Sunday, June 22

 The Coles man has been so the pantry is stocked up and we have what we need for the next few days.  he was saying that there is fog on the highway but I don't suppose we can expect anything else at this time of year. It made me think of driving on the Maddens Plains near Wollongong and the fog which seemed to hang around there.  One time I remember I had to get back to Sydney on a foggy Sunday evening.  I had borrowed my brother's car (I think mine had been stolen) and I ran into the back of a car which some fool had stopped on the highway while he got out (I think) to relieve himself.

He came back and saw the damage to his car, claimed to be a policeman who had stopped to investigate a suspicious vehicle and threatened to arrent me.  Not a happy memory.

I have another memory which is a bit more intriguing.  When I was 3 years old I had my tonsils out.  It was not in a hospital but in my Aunt Jenny's bedroom in my grandparents' house.  Sheets were hung on the walls and all concerned wore hospital gowns.  It would have been 1946.  Later, in about 1948, I remember having my tonsils removed again, this time in a proper hospital.  I remember the long rows of beds down the walls of the ward and having icecream afterwards on the way home.

It's never made sense to me: why was the operation at home the first time and in a proper hospital the second?  And, the answer came to me this morning as I browsed the internet.  Something happened between 1946 and 1948 which made going to hospital the norm: it was the introduction of the National Health Schene in Britain.  I'm glad that's cleared up.