“Come on,” I said “We’ve got a burger with our name on it, hurry up.” Mike looked up from his phone on his towel-covered lap, “McDonalds?” he grinned as he closed his phone and threw it on the bed, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry than that my friend… Lets go to the pub.”

I was completely conscious and completely confused. I was trying to get up and nothing would happen, my body simply wouldn’t respond to the commands I was giving it. There was no movement, no pain, no anything. The environment mirrored my situation; it was like being in a picture, everything still and quiet.

This was the second time I’d cried since my injury. The first was when I was being measured up for a wheelchair. There, at the top of the form, in black and white, it said “Steve Brown: Non-Walker.” That moment the magnitude of my situation became apparent to me. I cried that time because it finally clicked; my disability meant I was never going to walk again.

I wouldn’t want you to be a part of any group and assume that it exists only for your benefit. You have a duty to help others. It’s only through selflessness and cooperation that humans can achieve anything worthwhile.

We dream of scuba-diving in the Caribbean, snorkelling in the Maldives or whale-watching in Canada. At the same time, we overlook the wonders that exist on our own shoreline, most of which are easily accessible to us.

My time in wheelchair rugby and in television has taken me to all corners of the UK; to France, to Germany and to Finland; across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and 8000 miles in the other direction, to Vietnam. But earlier this year, television brought me to the place I love most in all the world – it brought me home.