On July 18, 1969, Senator Edward Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, along with his chances forever of following in his elder brother's footsteps to the White House.In space, on that same date, the astronauts of Apollo 11 - Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins - were preparing for their historic moon landing.
Here on Earth, I was in agony, in hospital for the first time in my entire 14 year old life, suffering from acute appendicitis.
As it was a momentous week in the lives of Edward Kennedy, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins, as well as the distraught Kopechne family, it was a turning point in my life. I fell madly, passionately in love with a young nurse called Yvonne Darlow and decided that I wanted to become a nurse. Just like that. After all the months spent with the careers counselors at my school, Hipperholme Grammar School, pondering life as a policeman, Naval officer, fireman, doctor, astronaut, layabout - I'd finally decided.
And I owe it all to Yvonne and the aforementioned Americans. In those days of primitive medicine (!!), it was the norm to remain in the hospital for at least seven days, even for something as routine as an appendectomy. So, after the initial surgery, there was nothing much to do except watch the news - and of course, the major news items were the above mentioned milestones.
In those days, each bed did not have a TV, as they do today - indeed, there was only one old black-and-white TV located in the "day-room" which is where I would go in the middle of the night to watch the news alone, while recuperating from my surgery. I didn't remain alone for long. Yvonne would come and keep me company, when she had a quiet period of time - in between the numerous "technical problems" in the Apollo transmissions, and the incessant replays of the "giant leap for mankind" soundbite , she would tell me about her job, her prospects and her love of nursing.
It must have had some effect on me, for ever since those nights, I cannot ever recall wanting to do anything else with my life. And despite frequent sidetrips and detours along the way, I finally did make it as a nurse. I never did know what happened to Yvonne. I hope she went on to enjoy her chosen profession as much as I've enjoyed mine.
It's now been thirty-two years and counting since I became a nurse. Now that was a giant leap for THIS man.
And to put this in a time-frame that's more meaningful to some .......... it was a whole month BEFORE Woodstock!!!!
I was born just ten years after WWII - boy does that make me feel old when put like that. England was still struggling with its post-war economy; indeed there was still rationing of certain foods and petrol (gasoline). My father was a policeman, a 'bobby', not a very glamorous, nor particularly well-paid job in those days. My mother, as so many women of that time , was what is today known as a homemaker. We lived for a while with my maternal grandmother, who owned a bakery in Wibsey, a little suburb of Bradford, Yorkshire. Prior to that........an Air Force brat.
In the austerity of that decade, my earliest memories are of a cramped flat above the bakery, no indoor plumbing - which meant a trip to the tiny, cold, primitive outhouse, no matter what the weather; it also meant a galvanized iron bathtub, filled with hot water from the stove, in front of the (coal) fire, for bathing. This was such a major operation that baths were, on average, once a week!!!!!. An old black-and-white TV, that took about 5 minutes to warm-up; only one or two channels, and those broadcast for only a few hours a day - and if I recall correctly, not at all on Sundays. It sounds primitive, but it was how much of England, indeed Europe, lived in those two post-war decades.
No matter how primitive the way of life, my memories of that bakery are only pleasant ones - huge ovens that dominated the kitchen, a cellar (basement) filled with flour that would be delivered once a week, and the constant layer of white dust that coated every surface and permeated every nook and cranny in the entire house, my grandmother arising before the crack of dawn to bake the breads and pastries to sell that day, and the wonderful, heavenly, mouthwatering aromas; to this day I cannot pass a bakery without those aromas instantly evoking pleasant memories of my childhood.
When I was four, with my mother pregnant with my sister, my father realized that in order to support his growing family he would need a job that was better paying than a lowly village copper. So he joined the Royal Air Force, became a Military Policeman.
And so it was that I started my education in a school in Germany in 1959, learned German at an age when language acquisition is easy. I went on to 15 other schools in various countries, and different locations in England, over the next seven years. I cannot ever recall that it was traumatic moving so many times, having so many different systems to get used to. Even though I was forever changing schools, there would usually be several kids at each of the new schools that I already knew from previous ones, because, like my father, their fathers had been on various 'postings' and our paths would frequently cross. In fact, that constant change was the thing that kept me interested in school, enthusiastic about learning; when I started grammar school in 1966 - by this time again living with my grandmother in a village called Shelf- I became bored going to the same establishment day after day, year after year.
My academic career was less than brilliant!! By the time I was in my early teens I was more interested in motorcycles, pop music (anyone remember Radio Luxembourg and the "Pirates"?), and of course girls.
By the time I fell madly in love with the afore-mentioned nurse, my grades were slipping, my attendance was appalling - it became quite a challenge to invent different excuses for truancy - and I really had very little hope for the future. Despite my deciding in that July of 1969 that I would become a nurse, I did very little toward achieving that goal. The six weeks off school following the appendectomy - standard practice in those days - didn't exactly help matters; I never really did catch up after that.
As soon as I turned 15, I left school without a single academic qualification; left home, went to seek my fame and fortune in London - ended up working as a lowly - REALLY lowly - office boy in the headquarters of a large Brewery/Catering/Hotel company within sight of Buckingham Palace, and living in a commune. Yes, a commune - full of wonderful and weird characters from all over the globe. My first week's wage was £11. Some fame and fortune.
Of course there are many, many other aspects of my childhood and early adolescence that I haven't touched upon. Some are intensely private - my parents' marital problems, for example; some painful to recall - an abusive mother, my separation from my sister, my increasing estrangement from my parents; and some are just downright boring to others.
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