大象传媒

Later on when I was about 13, I was attending a Woodwork class near the municipal market which was behind Grand Parade. I had been off school becuase I had been sick, and when I returned to the class, Mr Foggarty asked me to collect my chit from the school clinic.

The chit meant that I was well enough to go back to school. I then duely when over to the clinic as I had been told to do, feeling certain that I would be safe over there.

To my shock when I was in the clinic it was blown up along with the old church next to the Astoria cinema on Grand Parade. I was lucky because I was not buried under the rumble, but I was unconscious.

When I came to I found out that Dr. Stuart Warden had pulled me free from the rumble and Dr. Brown of Grand Parade had also come to help. I sustained a suspected fractured skull and for the next year or had to rest at Lady Chichester's hospital where I was made to sketch pictures to test whether my brain was damaged or not. They didn't find any permanent damage and I was allowed to go back home and back to school.

When I went back to school, I was still sporting my war wounds, and Kenny Harvey - who was the school football star, who ended up playing for Newcastle - looked at me and said
"Here, Gordon, your head's all bent"

As even after all this time my eyes were still black and my forehead had a large lump that stuck out, with a dent in the middle.

I would have been better off not going to the clinic at all . . and old Foggarty was pretty sorry that he'd sent me over there.

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