Introducing...

I’m continuing the medical theme here today.

This is Toby.

Toby was a male of about 17 or 18 and family history reports that he was probably from Russia or France. Of course there are no guarantees that the whole skeleton belonged to one person but the long bones and the sutures in the skull inform us of his approximate age. The pelvis identifies his gender. All medical students are required a half skeleton though now they are man made and not real ones.

Toby is almost a member of our family. He was purchased as half a skeleton from Adam, Rouilly in the early 1930s for the start of Cousin Bing’s medical degree at the Middlesex Hospital. Albert Vivian (“Bing”) Stevens (he could sing like his namesake) is from my Welsh family. He qualified in 1939, joined up and went straight to France in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Cousin Bing was awarded the Military Cross for a string of acts of bravery recorded in Dunkirk. It was only after he died that we discovered he had also been awarded an OBE for work to alleviate disease during the Bengal famine. He never spoke about it.

After Bing died in 1997, the Imperial War Museum contacted his widow, Margaret, to ask if they might be able to have the personal papers relating to the time in Calcutta.

Next, Toby the skeleton went…

Nostalgia

Oliver Postgate, creater of Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Pogles Wood, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers has died at 83 years old.

My favourites were Pogles Wood, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers.

Ivor the Engine was particularly important for me because he taught me about my quarter Welshness. My paternal granddad came from Port Talbot in South Wales. (Ivor the Engine was set in 'the top left hand corner of Wales.') We holidayed in Wales several times in this period of my youth. When it came to rugby, it was the quarter Welsh bit that mattered. My brother and Dad followed Welsh rugby union very closely and it was going through a golden age. Considered to be one of the greatest rugby teams of all time, the names Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams still bring back memories of take out beer and my brother and Dad roaring at the television.

My favourite character in Ivor the Engine was Idris the Dragon. I think there was some confusion going on in my head. As small children with good eyesight, my sister and I had been carefully trained to spot the Red Dragon and Double Dragon beer signs on the pubs as we drove through Wales on our holidays.

It didn’t, as it happens, have much of an impact on my eventual cultural identity… apart from still enjoying a male voice choir and a pair of fine male thighs!