Page last updated 15 December 2000

Method

Use an ordinary Jelly.  The recipe will specify a quantity of water.  Use only half of this to make up the jelly.  When all the jelly is dissolved allow to cool but not set and make up to the full quantity of liquid by adding milk.  Leave in a cool place to set.

The first time I remember having a milk jelly was when I was in the Children's Ward of the City General Hospital, Sheffield - a few weeks before the Queen's Coronation.  

I had become seriously ill living on Lucozade and not much else.  Every morning I vomited most of it back up in the form of a yellow liquid.  After that I was at home to visitors.  I slept day and night downstairs in a make-shift cot of our two comfortable chairs and the fire was kept going round the clock to keep me warm.  I   think my mother thought I was going to die and looking back I was probably not far from being dead.  I guess one or other of my parents would sleep in a chair near me.

A new invention enabled Doctors to see inside my body - X Ray, and so I was transported off by ambulance to St Helen's Hospital to be put under this frightening black horn.  The immortal words "Breathe in, hold your breathe, thank you!" are in printed on my mind to this day.

The X Ray diagnosed me as having an abscess on my lung probably caused by inhaling a small particle of tooth during a careless extraction.  Although I was promised I could go home the diagnosis meant I was confined to the ward.  I can remember to this day that I was abandoned.  I screamed the place down for what seemed to be hours.  

Someone must have given me a sedative because when I woke up I was in  the Sheffield City General Hospital with my mother at my bedside having brought me a Milk Jelly!  There were these strange tubes coming out of my chest to drain the abscess. 

The windows were always wide open and the birds would swoop down and peck food off our plates.   They were most welcome visitors.