Polio strikes

"It began with a headache one January afternoon in 1959. 'Don't sit too near to the fire,' my mother had said. 'That can give you a headache.'

"Within an hour I was screaming with a pain so bad I wouldn't let even her touch me. But by the time the doctor arrived, it had subsided.

"I was given Junior Aspirin and put to bed in the room I shared with my brother in our small council flat in Wyrley Road, Wednesfield.

"In the morning, when my brother had been washed and dressed and it came to my turn, I told my mother I couldn't move my legs. She thought they were 'asleep' and massaged them, to no avail.

"I was just over four years old. I don't remember when I first heard the word 'polio', but the events of that time return to me in vivid flashes.

"The green sheet on the examining table. The light shone in my eyes. The little rubber hammer struck just below the knees. Worst, I suppose, was crying in panic as I was wrenched from my father's arms and placed overnight in a cot for observation, and the feeling of complete desolation as he walked away.

"No question then of parents staying too.

"I remember a night-time ambulance journey, in the arms of a plump nurse, and the deep red night-light as I lay alone at the bleak Parkfields Isolation Hospital.

"Once, I awoke from fitful sleep to see my father's anxious face, dreamlike, on the other side of the glass barrier.

"He must have known that all our lives had changed forever."