When I was at the women’s hospital they used to have these things and they had a catheter in. And one day one of the women said to me ‘Nurse, did you put my catheter in yesterday?’ And I said ‘No it wasn’t me.’ So she said ‘Ooh well thank God for that. Because it was in the wrong place. And if you can’t handle that, what are you going to do when you get a fellah?!’

And I must admit, in those days we were all very green. We had no knowledge of different sexes and things like that. And when you went on the men’s ward you soon got a skin. Cause they used to make all sorts of remarks to you. One of the men asked me if I’d go to the pictures with him when he went out. I met him in Leeds outside the cinema there. And I nearly died! Because he was… when you talk about spivs… he was absolutely. He had the black and white shoes on… what they called ‘brothel creepers’, and a really loud jacket. And a trilby. But it wasn’t just an ordinary one. And I thought ‘Oh my God. What am I in for?’ But he was very good. But I didn’t go out with him again.

And we had one man who came back from theatre and he was put into a cot because he was a bit restless. And the Sister told me to go and do something for him. And I went and I had to shout for help! He’d got me over the side of the cot. He’d tried to sort of pull me down into the cot with him. He didn’t know what he was doing, poor soul. And he came out with this ‘beautiful’ language…

One of the male nurses, Jack, had a motorbike and he said ‘Do you want to come for a ride with me?’ And when I was standing waiting for him, outside the hospital, this man came up to me and said ‘Have you got the time?’ And I said ‘Well, there’s a clock up there. It’s half past twelve.’ So I told this to Jack when he came and he said ‘He wasn’t asking you the time. He thought you were a prostitute.’ Cause I didn’t have a clue about things like that. Anyway we went on this bike ride and we went up to the Chevin. And we came round a corner and there was a load of gravel. And he went straight off, fortunately onto a grass bank, and I went right over his head. But we weren’t damaged. We got back to the hospital all right.