Three things I have never gotten over
Aged about 4, I heard of a big picnic that was to be held in a shady region beside the river. I could hardly wait. The girls next door kept on winding me up about it. Came the day and I got so excited I threw up. That was evidence of something wrong and I so I didn't go. In fact I was perfectly OK

Several years passed. At my father's Masonic Lodge Christmas party at the end of the day there was some litter blowing about and so the kids were deputised to pick it up, reward - a free ice cream. I spotted something a fair way away and went to get it, by the time I got back all the ice cream was gone. No matter how much ice cream I have, that was one I'll never have.

This one nearly went wrong. I was about 9 and I got measles. We lived in a tiny town with one doctor, an irascible sort who regarded most chilhood illnesses as little worse than grazed knees, anxious mothers as all but hysterical and refused to visit.

I got sicker and sicker and I recall lying on my parent's bed one day delerious with fever and hallucinating. My poor mother was beside herself with worry, she had already lost two children, both of them soon after birth due to Rhesus factor incompatibility. We had no car and no phone, so she could not take me to the hospital which was only a mile away.

Eventually she went to the end of the block to ask the Anglican minister, the late Rev. John Hamer-Howarth to see me. He took a look at me, got in the parish car and rousted the doctor out of his surgery or whereever he was.

He arrived, and according to my mother, said "Oh" and got to work.

I might owe my life to John Hamer-Howarth.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Sat 27 Nov 2010, 0:26, Reply)