When I were a wee lad my favourite uncle was a jolly-faced old gentleman whose name was Sydney.

Actually he was my great uncle and was already knocking on a bit. He’d retired after a lifetime’s servitude of one form or another, but being an active chap he kept his hand in working part-time at the local butcher’s shop.

Let me tell you a bit about Sid so you can get an idea of the kind of guy he was...

I’d been a sickly child having had just about every disease known to man (and a few that weren’t!). In 1955 at the tender age of 3 I caught polio mellitus and ended up in hospital for an extended stay. My left leg suffered the worst of it.

Back in those days those used to isolate polio victims, no matter what their age so I just had to suffer alone in a room missing my parents and my brother. It seemed like an age before I got to see my Mum again.

When they found out I would be allowed visitors, Sid and his wife Sue packed a bag, got on a bus in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire and headed for Newport; they brought me colouring books, pencils and crayons to keep me occupied while I was in hospital. Wasn’t that a nice gesture?

When I was 6 the leg-iron finally came off and low and behold Sid and Sue turned up again; this time they brought me a football and my first watch because now I’d have “Time on my hands” and could learn to kick a ball.

Sid’s kindness knew no bounds. He didn’t have a lot of money, but what he had he was happy to share. I don’t recall him ever arriving without some kind of gift, but he was also a great practical joker.

One evening when I was 9 Sid asked me if my watch had luminous hands; I hadn’t a clue what luminous meant! He patiently explained that if the hands on a watch were luminous, they glowed in the dark. Then he produced a cycle lamp (I’d had a bike for my 9th birthday).

Sid told me that if I laid my watch face up on the bedside table at night and put the cycle lamp on top of it, lens to lens then turned the lamp on, the hands on my watch would be luminous.

Well of course I did as Sid suggested. I did it again the next night and for the next several nights, but did the hands turn luminous? No course not!

I’d got into a tizz with Sid when the hands on my watch hadn’t turned luminous and told him he as wrong. He just chuckled and asked whether I could see the hands of my watch when the light was shinning on them.

Yes of course Uncle.

Well Boy (he always called me ‘Boy’) if you could see the hands they must’ve been glowing in the dark and that’d make ‘em luminous!

The old devil teased me relentlessly over that for years.

While staying with them at their home close to Biggleswade, Sid took me with him to the butcher’s shop where he was doing the odd few hours. I helped sweep up and generally made a nuisance of myself getting in people’s way.

Sid jollied all the customers along, but particularly the younger ladies. There were a few he knew he could tease and one of his ‘chat up’ lines included offering to show them his Old Boner! One or two giggled and said yes, so he whipped it out from behind his apron to great guffaws...

I’ve got Sid’s Old Boner now and here it is for all to see:

This knife must be 100 years old now and is still an amazing tool for boning meat!