25-04-2018, 07:51 PM
6053
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
I am sorry JEM, for getting JRJ so quickly, all that typing.
You have struck a rich vein of my early days on a lively council estate, back in the 1950’s.
My escape was to watch old films & save my pocket money
(3d per week) to buy comics.
My heroes were in there,
Terry Thomas, Jimmy Edwards, JRJ, Lord Snooty & the Bash street kids.
I was taken ill aged 7, it was touch & go for I had developed sepsis. My mother told me when I was aged 40 that she had signed the forms agreeing for my arms to be amputated.
I don’t know what she planned to tell me after I had come round after the general anaesthetic.
But it was not my destiny to become armless.
(It’s my arms so I can joke about it now)
Anyway, on the subject of JRJ, I began to recover after the operation. My arms were intact.
Being nosey, I recognised the person in the bed opposite me was Jimmy Edwards (before he was outed).I called over to him that I, was a big fan & read his japes in the comics every week.
Heb beckoned me over & gave me a signed photograph.
“I’m off on tour with Alma Cogan & Lenny the Lion as soon as I get out of here”
Many years later, my mother was in hospital, gravely ill after suffering an aneurysm. It was 1999.
I visited her every day. She was very confused and not making sense but she suddenly recalled the time I was in the hospital, the same ward she added.
“Robert, do you remember that you were in hospital in 1955.”
“I remember there was a funny old boy in the bed opposite you who thought he was Jimmy Edwards.
“I knew something was odd because he signed the photo BERT BROWN” she added.
She died in 2011 & I miss her still.