Meningitis and more angelic intervention

Now this isn't going to hurt at all

Le marché de Roanne 1968

In 1969, aged 15, I bade farewell to my family and set off on my first foreign adventure, together with other teenagers of a similar age. We flew from Birmingham to Orly Airport and then enjoyed a sight-seeing trip for a couple of hours in Paris. We then boarded a packed train at the Gare de Lyon and, after a very long journey, arrived around midnight in Roanne. 

It was a school exchange trip, scheduled to last three weeks over the Easter holidays. New friends, new experiences, French food. Perhaps even pick up a little bit of French. What could possibly go wrong?...


One week later, it's Saturday. Me voici, seated in the Café des Promenades, chatting with une demoiselle vraiment enchantante. Rich, curling tresses of dark brown hair; a mysterious (or was it mystified?) gaze fringed by super-exotic eyelashes; tziganesque earrings; full, Gallic pouting lips... a regular Carmen. 

Suavely (picture Johnny English), I ordered aniseed cocktails to toast the future of our little entente cordiale. Alas, my outre-Manche musings were interrupted by my French penfriend's reminder that maman's lunch awaited us. I bade farewell to Carmen with a time-honoured bise and made to get up from our table.

I could hardly stand. Perhaps Cupid's dart had scored a direct hit below the belt. No, something even more serious was happening. Severe pain meant I could barely walk back to 19 rue Raspail where my French family had a patisserie and bar. 

'Des courbatures', suggested my penfriend. This was small consolation, even had I known what it meant. (It's muscle ache, after unaccustomed exercise).

His mother was worried and asked me

'Mais qu'est-ce que tu as, Peter?' 

I groped unsuccessfully for the word 'flu' in French. Finally, I tried a bit of franglais:

'L'influenzie, peut-être', I ventured, doubtfully. I felt I was losing my grip.

Her mystified expression disappeared when her son explained to her:

'Il veut dire la grippe, maman'.

I went to bed with un grog (hot milk and cognac) and as I undressed, I began to shiver so violently and for so long that I thought my teeth might drop out. I have only the dimmest memories of a catatonic night of chronic headache. The next morning, I was shaken by Michel ('Jojo') who had been brought in because he had the best English of the French boys.

'Peter. You want that I send for the doctor?' 

I made a mute, nodding movement, noting the French construction he had employed in his English question. I have no more memories from that day apart from a sensation of being wheeled along endless, dark corridors. I was later told that they had contacted the police in order to find a doctor. It was Easter Sunday, after all. He immediately ordered an ambulance to take me straight to hospital.  

La table de nuit. L'hôpital de Roanne PB 1969.

I was to spend several weeks in Roanne Hospital. The picture on the left is of a drawing I made of my bedside table. The vessel with the long neck reminds me I was still confined to bed and was unable to get up go to the loo for most of my stay. The days were fairly uneventful apart from meals, bed-making (with me in the bed), and occasional visits. One morning, I gazed in puzzled, Woosterian innocence as the head doctor arrived followed by a cohort of sober-looking assistants (read, dastardly accomplices). I should have suspected something was amiss when he said:

'Now this isn't going to hurt at all...'

I was manhandled into a fetal position, and while the burliest of the gang held me fast, the chief druid administered his awful rite. A lumbar puncture. Look it up, if you have the nerve...

My beautiful, eldest sister B arrived one day to accompany me back to Blighty. She was a fully qualified nurse and reasonably happy in French, having lived for eight years in Aleppo, Syria. We travelled in a sleek Citroën ambulance back up to Orly, lunching en route on the banks of the mighty Loire river. 

During my letters home, I had once noted that the one thing I was really, seriously missing in France was a 'fry up'. My wonderful mother duly obliged for my first meal once I reached home, at tea time. Tomato sauce included. 

Home at last and back to civilisation (humour britannique, mes amis).

I never knew then that I would later spend 12 years in a second career giving lectures and guided tours in French. My groups were fascinated by this account of my first trip to la Patrie. I always finished by thanking them profusely and explaining that all my tours for French visitors were offered entirely free of charge.** French doctors and nurses had, after all, saved my life.*

But I should always be thankful to mon ange gardien. D.G. 

*PS: Some years prior to my illness, my nephew contracted meningitis while he was a baby. He survived with serious brain damage and partial paralysis but died a few years later. The cemetery where he and his parents are buried has a fine view of Ben Nevis nearby. RIP.

**PPS: The French were generously and unfailingly gallant in appreciating this example of the celebrated humour Britannique.

PPS: Before I left Roanne, I was presented with a lavishly illustrated volume entitled Département de la Loire. The photo at the beginning of this post is copied from the book and shows Le marché devant l'hôtel de ville de Roanne.