Eventually Helen arrived with her arm in a sling. She had gone ice skating with Andrew after work, fallen and broken her arm. No thank you, she didn’t want to eat but would go straight to bed. Later still David arrived with eight sailors he had found in Greenwich Park. Could they sleep on the floor? They had nowhere else to go! Finally I got them all to bed.

Next morning, wearing Peter’s dressing gown and looking like Friar Tuck I organised a ten-man removal team as Helen had been waiting several months to exchange her heavy bedroom furniture for that in our mother’s room. It seemed a good time to get it done! Then Helen went off to work, broken arm notwithstanding, and I got ready for my hospital appointment that afternoon.

At Lewisham Hospital they listened and prodded. “Any time now,” they said. Tomorrow if you haven’t started, have a hot bath and take a tablespoon full of caster oil.

Friday was the day Peter rang me, and nothing had started so I walked up to my Dad’s house through an almighty thunderstorm and, when Peter phoned, said, “They say everything is OK but it may be a week yet. Ring me on Sunday. How are you?” etc. etc. Then I went home; the rain had stopped; had my bath and caster oil and went to bed.

At about 5am I woke and began to wonder – but it was too early to do anything. At 6am I got up and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. The sink in the scullery was crawling with enormous black slugs, as big as my fingers, which had come up the plug hole. While I drank my tea I filled in the time with a slug hunt using up all the cooking salt, then cleared up the mess, made yet more tea and wrote a note for the others.

At 7am I thought it not too early to go over the road to use their phone as arranged to ring the hospital. Nursey answered the door, the children’s nurse in full brown uniform who had arrived there when the twins were born, and was still in residence although they were now grown up and in the Air Force. She would never touch the phone herself as she was convinced that germs came down the wires, but I was welcome to risk it. Soon the ambulance came, and I was on my way.

“You are not quite ready,” they said, “but now you are here you might as well stay.”
That day I rested in a bit of discomfort, but not too much, and read a book about childbirth Peggy had lent me, so as to know what to expect. That night I slept fairly well, but on Sunday things started to happen, just as the book said. However Gale was a bit slow to face the world and when Peter phoned the hospital soon after 6pm I had to ask them to give him a message to ring back at 9pm but say I am fine.