I suppose reading Tom Glassey's blog, I remembered my visits (as an escort not a patient) to the Cardiothoracic Centre in Broadgreen, Liverpool.

Broadgreen Hospital.

Christmas 2003.

Robert Owen House.

Me and a house full of women. They were all well into their 60s except one who was around 30 and more than 10 years younger than myself. We got on.

Her partner was in intensive care.

"A split aorta. Brought about from too much smoking and partying".

She was quite frank and open about that. I think she was too quick and ready with the answer, as if she had become too used to it by now.

Although I don't remember me actually ever asking the question.

She went to visit him one evening and I never saw her again.

Unusually, no one else in the House was from the Isle of Man. I had been there before, accompanying my mother for various tests and operations, so I knew the form. This time was the big one though - a triple heart by-pass.

The others were staying in the House whilst their husbands received treatment of one kind or another, just a hundred yards or so away. For some, things were not looking too good.

We were all sat in front of the television. Coronation Street or was it Crossroads? Not one word of the wooden dialogue was sinking in.

"Where are you from?" one lady asked me, in an attempt to break the silence and spark conversation, perhaps escape the collective thoughts for a moment.

I replied "The Isle of Man . . . . . and you?"

"Well, I grew up in Liverpool but we have moved over to The Wirral now"

Other than football, I know nothing of the city and all I could think of was The Beetles. I felt like an enthusiastic American tourist as I asked her if she had ever seen them. Her reply surprised me:

"Oh yes, many a time, as a teenager we often used to visit the Cavern in our lunch hour".

And that was it!

Suddenly the atmosphere changed as the company, all strangers to each other until now, excitedly joined in the conversation. It turned out that the ladies were all from the area and during the early 1960s they had worked in various Liverpool city insurance offices and banks. They had more or less grown up with the Beetles and the Mersey Beat bands of the era. And so for the next half hour or so, I felt privileged to listen to the reminiscences as they re-lived the years of their teenage and early 20s.

Who was their favourite Beetle and why? Yep, they knew them personally alright.

It wasn't just the music but the latest fashions, the politicians, the scandals, the wonder of television, Habitat, train travel and the Modern Art movement.

The conversations were spontaneous and the scene would have made an excellent television documentary. A snapshot of being a teenager in the 1960s.

The room seemed to explode as so many wonderful stories came out from the time when these women were all young and carefree and living those exciting years. For those too brief minutes they were laughing teenage girls again.

And then suddenly the reality of the present, four decades later, struck the room like a big black cloud. One by one they said their cheerios and left, as visiting time arrived.

I was left in the room with just the one lady. Her mind focussed well beyond the television as her eyes gently watered. There was no visiting time for her as her husband was at that moment in the operating theatre.

"I went to the Isle of Man a couple of times when I was 19. Port St Mary." She waited. I listened to the short silence.

I was hoping for a bit of history. Perhaps I would know people she had known and it was clear that she had met someone special from the Island all those years ago. I wanted to know more.

"I didn't go back again" she said, "I married a Doctor from home instead."

I wasn't sure just what to say but it seemed she was just going back over a few points in her life. Anyway she looked at me to see if I wanted to know more, or if I was even interested. I was of course and glad to be there, allowing her thoughts to flow.

"This was supposed to be our time." She said sadly.

It turned out that she had married in her early twenties and had had her family in the first few years. She had devoted her life to her children and by the time they had left home and had families of their own, it was time to look after her parents, and then her husband's parents. She had made sure they were cared for and looked after, and it seemed that this was a particularly stressful time of her life. Eventually the parents died.

Together with her husband, after giving their lives to others, they could now finally relax for once and look forward to the rest of their lives together. This had been just a few months previously.

"This was supposed to be our time," she said again.

Some weeks ago her husband had gone to the doctor with chest pains. It was lung cancer and he had been given just months to live.

I looked at her. I gave her my best dead pan look. Perhaps some questions can't be hidden.

"No," she said "He never smoked a cigarette in his life."