A meeting with my past in an NHS hospital

Pushing through a crowded hospital corridor behind my father, I heard a voice calling me.

Then a nurse grabbed me and threw her arms around me. She had heard my father’s name and recognised me, her old school friend from St Joseph’s.

As we walked and talked, she told me, ‘We all read your articles’ and I thought: ‘Oh dear I’m about to be exposed as an anti-vaxxer in the middle of A&E while my father’s having a heart attack.’ But she was smiling, pleased to see me. In fact, she was beaming as she said, ‘I remember Alma!’ referring to my maternal grandmother.

I haven’t heard someone talk about my nan for many years but she was a well-known character in my small home town.

A larger-than-life figure who helped my mother run her hairdresser salon, she was so popular with her brand of earthy humour that we often thought most of the customers were coming for the entertainment.

She would sit behind the reception desk taking calls, or at the manicure stool doing nails, or shampooing hair at the sink. But wherever she was she would be telling the most extraordinary stories and risqué jokes.

People would come in for a shampoo and set and book in again for the cabaret.

A tailor’s daughter from Coventry, Alma married an Italian immigrant from the Abruzzo called Antonio – a handsome devil, she called my grandfather. She was a devout Catholic convert and took me to church with them every Sunday, but she was never sanctimonious. If my grandfather upset her she’d wink at me as he went out the door to confession and say: ‘He’ll be in there for hours this week.’ She believed profoundly in the spirit world and would often take herself off to see a psychic.