Surgeon’s Notebook

Memory, neuroscientists tell us, is fallible. It is a dynamic process whereby each time we remember something, it will be changed. Our first memories are probably even less reliable, but I think mine is of Christmas 1953, when I was three. My mother was German and we celebrated Christmas in the German way. An English Christmas is a dull affair in comparison, with presents handed out by underslept parents on a cold and drab Christmas morning, around a tree decorated with electric lights. German Christmas would start on the first Advent Sunday with my mother making a wreath of fir branches and red ribbons, with four red candles. On each Saturday night before the four Advent Sundays we would clean our shoes and leave them outside the front door. In the morning we would find them magically filled with nuts and tangerines (a rare treat in the 1950s). St Nicholas would visit on St Nicholas’ Eve, leaving a sack of sweets and fruit on the doorstep. And every day we would open another door on an Advent calendar that dated back to my mother’s childhood in the 1920s, which had somehow survived the war. Christmas was celebrated on Christmas Eve with a real fir tree decorated with real candles and lametta. My main Christmas present in 1953 was an antique milking stool, which I am looking at as I write. I remember sitting on it — at least I think I do — 64 years ago, overwhelmed with joy at the sight of the Christmas tree and the fire burning in the stone fireplace of the 16th-century house we lived in at the time.

I retired from working full-time for the NHS two years ago but I continue to work in my hospital a few hours each week, mainly teaching the trainee surgeons.