I was born in summer 1934 to a couple who were struggling to make a living but were helped by my grandparents with whom we lived until August 1939 when we all went away on an unexpectedly long-drawn-out holiday.
I was a sickly child having been in hospital for 18 months and handed back to my parents to whom it was suggested that they put me into one of the big teaching hospitals in London in the hope that a cure might eventually be found and have another child.
Unable to accept that my parents, with the help of my grandparents, kept me at home and found a doctor who was working on the problem I had and cured me with diet and massage so that I was able to go to kindergarten at the age of three and a half.