I remember everything I was wearing. White lacy tights. Vest and pants, white. Fuschia pink paisley dress. The camel coat with the furry collar, and the T- bar shoes. I had a silver necklace with a picture of a Victorian lady made out of butterflies wings, which I had swapped some glass beads for. I always did have an eye for the unusual. My hair was shortish and messy, growing out an ill - judged Mia Farrow Crop. But I felt pretty, and pretty cool. I had recently decided I might like to stay ten forever, though I didn't have much longer to go .

When I looked at myself in the mirror wearing just my vest, I thought my shoulders were too square and angular. Girls should have gently sloping shoulders, like a Rubens or a Renoir. All the girls had plump cheeks and pillowy lips, and I had a solemn little face, and was slightly goofy. But suddenly there was Twiggy, and it was O.K.

The fuschia pink dress used to belong to Jane, but it didn't fit her anymore, so it came down to me. Jane had a Dad who appeared one day, and took her on a spree. They came back with armfulls of carrier bags, and Jane went to try things on, while her Dad, a grizzled little bearded moonfaced Irishman , gave us a rendition of " It's a long way to Tipperary " .

Jane came down looking super - cool, in the paisley dress, with its fabric plait that encircled the neck, and hung down at the back almost to the waist. She had new purple tights, and lime - green suede loafers, with  a heavy silver bar across the front, and thick crepe soles. A little white cardi completed the look. And also a bra.

Secretly I was really happy that Jane had grown into a teenager, and couldn't squeeze her boobs into that dress anymore. I couldn't have dreamed a better dress than that one. It was so sixties. And today it was December the 18th 1968 - only a week until Christmas ! A week until Christmas, and we were going to a party in London. I was wearing my best clothes. We had to get up pretty early, it  was still dark when we set off in the minibus.

There was me, my younger brother, my Mum and Dad, and eight other kids. My big brother couldn't come because he had to stay behind to do exams. Some of the older ones were travelling by train, and would meet us there. The party was to be hosted by the G.P.O. Was it in the glamorous new Post Office Tower? I never found out.

Driving along the icy roads, it was just getting light, but  quite misty. Everyone was excited, laughing and joking, and chatting about the day, and C - R - A - S - H  we hit a massive cement lorry, a yellow one. I remember that. I saw it coming. I blacked out for a while, and then all I remember, is sitting at the back of the bus with my legs stretched out in front of me, and the right one was hideously distorted, and I couldn't move. There was wailing and moaning coming from everywhere. It was horrific and I cried out, " I don't want to be a cripple. " over and over again. And I didn't. Because you see I was a dancer and a trapeze- artist. I was Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze and I would have men fighting over me.

Ambulances and Police cars came. A Fire- Engine had to use lifting gear to free one boy who was trapped under the wheels of the lorry. The force of the impact had ripped open our bus like a can of beans. Witnesses said it was like a battlefield, with children strewn all over the road.
  If only I could move this leg. I needed to get help, I needed to tell someone there was something badly wrong with it. I kept trying to move, but then, but then......I don't remember what happened, maybe some morphine happened. I must have drifted in and out of consciousness, but the next thing I remember is, they cut off my white lacy tights! They took my silver necklace, and my beautiful pink paisley dress with the plait at the back. But then there was the pain, the most excruciating pain, and they were doing things to me with tubes and needles, and where was my Mum. I don't want to be a cripple.
 
I woke up in a Hospital ward. Nurses  swished back and forth. My right leg was lying in a rigid hammock all bandaged up, and there were weights on the end of it. There was a sort of trapeze contraption hanging above the bed, and I hurt like hell. A big Trinidadian Nurse said to me, " Do you waant  e byed paan? " I didn't understand her. A few minutes later I peed the bed. I didn't know the protocol about these things. I felt the warm trickle then the cold dampness. The Trinidadian Nurse was not well pleased. "I arksed you if you waanted e byed paan, now you wet youself! " I didn't know what a bedpan was, I didn't know how to go to the toilet with your leg strung up, and I didn't know how to ask for a nurse. This was all pretty new territory for me, and there was no-one there to help me with these things.

There were other children on the ward, with Adenoids, and Tonsilitis, who had parents who visited with toys and soothing ice-cream and love and tenderness. But there was nobody to comfort me. A nurse would come and give me a painful injection into my hip or my buttock. She would take my temperature, measure my blood-pressure, and then go. I remember the bitter Irish Nun, who told me, " Y'd bettr sit uhp or y'll get a bluhd cloht n' duy. " Which is tricky when you have one leg in traction, and a broken collar-bone, and only one arm to pull yourself up in the bed. But mostly, what a frightening thing to say to a child who is already clearly distressed.

