A Christmas with Long Arms

Some of you will know from past posts that at the age of five I was whisked into hospital with pneumonia in both lungs and pleurisy. I don't recall anything at all of the illness and nothing of the treatment except that it involved two large bell jars, one filled with a coloured liquid, the other empty and the two connected by rubber tubing. Another length of rubber tubing was equipped with a mouthpiece and using this I had to blow all the liquid into the empty jar.

Apart from that, I remember the deep snow outside and seeing my parents trudging through it to visit me. I remember too, the nurses bringing in large bowls of snow for each child so that we could play snow balls. Still in bed, we threw them across the ward at each other. (Imagine that in the NHS!) I also remember (This being the time of my earliest connected memories.) the Christmas tree in the ward and the presents piled round it - all brought by Santa during the night whilst we all slept, of course. My present was a large Noahs Ark with two each of all the animals - all made from wood. And I remember the photograph, taken by the photographer from the Mitcham News and Mercury, of me being held by my favourite nurse beside my cot in front of the tree. The Noahs Ark was in the cot. I remember the photograph so clearly because my grandparents bought a large copy of the original, and it did the rounds for years afterwards.

I am not sure how long afterwards it was that we were visiting my dad's parents in Wandsworth and had gone to the shops. I had been left outside one particular shop for a moment. There were two women close by who, like me, had been looking in the window, but now one took a newspaper cutting out of her bag and showed it to the other. I cannot remember - or didn't hear - what was said, but they both looked at it for a few minutes before the first one returned it to her purse.

When my parents and grandma returned I asked who the women were. They didn't know - and it seemed quite obvious that the ladies concerned didn't know me. That being so, I always thought it odd that they should be looking at my photograph, for there were no other people in the photograph, apart from the nurse.

Roll on ten years or so and I am in Northern Italy, cycling with some friends. We go into a small wayside church in which some candles are burning. One of my companions lights one for a relation - I think a cousin - who is unwell. All the candles have small cards in front of them, each with a name and a date. Some with a message. One though - are you yet ahead of me? - has no card, just a newspaper cutting. No name, just a date - seven years earlier. It bears the same photograph of me aged five in hospital. Now is that eerie or is that eerie? One last thing: the cutting from the newspaper is printed in Italian. Does that make it more creepy, or less?