One trait of autistic spectrum disorders is having fascinations and fixations.  

I knew two disabled children who used the snugseat spring wheelchair by tendercare.  And as soon as I set my eyes on that multicoloured red-framed buggy I have been fixated with it.

Given I was 9 when I first saw the chair (although I was 7 when I first met the children) that is 13 years of fascination.  I can draw it almost perfectly, although never quite well enough to satisfy my own mind.  Now the multicoloured seat cover is out of production, although the chair is still going.

The site won't let me upload an image of the seat but if you go onto the tendercare ltd. and look at 'snug seat spring' in the products section of the website you'll see product images of both the multicoloured version and the new plain one.

A year or so ago a rear facing version of the entire multicoloured snug seat wheelchair came up on Ebay.  It was in Nottingham.  It was 99p, no reserve.  I dug my nails in and resisted.  But now...now the seat alone plus the footrest has come up again on Ebay...for 99p! But it's in HERTFORDSHIRE with a pick up only postage rule.
This is pure torture.  I have no use for this seat currently, and aside from the fascination there is an air of sadness around it.  My two friends died in their early teens and I miss them every day.  So to see the seat empty and exactly as I remember it makes me rather melancholy.  Like seeing Granny's favourite armchair that she spent all day in, just sitting empty in the living room shortly after she has died.  It is a blast from the past and brings back vivid memories and emotions.  I apologise sincerely if I am stirring up any unwanted emotions in the readers of this blog.  

It is also torture because if I were to buy the seat I would be worried people would see me as a materialist - I love the seat and always have, but that doesn't mean I didn't love my two friends much, much more.

But there's another reason and it is this: Although I am not synaesthesic (one sense accompanying another, most commonly seeing colours along with hearing sounds), I do imagine different colours for different music.  Minor key evokes blues and greens and browns and dirty yellows.  Major key evokes bright, primary colours.  But really beautiful music is like a rainbow spectrum of colours swirling and merging and blending beautifully, like the aurora borealis in my mind.  Since the snug seat has a swirly, pleasingly simple, contoured, symmetrical shape, and the seat cover is a swirl of rainbow colours, to me looking at it is like hearing the most beautiful music.  I could look at it all night and literally have come close to this on some occasions.

To own this multi-coloured rarity that would normally be financially unobtainable would be, to me, like owning Bach.

It makes me sad that this choice of colour for seat cover is out of production also, because of what that indicates about the current day and age, and also the attitude to (disabled) children.  Adults like to conform, but children, who are bright and innocent, would love the swirly rainbowness of the seat cover as it was.  It looks far less intimidating to children if equipment is bright, cheerful and familliar-looking (the seat is basically a larger version of a conventional car seat and can be used as such), and it gives them an air of individuality.  They shouldn't force the need to conform onto children by sapping the choice of colour out of everything they come to own.

Plus this seat is one of the few that is firm, supportive and yet very simple.  No seat structures that look like building construction sites or psychiatrist couches, just a nice, normal-looking buggy-seat that supports the child discreetly (and, I can say from personal experience), gives them the impression of holding themselves up without much assistance.
 
I know for a fact that a comparatively numerous amount of disabled children owned this seat.  I have come into actual contact with no less than eight children, all by coincidence, and all within the space of about six years, who owned this seat, and all had the multicoloured choice of seat cover.  It caught people's imaginations and I for one was drawn to the child's - well - childish, fun-loving personality as a result.

So now I must find out about courier for this seat and if there is any way I can obtain it.  Providing nobody else needs it more of course - as that is much more important!