3/3 and 33 years

Today it’s the 3rd day of the 3rd month and exactly 33 years since I started my Midwifery training. I was 21 years old we’d been married a month. We were living in a leaking loft flat in Princes Street Durham.

 I distinctly remember it was a freezing cold day, in fact there was 4” of snow under the frost. Tom and I had done a recce the day before. We knew the 20 mile  journey took half an hour, but added in rush hour and first day nerves I decided to set off at 07:30am for a 09:00am start.

The Ford Fiesta - Notoriously bad at working in very cold conditions. 
This little red car had been lent to us by my dads sister, Aunty Pat. 

I scraped off the ice and snow, put the key into the ignition, pulled out the choke and tried to start the engine - nothing. I tried twice more (I could hear Dad’s voice in my head saying “don’t flood the engine”.)

Starting to feel a bit desperate, I noticed Brian our landlord getting into his car and asked him for a jump start - yes, it started. I sat for a while warming the car up - or trying to - before sliding down the hill to the town centre.  It stalled again at the bottom of the hill. Brian came to the rescue for a second time.

I was off down the A1, the air coming through the vent was freezing. I was gone about 10 miles when the car started to lose power. You can imagine what was going through my head. Fortunately there was a slip road/junction that I limped off with a small village in sight, I putt…putt….putted to a juddery halt in front of a phone box.

I opened the bonnet to see steam pouring out of the radiator and the dip stick was literally boiling in it’s tube. I was in an a bit of a panic by this time. I phoned Dad who was 90 miles away, “Daaaad” - and explained what happened. In a short time, he told me he’d sort it and I’d to get myself a taxi to the hospital. 

Another stroke of luck - there was a chap getting into his car across the road, I dashed over and asked him for a lift. What was I doing? I’d no idea who he was, but he took me to the door of the hospital. I did offer him some money but he wouldn’t take it.

 I dashed in and quickly made it to the room I needed to be in with 2 minuets to spare. I won’t go into full details, but the senior tutor retorted “you’re late” and wasn’t really very pleasant for my 18 months training - but I should have realised that when she asked me “what sort of contraception was I going to use” when I went for interview a few months before!

The set I was in were lovely and very supportive, but I think only 2 of the 8 of us are still currently in the job we are trained to do.

I took the train back to Durham after that first day to find Dad had got me a courtesy car parked on the street and had got the Fiesta towed to a garage to get fixed. Basically I’d melted the pistons to the cylinder block, or something like that. What a star my dad was.


Today I’m having an MRI scan. I was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy in early February. It is a lot better, but they are just checking me out to make sure there’s nothing else going on as I had double vision last year and some ridiculously high blood pressure readings. I wonder what my blood pressure readings would have been on 3/3/86? (laughs).


Apologies for the uninspiring shot. 

Late edit: I replaced the 'scan in the van' shot with these pretty primula.