Our Trip to London

The subject of my home/school digital report is my twin sister and I going to London in order to attend an outpatients appointment at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

This involved careful planning with regard to transport and as it is a hospital that treats children from all over the world. Scheduled appointments, our scarce and must be attended. So we got up early and my dad drove us to Belfast airport in order to catch our flight to London. 


Great Ormond Street Hospital has a very interesting and distinguished history. Here are some facts that I researched.

G.O.S.H. opened in 1851 which is the Victorian era as tens of thousands of children under 10 were dying due to lack of medical treatment. In its early years it saved the lives of children from nearby slums who were dying previously from minor illnesses. The hospital needed more money and the fame of many famous authors became involved in saving the hospital. The first one was Charles Dickens who gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol to increase the number of children it could treat.
I find this an interesting coincidence as I took part in a Newry production of this book in November 2016 with the Sheridan Stage School. I played one of the workhouse children who could've been based on stories about slum children who's lives were being saved. Through out its history as I said earlier, many famous writers and royals such as Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland and Roald Dahl who wrote many famous stories, my favourite is Matilda. However it most associated with J.M. Barrie who donated the rights of Peter Pan to the hospital as he loved children so much and Peter Pan is the symbol today at the hospital. This reminded my mum of my twin sister meeting Peter Pan from the Disney film last Autumn in Disneyland Paris purely by chance and he asked if she wanted to have a photo taken with him which she did and this was special as he was not meeting or greeting any other visitors that day. The hospital has been the first in many areas in medicine including training doctors, surgeons and nurses in fact their first women doctors joined as far back as 1914. I was interested to note that the first orthopaedic splint was invented at the hospital in 1912. And my sister wears one today. Of course the hospital has expanded and treats children that for example need transplants and other ground breaking surgical procedures including neurological surgery. They also invent different devices to treat children which are then used all over the world. One of these was invented by Roald Dahl and an engineer which was a valve to treat children with water on their brain. A very important part of the hospital is the institute of child health which is a major research centre. To this day, the hospital treats researches and carries out pioneering treatments and will continue to do so with plans to open new research centres into rare diseases.

Anyway, back to our visit.
So when Dad, my sister and I went on the plane to Gatwick airport, we landed safely even though it was very windy, it was fine. We then had to connect to the city centre of London which we did by train into Victoria Station. We then got a taxi and on the way we saw Buckingham palace, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament at West Minster. I thought they were amazing sights as I only see them on Television. 

We arrived on time for our appointment and then met the whole plastic and neuro surgery team including some nurses who remembered us as babies. 
We then we made our way back to Victoria Station, when it was getting dark and cold and I was looking at the delicious food stalls with their enticing aromas and decided we had to eat there and then. And what a delicious meal it was. All went smoothly on our return journey except for one glitch.

At Gatwick airport security your photograph is taken automatically. However. when we got to the departure gate we were almost prevented from boarding our flight as the machine had not taken my sister's photograph. This meant they could not discover from what country of origin she had come from! Luckily my Dad produced our passports and thankfully we were able to get on the plane.