During the summer/early autumn of 1954, I was unfortunately run over by a large wagon that stopped on top of me, wrapping my boyish body around the main-shaft drive-axel and leaving me in a critical state by the time I arrived in Batley Hospital with twenty-two of my twenty-four ribs broken, a lung puncture, two broken legs, two broken arms, and a damaged spine. For nine months I remained in hospital; the first three weeks existing in a semi-conscious state between the living and the dead. The following nine months would witness my legs being broken and reset over fifty times, and upon leaving the hospital, I was unable to walk for three years.
Three weeks after I was admitted to hospital following my accident, I fully regained consciousness and stayed conscious. The very first words I heard after I re-entered the world from my state of limbo came from a nearby radio playing a very popular record of the time, ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ by the Ames Brothers. That record of the Ames Brothers came out around the same time that I came out of my coma. I will always hold this song fondly in my heart. I can still faintly hear the song being played 'in the distance' as though it was yesterday and I have tried to incorporate that element of 'distance' for today's listeners.
The song was written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett. The lyrics suggest that this ‘naughty lady’ driving the whole town crazy is an attractive young woman who ‘throws those come-hither glances at every Tom, Dick and Joe’ and when offered some liquid refreshment never says ‘no’, but the last line reveals her to be an infant ‘nine days old’.
Love and peace Bill xxx