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As a child I was a tomboy, not interested in dolls, wrote Joan Ure. I was happier with the boys, scrambling around in the chalk quarries of the Kent village of Wouldham, near Rochester in Kent, where we lived. My knees still bear the scars of those escapades.
It was wartime (WWII) and my father was a regular in the Royal Navy. Every time he came home on leave a child was born some nine months later. My mother ended up with six children. I was the eldest and at the age of 15 I had to leave school and start work.
One of my earliest jobs was in a haberdashers, McIlroys at Maidstone in Kent. In those days there was a system of wires on pulleys to take the customers' money in a container to a small cage where an assistant removed the money and put in the change to return it to the customer. Because I was good at arithmetic I was the one in the cage.
At the age of 17 I became a pre-student nurse and began proper training at 18, with cap and starched uniform. We were not allowed to be out after 10pm and certainly no boy friends. But I was still a bit independent and, like a lot of other new nurses, fell in love with one of my first patients.
His name was Bob and one of his legs was encased from hip to toe in plaster. When we went to the cinema he had to sit in the end seat with his leg stuck out in the aisle, to the consternation of other cinemagoers stumbling over it in the dark.
But this romance was not to last. Bob's mother was opposed to it and, worse, I had incurred Matron's wrath. I remember being up before her, standing to attention with hands behind back, and being told that I had to stop seeing Bob. In those days you did as you were told or you were out of a job.
Over the course of time I learnt how to be a real nurse, which is when you can clean up a fouled bed and eat a bar of chocolate at the same time.
By the mid-1960's I was working in a hospital for women geriatric patients. Some of these old ladies were quite aggressive but I got on with them quite well and used to carry some of them to and from their bath. At a height of 5ft.4in. I weighed under 8 stone but was very fit.
Throughout her nursing career Joan worked at three hospitals: St Bartholemews (St Barts), Rochester, Kent; Orpington General, Orpington, Kent; and Poole General, Poole, Dorset.
One day I had an opportunity to go on a blind date. I was then 33 but, living a sheltered life in a nurses' home, I was still quite ignorant about men. I was certainly not thinking of getting married. But, some nurses being what they are, said, 'He must be all right because his name is Roderick and he's an industrial chemist.'
So, early one morning when it was still dark, I set off by train (with a lucky nutmeg given to me by one of the nurses) in my best clothes to meet Roderick, who lived about 50 miles away. I got off the train and checked myself over to see if I looked all right.
To my dismay I saw that I was wearing odd stockings. No tights in those days and I had got dressed in the dark so could not see the colour of my stockings. But it was too late.
There was no opportunity to buy another pair of stockings and Roderick (Alan) was already on the platform with his two children, waiting to meet me. The rest of the day went off fairly well and we agreed to write to each other and perhaps meet again.
Our friendship progressed mainly by letter. Our meetings were limited by several things: the fact that we lived 50 miles apart; he (a widower) had two young children to look after; and men were not allowed inside the nurses' home or the hospital. (Imagine what would have happened if they had been?)
After about three months Alan told me we were going to get married. (He was and still is that sort of man). We were married in July 1966 and I immediately became a housewife with two young children.
After the wedding Alan carried me over the threshold (I was still under 8 stone) into the kitchen and said something like, 'I know how to cook but I don't want to interfere with your learning how,' and left me to get on with it. I was horrified because as a nurse 'living-in' I had not had to do any housework or cooking -- everything had been provided.
But, in the fullness of time, I learnt how to cook and even do housework (but the latter is still a task that does not appeal to me).
In due course we had two children of our own, making a family of four, three boys and a girl. Three of these are now married each with two children, giving us six grandchildren.
During our marriage I have still been able to use my nursing experience in caring for others. But sometimes my inability to say no to a request for help gets the better of me and I tend to become overwhelmed by other people's problems.
But I now have Alan to step in and say 'No' for me when it gets a bit too much. (As I have already said, 'He's that sort of man.')
Joan Ure, Leicestershire, 2002
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