When I was five I attended La Sagesse, a convent school run by French Sisters, a few hundred yards from the bank. We would start each day with the greeting, ‘Bonjour, Bonne Mère’. This was a happy time of my life, although on one occasion my friend Kenneth Smith and I decided to run away and live, like the Red Indians, in a nearby wood. We stole tins of food and matches, settled under a tree and lit a fire. It started to pour with rain and we decided to give our parents one more chance. The next day we had to go and see Bonne Mère. She gave us each an apple and suggested that we wait until we were older before starting to live like Red Indians.

Our big adventures usually took place in the farm at Dugdale's dairy. There were high beams in the barn and Kenneth and I would dare each other to walk along the beam the length of the barn. It was very foolish, but fortunately neither of us fell and our parents never knew. On Saturday we would often go to one of the two local cinemas, the Lyceum and the Empire. Those were the days of silent films, although the piano played and the music suited the events on the screen. The hero was cheered and the villains booed. Two films in my memory of this time were Chang, about Indian elephants, and Svengali, a frightening film about hypnotism.

While at La Sagesse, I developed a rash and was diagnosed as having scarlet fever. I was immediately taken by ambulance to Fazakerly Fever Hospital and was not allowed home for twelve weeks. The three fever hospitals in Liverpool were kept full with scarlet fever and diphtheria patients. Scarlet fever, now uncommon, is caused by a streptococcal sore throat. My sister Pauline also developed rheumatic fever, now seldom seen in the developed world, which is also a reaction to the streptococcus. Rheumatic fever often caused damage to the heart muscle and scarring of the mitral valve. Fortunately, it did little damage to Pauline's heart.