away and, you know, calm down and compose himself.

Alex: When Ric’s father came back up the garden path, the two men cleared the air. Deep down, they both knew that Ric had never blamed his dad for what happened at the swimming pool that day.

Ric: I think it was grief. I think it had just come back to haunt him that, you know, maybe that's what I felt.

Sometimes in your life, there's little things that you think about, and you just think, if I'd have done something different then would life have been a bit different? So I don't know… I don't know how much he had dwelt on that. And I'd like to think that there's enough positives in my life.

Alex: Ric’s dad had plenty to be proud of. He was delighted when Ric took up sailing. And when he applied for a flying scholarship, Ric’s dad wrote him a moving letter of support.

Ric: I think he's always admired the amount of travelling that I've done, and the way that my wife and I, we've taken the kids with us as well, because he has first hand insight into just how complicated that can be at times with finding accommodation, all of the equipment you have to take with you. And he's always just, encouraged me.

Alex: Bolshy, defiant, resourceful… whatever you want to call it… it’s clear that the influence of Ric’s father lives on.

Ric: Everything is achievable. It's all to do with what's going on up here in your head, not what your body is capable of.

And even in this house that I'm in now – we live in a house, which I've only recently, only two years ago had a lift put it because I just get up the stairs on my arse. That's how I've always done it.

There’s no such word as can't – has been what I've always just stood by, now I'm older, I look at it, and I just think I could do that. But I’m too old to bother now. So that's a sign I've tired. You know, even today, things about disability are not right. But I've reached the point where I've run out of energy to carry on fighting it, but that's my choice. So if I wanted to fight it, I would, and if somebody is struggling, I will immediately jump in and try and fight it for them.

Alex: Ric spent many years campaigning for better quality wheelchairs.

Ric: Wheelchairs are dead simple. Why do we have this strange system where dependent on where you live, some people get good bits of equipment, and others get a pile of crap at times, you know, that's totally wrong.

Having a disability is just an impairment. It's not the end of your life or anything. It's just something that needs to be addressed. And far more of what makes you disabled is the social environment around you, rather than what you can't do. You have to keep on being questioned and having to do assessments about what you can't do. And at times, they just ignore the fact of what you can do. And I think COVID should have opened people's eyes, because so many people have been working remotely from home, which is something that a lot of disabled people could have been doing for years, but have never really been given that opportunity. Whereas now, the gloves are off, you've got no excuse.

Alex: Ric’s stoicism and can-do attitude are a marvel to behold. One thing which clearly emerges from Ric’s story, and many other stories from this series, is the focus on ability not disability. Ric regales us with how he is able to do so many things that people in wheelchairs would be assumed to be incapable of. Not only does he look after himself, he has also taken care of his children and friends when required. Ric’s self-confidence and self-belief has seen him break down barriers. Competing in the London Marathon in a wheelchair is no longer a unique event but this is down to the attitude of people such as Ric. He will not take no for an answer and refuses to be limited by his condition.