“I like to travel to away matches, see the different stadiums, and take pictures. Plus I get to visit places that I wouldn’t normally visit.”


When I walked past Patrick, I gave him a smile and he genuinely smiled back. This doesn’t always happen so I decided to stop, said 'Hi' and introduced myself.

First thing I noticed about Patrick was the Leeds United hat and the numerous attached pin badges. We started talking about the team and recent developments (scandal?) around the takeover of the club by an Italian businessman. Normally, I have nothing to say on football related matters as I’m not into it in any way, and know nothing about the clubs or their players. It just happened to be a story I caught on local news channels few days prior.

Anyway, Patrick was hopeful that there would be some good news regarding the club in the next few days, meaning they could "get on with the job of playing football and scoring goals!” as he put it.

Soon after his wife and son appeared, and we talked for a bit about Scarborough as that’s where Patrick and his family live. Patrick suffers from a brain disorder which means that signals can’t be sent to his legs, and hence the wheelchair. It sounded quite specific, only contained to his legs, as he seemed perfectly able otherwise - speech, upper body etc,

I got the feeling Patrick, though he was friendly and jolly, didn’t want to talk about this subject with a stranger (his wife gave me most of the information), so I wished him well in his recovery and left the family to carry on their shopping trip.


Humans of Leeds