About me

When I was five I went to have my tonsils out — this was an operation nobody bothers with any more, but back then, when the Beatles were young, it was quite normal for children with lots of cold and coughs and bad ear-aches to go into hospital, have their tonsils and sometimes their adenoids out and go home a few days later.

(Tonsils are lymph nodes in the throat.)

I must say, after the operation I stopped having the awful ear-aches that sent me crying onto the landing at 2 am and got me in trouble with my parents. I still remember the feeling of an invisible steel spike being hammered into my ear until I didn’t know what to do with myself.

But while I was in hospital I discovered something strange. I was happily telling myself a story while lying in bed, waiting to go to sleep, when a nurse put her head round the door and asked grumpily what I was doing.

“I’m telling myself a story,” I explained to the poor creature, “It’s about a naughty hamster.”

“Well, stop it and be quiet. You’ll wake the other children.”

I was astonished. Whyever couldn’t I tell myself stories? What else was there to do at night?

Before, when I was sharing a bedroom with my new little brother I had threatened him with horrible things if he dared to interrupt my constant stories. That settled him.

But for some reason, grown-ups didn’t like me telling stories.