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In the memoir I talk about a children’s hospital alongside the Medical Research Council where I worked. In the hospital there was a ward for children physically affected because their mothers had taken Thalidomide. Although perfectly fit and healthy these children had never left the hospital because there was a concern that the general public could not deal with their deformity, often no more than small arms and legs. Some of the children’s parents visited and others not, so these children were abandoned and imprisoned.

In the North sea the temperature in Winter is 5 to 9C and the decompression would take several hours, not a pleasant experience. Divcon, the company I worked for introduced the use of the diving bell . The Bell would be taken down to the same depth as the diver. With the bottom half of the bell pressurized up to the pressure at the diver’s depth the diver would be l locked into the lower chamber, the diving bell brought up to the surface and the diver locked into a decompression chamber on the oil rig which had been pressurized up to the same pressure as the lower half of the diving bell.

Having failed the eleven plus examination I was in a secondary modern school and in the second stream not even the top stream. Those who passed the eleven plus went to a grammar school where the more academically gifted went and often ended in office jobs . One factor on going or not was if your parents were keen on you going to a grammar school, in which case there was some pressure to study and perhaps more books in the home. One reason to prefer a trade was because the pay was often better than an office job.

I worked alongside Dr. Rudolf Vrba at the medical Research Council, Carshalton, England, he was one of only four to escape from Auschwitz.

He tells of being captured by the Nazis and standing packed in a railway couch with others for hours without water and the agony they went through on hearing the train taking on water but they got none.

In looking at the photo  of the members of the Neuropsychiatric Research Council at the Medical Research Council it is sobering to think that very few would still be alive. They would have to be about 87 or older to still be alive. One would hope that some of their studies had a benefit in the alleviation in mental desease. Dr Alec Coppen was born in 1923 and died on 15 March 2019. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and acted as director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Neuropsychiatric Research in Epsom, England, until 1988. He discovered the e role of serotonin in the pathogenesis of depression. His seminal paper in the Lancet 1963 showed that tryptophan markedly potentiated the antidepressant action of MAOIs (Monoamine oxidase Inhibitors).

I and my colleaugues from the company Plath in Hamburg went on a cruise along the  Rhine and after seeing the umpteenth castle we went  from saying how beautiful, when we set out,  to not another fxxxxng  Castle.

An excursion I went on alone was to the island of Sylt, one of the North Frisian islands in the North sea, in Germany. At the time it was, unlike now, not often visited. I walked along the beach until I came to a little man with a cap and a whistle and nothing else. He said this is a nude beach.

Although I have been working on my two books almost non stop for the last two years I also  take three or four weeks off to go to Barbados. This is  to partially escape the Canadian Winter, which goes on from December to April. To love Barbados you must  understand  it is a different but great and fun culture the people are usually very friendly and helpful.