Early Life

Micheline Mason: The World Stepped Back


Micheline Mason was born in 1950 in Kingston, Surrey. Micheline lived with her family in Croydon, Surrey, having home tuition until the age of thirteen when she left home to attend a residential special school in Hampshire. She then went on to Art college.

Here Micheline talks about her early life.

  • Micheline Mason
  • Micheline Mason
  • Micheline Mason
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/world-stepped-back.mp3

Transcript

When I was born people had no idea that I had an impairment of any sort, but I in fact had fractures in both my legs, as far as I know. So I went home with my parents, as you would, but every time they tried to pick me up or do anything I was screaming. So after about four days they took me back to the hospital whereupon they took x-rays. And I feel I can remember the sudden change that happened when they took the x-rays, as if everybody just stepped – it felt to me the world just stepped right back from me. And it sort of changed everything, you know. There was a complete change from thinking I was just an ordinary child to being told that I wasn’t. And, you know, the shock, the fear, the … everything. And we’re also going back to the 1950s when it was worse then than it is now, in terms of what people felt or thought or knew about these things.

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