Wednesday 12 November 2008

Remembrance Day 2008

What better day to start a blog like this!!!





I wanted a place to keep my memories alive, be they misplaced, slightly glorified or whatever - here they will be.





I feel that now, as I start to lose hold of short term memory, this will be where I can remember who I am and how I arrived here.





My earliest memory is being wrapped in a blanket, or shawl of some kind, and in my mother's arms. It is cold and windy, she pulls the blanket round me and bangs hard on the door knocker, which is slightly higher than her so she has to stretch to reach it. A lady with grey hair scraped back in a bun and dressed in black answers the door. She says 'the doctors not in' to which my mother responds with 'what shal I do?' I cannot remember the answer, but I am in a square room sitting on my mother's lap and there is a kindly looking man sitting behind a desk. He rolls a threepenny bit across the floor and says to me 'if you can get that you can have it'. As I walk across and get it, he tells my mother that if I can walk my leg is not broken.

I had this memory for years and it was closely followed by another of me falling and my brother, with outstretched arms, catching me.



I asked my mother about these memories and she told me that I had fallen down the stairs and that is why she took me to the Doctors........... I was three years old. The Doctor wasn't in so she had to walk a couple of hundred yards along Station Road (Stechford in Birmingham) to the next doctor's surgery. My mother was not convinced of the Doctor's diagnosis so she took me to the hospital where they confirmed that I had a greenstick fracture and plastered my leg. About two weeks later, after I was out of plaster (six weeks), I fell down the stairs again - only for my brother Tony to catch me and save me another trip to the hospital!!! Stairs have always been the bane of my life, falling down or up them, I am not fussy. lol