I drifted in and out of pain. I just wanted to sleep. I don't know how much time passed, a few days I think. But one day , a strange clergyman came in a black coat. He smiled weakly at me and he sat down on a chair beside my bed. A Nurse put a screen around us. He said, "Hello, I'm Father Whatever." and squeezed my hand uninvited.  " Grace, your Mother is badly injured in another ward, and your Father's dead. Would you like to say a prayer for him? "
" Yes , please God can you bring him back ?"
But the clergyman said I would have to be strong for my Mother.

The Police came while I was semi - conscious and proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about the accident. Had I seen the Cement Lorry? Was it going very fast? Were we ? I really couldn't remember much, or even think very clearly, drugged up as I was. Every now and then, the dull - witted Janitor would come and leer at me, and leaning on his broom he'd say, " Are you titless? Are you titless?
Even after I'd worked out that he wasn't referring to my chest, I still didn't much fancy being tickled by a strange and slightly flaky fellow.

My school class came to visit me, and looked at me pityingly, not knowing what to say. My dance teacher came with a bottle of cologne covered in a black crocheted poodle. She said it was a shame I had broken my leg, because I could never be a professional dancer. I was not a Sugar-Plum Fairy kind of dancer, in pastel pinks and pointe shoes. I did Modern Ballet, all Twyla Tharp and Martha Graham. We danced barefoot, and wore black leotards. Once I was doing an amazing lift with the dance teachers' husband, quite an honour. I was giving it my all, stretching my legs out as far and as high as they would go. Afterwards he took me to one side, and he said," Could you please not dig your pubic bone into my back." I crept away, mortified. They organised for some dancers from the Ballet to visit me in Hospital, but that just made it feel worse.

My little brother came with Aunty Mary. It was good to see him, and he said his poorly tooth was feeling better. I don't know how it was for my brothers back at the Children's Home. They were like orphans too now. Father Christmas came, but that was my worst Christmas ever. All smashed up, no family, no friends and no cheer. Matron gave me two roomy dresses with matching big pants she had made specially for me. She felt sorry for me, and she knew what was to come, and why I would need them.
A new girl came and occupied the bed next to mine. She was about my age, and her Mum would come in and bring special food for her, and little gifts to amuse her. One night there was a baby, crying and crying inconsolably. My neighbour said, " Shall we call the Nurse? " So we rang the bell and the Nurse came over, and she said, "There's a little moite in thire, foive munths old. She's been beaten black and bleue boi hur fahther. She's two broken airms and a fractured skhull, so don't be complainin'." Well that told us. There were some hard life lessons in there, and I learned them all alone. And I knew then that I had to be strong for my Mother, and I should not complain when things got tough.

One day, they wheeled my bed out of the ward and across the corridor to the ward opposite, which seemed to be full of very ancient women with no teeth, calling out, and grasping the bed bars with their gnarly hands. It scared me. Eventually they manoeuvred my bed into a space and put the brakes on, and there was my Mum. But she was the saddest version of my Mum I had ever seen. She looked so broken and vulnerable. She didn't look like someone who could make things better. We couldn't even hug. We both had legs in traction. She had fractured both femurs, and one kneecap was so shattered, they just had to remove it. The conversation was understandably stilted. It was hard to be chatty when the bottom had completely dropped out of your world. I left there feeling even more lonely than before. Nothing would ever be the same again.

After a while though, a kind of routine was established, and Hospital life became just life. An occupational therapist came and introduced me to really boring things like needlepoint, and weaving useless stools out of nasty nylon webbing. But I was happy with pencils and paper, drawing fashion models, and weird creatures.

The bed-baths continued. The injections continued. The wounds were dressed and eventually, about thirty stitches were removed, and the nurse asked me if I wanted to keep them, but I don't know what happened to the little jar she put them it, but I have got through life without them.

One day someone in a different uniform came. Someone who needed to measure me for a special calliper and special shoes I would have to wear, in order to be able to walk. I wasn't allowed to put any weight on the leg. So she measured my legs and she measured my feet, and I didn't see her again for a couple of weeks. Then she appeared one day, carrying a frightening iron contraption and the most hideous shoes they could possibly have created. It wasn't a pair of shoes because they weren't matching. They were dog - poo brown flat lace-ups. One was attached to the calliper by a metal bar through the heel. The other had a bizarre kind of iron rocking-horse device on the bottom, which rocked when I walked and brought me up to the height of the other leg, which had a big weight on the bottom. So it was time to try them on, and to finally try walking. About two months in all we had stayed in that Hospital. A long time for a dancer/ trapeze artist to be bedridden.

It was a scary business. The calliper had straps and buckles everywhere, and a padded leather collar at the top, which sat in my groin, and a leather brace over the knee to keep it straight.
Then the rocking- horse shoe went on the other foot and they had to be laced up really tight. I felt like the crippled blind girl that always stood outside the sweetshop, and wore the exact same kind of shoes.

My muscles were very wasted from lack of use, so my little legs were very thin. I wore the special dress and big pants Matron had made me, and of course they had to be big to fit over the calliper. The Nurses helped me to take those first faltering steps, but it would be a long time before I could return to the Big Top.