It was November 2011 and after experiencing several hospital admissions during the previous 6 years, I once again found myself in yet another hospital bed. This time, I was allocated one in an isolation room, due to my seriously compromised immune system and was feeling distinctly unwell; although probably not that much worse than on previous occasions. I had arrived at St. Thomas’ hospital the day before, in some discomfort. My consultant thought I was suffering from a chest infection, and gave me a prescription for yet another course of antibiotics. I was about to leave when he suddenly change his mind and sent me for a scan. After some quite considerable time and a lot of confusion, there I was in a room with a lovely view of the Houses of Parliament. I was just about to try and have a snooze, after sending the obligatory report to Jan my wife, when in walked my consultant with four of his trainee junior doctors in tow. They all stood at the foot of my bed first looking at me, then at a set of notes, then back at me. There was an unsettling silence. Finally my consultant announced that I had two massive blood clots, one in each of the main arteries leading to my lungs. I just swallowed and took a deep breath. He went on “I don’t think you realize how ill you really are. I think you should have your family around you tonight because I don’t expect you to survive till morning”. It was at this point I thought he must have been talking to someone else who was sitting in the visitor’s chair beside my bed, but when I looked, there was no one there. We exchanged brief pleasantries before they all left the room and closed the door behind them. After a few minutes and with several thoughts racing through my head, I slid down in bed and turned to look back at the visitor’s chair just to check, and there sat Bonkers, a character from my many manuscripts that I had been scribbling down while laying in hospital beds over the years. He sat there with crossed legs, one of his paws leaning on the arm of the chair while resting his head on his paw. “ Don’t look at me,” he said, “he’s not a vet!” I quickly shuffled out of bed, turned around, but he had disappeared. It was at that moment I said to myself “if I ever get out of this place alive, I must get these stories out of my head and into print”. Three weeks later I started on my books.