Follow-up

LIKE other readers, I also remember the severe winter of 1947 (Peterborough), when I was 11 and suffering with scarlet fever, which was a common childhood illness in those days.

The doctor came to see me a few days after Christmas and decided I needed to go to hospital. for three days we waited for an ambulance, while I shared a bedroom with my two brothers — my home only had two bedrooms.

It turned out the request for the ambulance had been missed. It finally arrived on New Year’s Eve, with a driver who didn’t know the area. He got lost on the journey before finding the hospital in the falling snow.

I was whisked into isolation because it was thought I had diphtheria, a contagious disease that can prove fatal. I was put in a small ward next to a large draughty window with a big tree outside. After dark, I was terrified.

four weeks later, I was able to go home. I was desperate to visit the local park, but my mother insisted I convalesce.

At last, I was allowed to go out, but with dire warnings not to go skating on the ice. But, of course, I did — and I fell in and ended up with pneumonia.

When I recovered and was finally allowed to go to school, the snow was still deep. Coming home one day, I was knocked down by a car. Luckily, I only suffered a few bruises.

It was a week to Easter, so my mother kept me home. I had missed a whole term of my first year at grammar school, for which I was kept back a year, much to my shame.

Eileen Wass, Mansfield, Notts.