Duvet days: How sport saved Hannah Dines from a life under the covers

Born with cerebral palsy, all eight-year-old Hannah Dines wanted was to stay in bed. Sport came to her rescue. Having made it to Rio, Tokyo was in her sights but then a double disaster saw her battling the odds once more

MY mum was legendary. She made the slide. I was on the top bunk; I was the oldest and I was the only one who was allowed to use it. It was my big sister privilege to pull myself up it with my arms and slide down and no one else’s. The fact I couldn’t use the ladder was never the thing. I got to slide down every morning, like the smug little sausage I was. What a great childhood.

Despite my mum’s incredible efforts to get me to engage with life, when I was eight I was asked to write about a favourite place that I had visited and I wrote about my bed. I think a direct quote is, “if I could stay in it forever, I would”, all at once making that slide, however cool, obsolete. I am unsure what that predicts about a girl’s future but it is not immediately thrilling, is it?

Indeed, that first bit of writing may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy but not in the way one would expect.

Every person with cerebral palsy experiences it in an individual way. Especially me. Mine made me feel like a pirate. The rocking deck of the ship was my lack of balance or co-ordination – so staying upright was a hearty combination of risk and guesswork. The high winds and rum-stupor were the muscles in my legs, torso and left arm which stayed unusually tight. Most movements had incredibly high resistance, as if I was battling against the winds of a tempest, except I was usually indoors on a dreary school morning trying to put my socks on.

I was not really a pirate. I had cerebral palsy and perpetually cold feet. I would lie down and throw my head from side to side and clench my eyes. I could stop and start, pretending that I did in fact have power over my own freedom of movement, briefly, and then I was left reeling with the dizziness and exhilaration of mind-travel. I would dream of my bed flying out of the window into the stars…or the sea (and to magic pirate school – obviously, very much of the Harry Potter and the Worst Witch generation with a bit of Swallows and Amazons thrown in).

There was a moment though, where my body went as far as my mind. When walking (or socks) were out of the picture, everything was fine. Bed and head shaking was one option; my clown looking disability trike was another. I usually used it on the uneven, cold Glasgow pavements for a few minutes per ride. A dream-machine, it was not.

We must have driven to southern France once, with that trike. I remember a long flat, tree-canopied road, longer than my eye could see. I remember how empty it was and how sun speckled. How the speckles blurred into stars as I pedalled away from my family, who must have been walking. I remember loving being alone and faster than anyone. I definitely showed off how fast I could go and then suddenly I was gone, into my dazzling, green heaven. As fast as a mattress into the stars.

The police car was especially friendly. I must have made a few miles because as the story goes, a French policeman was worried that such a young girl was off cycling on her own and stopped me. I like to think mini-me was stopped for speeding. They put a sticker on my trike – a tracking sticker with invisible ink or something – and I was really fascinated that when you shone a special light on it, words glowed. My blissful or slightly psychopathic childhood priorities focus on that rather than if my mum was cautioned for letting her child roam free or in fact, whether she was

I was left reeling with the exhilaration of mind-travel. I would dream of my bed flying out of the window into the stars or the sea