On the outside looking out.
Beginnings
I don’t recall much from my early years. I remember crying when my sister was going to school without me. I think she may have taken me out lots; she is four years older than me. She once took me along when she and her friends went to see the Beatles film “Help”. We walked all the way to the Bristol Road Cinema and back. She got into trouble from Mother for making me walk “all that way”.
I remember having a bed made up in the bay window of the front room when I had German measles! Even though I had never been to Germany. The front room was the special room, it was only used on high days and holidays or when you were ill. I must have spent lots of time in there; it seems I was always ill. Well, I had a Congenital Ventricular Septal Defect, commonly known as “born with a hole in the heart”. A blue baby.
When I was three they did tests and decided that it may repair itself. Evidently, they could do nothing until I was big enough, which took three years, they did not expect me to get there. Such was life in 1956, there was very little they could do in those days. It was not until 1967 that a South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant.
I remember that and the World Cup win in 66 and the moon landing in 69. I sat between Dad`s legs asking, “Are they down yet”? It seemed to take ages to land the bloody thing. I was captivated by the World Cup in Mexico1970 but that is probably due to me being well. But let’s slow down I have covered 14 years in 300 words.