Guess I had a fragile start. My parents were married in 1934. Around Christmas 1935, they went up to Blackpool where twins were borne but died within 24 hours. Dad had to return to Wolverhampton leaving Mum to bear the burden or lose his job at a time of mass-unemployment. 

In January 1937 my elder brother was born, a nearly blind baby. My parents, I am told, were  advised professionally to go home, get over it and have another baby. In 1940, that was me but I came very early and was pretty weak and, so they thought, very blind. Apparently, I did not start motoring for a couple of months and they say it was vessels milk that fuelled me up. So off I went into life’s adventures and all the time bombs were dropping and anything like normal life was a memory or, in my case, an unknown I was hard to feed and not moving through the normal infancy milestones. My movements and hand control were those of a spastic,  Mother told me. These days she would have used the word Cerebral Palsy correctly, of course. 

No wonder I have lived for 80 years as a glass half full, give it a go, strong-minded    kind of man. I was forever equipped to struggle and survive. But if ever there was a choice between the easy and the hard way ahead, guess I tend to choose the hard way.