THIS column often reminds people of what ware often called 'the good old days', even if many parts of them were perhaps not so good!

For instance, Mrs Alice Cook, of Mealhouse Court, Atherton, has written to me about her days as a patient in a TB hospital in 1932. It was in Rufford, near Southampton, but I am sure that the experience was similar to what must have happened in this area.

She writes: 'Patients sometimes spent several months in hospital, although my stay of 17 weeks was comparatively short. I had visitors on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, but in the isolation hospitals where infectious diseases such as Diptheria, Scarlet Fever, Polio and Smallpox were treated, visiting was not allowed.

'In 1944, my three-years-old son was diagnosed as suffering from Scarlet Fever; the green "fever ambulance" with a nurse in attendance called for him and took him away from me, struggling and crying for me.

'I didn't see him again until his discharge five or six weeks later, but each Saturday I would go halfway to the hospital drive, to a small building, where I would leave sweets and a toy for him, and a nurse would tell me of his condition.

'I have often thought of the distress of children at a time when they were most vulnerable. Thank heavens, today this is unheard of - parents often stay the night on a camp bed alongside the child patient.'