Who's the youngest and the oldest D-i-Yer on here?

Oh, I do, hearing all the sombre reporting of the king's deat on the radio. Then the coronation for which (among other things) we had bought a television to watch. I was quite youg, about seven.

We lived in Brockley, SE4, then. I was 5 and we bought a TV, 9" black and white, to watch the coronation. The new queen actually drove past our house and we waved from the balcony. Tommy Steele did the same most days, much more exciting :-)

I was two-and-a-quarter. My mother wrapped me up nice and warm and wheeled me in my push chair to watch the funeral cortège.

I don't remember a thing about it. Fortunately I didn't have to because the Daily Mirror photographer took a picture of me in my pushchair on the route and it was on the front page the next day.

That might just be a tiny exaggeration. It might be that the photographer captured a general view of the thousands and thousands of people lining the route and my mother might then have worked out which small cluster of lithographic dots might have been us, but I couldn't possibly comment.

I consider having been wheeled out to pay my respects to that late monarch probably influenced my personal decision to wheel myself out this time and join the crowds in Hyde Park for the most recent one. No Daily Mirror photographer this time, only selfies.

Nick

We have so many wars…take your pick…

I saw his funeral on TV.

That reads as though Tommy Steele waved from your balcony. :-)

You are Adrian Mole and I claim my £5 :-)

I am 78

Can’t go back that far, but in 1959 we were marched across the playing field adjacent to my Primary School in Chiswick to the edge of what most still called The Great West Road , from there we waved at President Eisenhower going past in an open top Rolls. Later research to pinpoint the date has shown he requested an open vehicle and the Government had to borrow one off a businessman as the official car pool only had saloons. Often when people used to ask my age but I didn’t want to be too precise I used to reply ,old enough to have ridden on the Trolleybuses but not the Trams. For a decade or more though younger people have queried “What’s a Trolleybus?”.

GH

On 24/06/2026 12:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I have just tested my oxygen level and it is 98, but I am sat in a chair using a keyboard. If I walk uphill I get out of breath very quickly and have to either slow right down and keep going or stop to get my breath back and then carry on until I have to stop again.

Almost 9 years ago I had what the medical records call a TIA. Effectively a short-lived stroke. I collapsed on the bathroom floor partway through my morning wash and shave when I lost control of the right side of my body. But over he next minute or two I gradually recovered enough to haul myself back on my feet and I stumbled back to the living room where my wife took one look at me and dialled 999. The ambulance arrived surprisingly quickly afterwards and I was quickly assessed then helped into the ambulance, and the phone call ahead meant that I was wheeled immediately into the stroke unit where there were a few more tests before I was given anti-coagulant injections and put to bed to rest. I had more injections about 4 hours later and then went to sleep. When I woke up the following morning I felt completely back to normal. During the day I was wired up to a couple of machines, then kept under observation for another 24 hours before being discharged home with an appointment to have a lot more diagnostic tests.

A long story short, the TIA was caused by Atrial fibrillation which overnight had formed a soft clot in the heart and being active the next morning had dislodged it and it had been pumped around my body. The bit that arrived in my brain actually worked its way through thanks to the anticoagulant injections but the bits that ended up in my lungs stayed there. The artery that goes into the lungs divides into a branch to each, and each of the branches then divides into three smaller arteries, and in each of these one of the three is still blocked by a clot. So a third of my lungs have no circulation and are effectively non functional, my heart has to work harder to get blood through fewer routes through the lungs so I now have an enlarged heart.

I was subjected to various things to try to get rid of the AF, none fully successful. The final one before they decided I would have to live with it was where they gave me an injection to knock me out, then stopped my heart, then restarted it with a defibrillator with the intention of the electrical discharge destroying the rogue nerve in my heart which was responsible for the AF. I was assured that this was a routine process. Most patients had their rhythm restored by the third attempt, and if the third attempt failed to restart the heart, they would increase the power for the fourth attempt and that would be successful. When I came round afterwards, I had a huge electrical burn across my chest. Apparently the fourth attempt also failed, the fifth at the highest recommenced power didn't either, and the sixth one was at the highest output possible from the machine (hence the burn) but it did restart my heart. Over the years since I have had to have annual tests with MRI scans, timed walking trials, electrocardiogram tests, ECGs and blood tests. At the first tests I was told that the AF was improved, in that it happened now and again and not continuously, but I am now on anticoagulant tablets for the rest of my life to prevent a repeat of any clot formation. I was told that normally, the treatments would either slowly remove the clots in my lungs and I would then be fully back to normal, or there would be a repeat, and if it didn't kill me there was only one hospital in the country with the skills and specialised equipment to remove clots from deep in the lungs.

Typically I did neither. After the sixth annual review I was told by the consultant that I was one of the rare cases where I was almost entirely stable. My walking distance over a timed 6 minutes was almost exactly the same (+ or - 5 metres), my electrocardiograms and ECGs were almost identical. I was told that there was no point in the hospital continuing to monitor me, and I was discharged. So I just carry on regardless. I know one day my enlarged heart will give out, but it could have been worse as the electrical burn on my chest showed. Every day above ground is therefore a good day. I was 78 in March.

:-)

My dad was very impressed with Tommy's car but I can't remember the model.

just changef the pull light switch in the bathroom - and yes, I turned off the supply breaker.

There's quite a well-known publicity picture of Tommy Steele lounging against the side of a white Ford Zephyr but I don't know if it actually belonged to him.

I lived in Sunbury-on-Thames in those days and quite a few famous people lived around that area. Tommy Steele lived in nearby Hampton Wick. I was very confused when I bumped into the actor Richard Vernon once, near some shops in Molesey because I regularly watched children's tv and by rights he should have been in Brighton with his family and their new French au-pair. [1]

Graffiti is nothing new because you could recognise Adam Faith's house by the messages of teenage lust scrawled all over it. And even though Dicky Valentine was more of my parents' generation, on my walk to school, I always peered through the hedge outside his house to see if I could spot him. I never did.

Nick [1]Such a shock to this young boy that I remember it still and by the way, the first gramophone record I bought with my own money was Acker Bilk's recording of the theme tune to the series.

Different issues: same sort of story. So9metimes they find out what's wrong and fix it. Sometimes they are completely baffled.

I lived a village or two over from Eric Clapton for the first 15 years of my life. Never saw him, never met him.

Ditto Barnes Wallis. And Petula Clark. And the Tyrell racing team.

Much more exciting were the V bombers making roof top approaches to the 'unmarked secret' airfield just down the rad where William of Occam was born.

Ada Lovelace used to live down the road 100 years ago. Her house was bought by Tommy Sopwith.

I recognise those references, Ada's house is now a hotel and is hosting a village picnic on Sunday.

But how many prime ministers :)

Ditto

Six stone (with the jabs)

Same, but overdid it a fortnight ago and have a pig of a blister under my big toe.

Indeed it is.

Lovely venue.