I don't think I'm particularly squeamish as far as the sight of blood goes. I could watch any episode of ER or St Elsewhere or M*A*S*H without feeling queasy.

But, in three of the four instances of actual fainting that I've ever experienced, descriptions of blood or of unpleasant medical procedures were to blame.

The first time I was maybe seven or so. We were still living in the Co-Op flat. It was a Sunday. I know it was a Sunday because my Uncle Brian was doing the talking and Sunday was the day Uncle Brian visited. He'd bring a dozen eggs and give me two shillings (later half a crown) so I was always glad to see him.

He lived on a farm (hence the eggs) but he wasn't a farmer. He'd once been a farm hand and he just ended up 'staying on' in the farm house. The eggs stopped when he married, very late in life, the woman who, rumour had it, had given birth to his child decades earlier. The 'rumour' came from my Dad, and the inference was that Uncle Brian had behaved rather shabbily about it. Anyway, she went on to marry someone else and had a whole lifetime with him but, on becoming a widow, she and my uncle somehow found each other again. I doubt it was through Friends Reunited. Actually, she'd only been sixteen miles away all the time, so it's not as though he'd tracked her to the other side of the world, but some imperative drew them back together.

But that's got nothing to do with the fainting.

My Uncle Brian was describing, with some relish, a road accident that had happened on the Rathmell bottoms road. He hadn't personally discovered the overturned Land Rover, but he'd been talking to the man who had and was regaling my Mum & Dad with the details. One minute I was listening to "....and there was blood all over the inside..." next thing, the red and green floral swirls on the carpet were rushing towards me, and my Dad's voice was being funneled from somewhere in the distance: "...she's white as a sheet..." Then, just as suddenly, everything coming back into focus and my Mum was next to me telling me to put my head between my knees.

The other times were nothing to do with my Uncle Brian at all.