Travels with a Squirrel part 2.The squirrel collector ( I must be nuts)I left off my story, where I lost my original squirrel, due to an accident.
It was different to my other squirrel being a mark three, with a contoured plastic seat and plastic covering the wooden base, none the less it was the same four wheel drive system underneath that mattered. When the company making squirrels had gone bankrupt. I wrote to the president of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine asking if he could intervene to make sure that the technological advantage of the squirrel was not lost for ever, and to ensure that the spares would still be available. I do not know much about the spares but what I did hear was discouraging, that a creditor had seized a great number of them and would not release them. I heard no more and still do not know what has happened to the majority of the spares, however I did receive a letter from the Mobility Centre at Banstead Hospital that hey had a demonstration Squirell which was no longer of any use since the company did not exist any more, and that they would give it away for spares to any one who could collect it. I jumped at the chance, and my son took me on another
long journey to the south this time. Banstead is a
demonstration centre belonging to the Health Service
where disabled people can try out various electric
vehicles and adapted cars. Because of this the squirrel
had some features that my second hand replacement did not,
such as adjustable leg rests and a headrest. My cat circe also thinks its comfortable to sit on! One of the thins which I do from time to time is man a stand at various exhibitions, which the Coventry Council of Disabled has a stand. On one such exhibition, in Coventry, which I helped to organise, for the wheelchair users of Coventry, I was approached by one of the wheelchair salesmen, who was interested in my Squirell. He told me, that he had one like it which he had taken in part exchange but could not find anyone to buy with the spares situation being non existent. I did a deal to buy it off him very cheaply, trading in some parts which I had kept form my very first electric wheelchair, which were of more use to him. Thus it was that I acquired my fourth squirrel to date. I only live in a one bedroomed flat so you can imagine the difficulty I have with keeping them, but it is better to be safe than sorry, because the controller on one of them did start acting erratically and had to be replaced from another. I still like the wooden mark II best of all and would
buy another if it was in working condition as that
version packed away in a car best of all. The plastic
seated chairs are more bulky. So if you know of any which
no-one wants any more, or have heard what has happened to
the spares. please let me know.
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I thought at first that I would
have to go back to using a conventional electric
wheelchair but I remembered seeing an advertisement for a
second hand squirrel, in the RADAR bulletin. Looking
through back copies, it turns out that the advertisement
was about six months old, but as luck would have it, it
had not been sold. One car trip to Leeds later and it was
mine! 
