Letter from Australia

John, I thought you would like to know that I had planned a three week holiday in Scotland from 28th August to 12th Sept. Barb and I spent the night of the 27th August at the Red Deer Innkeepers hotel in Cumbernauld. In the early hours of the 28th (my 73rd birthday) I was rushed to the Monklands Hospital in Airdrie with a gangrenous gall bladder. The pain was something else. 
 

The man across from me would slip out with the young man in the adjacent bed for a fag . It was " Hey Andy, son, ye fancy gone out fur a wee puff?" "Naw ? Later, eh?" And the visitors, little ladies with their gaberdine coats, some with their noses nearly touching their chins like they had forgotten to put their teeth in.

I could hear them all whispering, " see that yin in the next bed, he's an Australian." And as they passed my bed on the way out they would shyly look at me and say " Sorry aboot yur illness and sae far frum hame"

Alistair lives in Merimbula/Tura beach in NSW Australia but is originally from Garrowhill