The twins were with us and our sleepless nights started. For those of you who have only had one at a time I have to say you have no idea of how hard twins are. With one, they wake in the night and cry a little, you wait a little while, and they usually go back to sleep. I know this is true because we had two singletons after the twins.

With twins, the one who wakes and cries a bit wakes the other and you have to get up. You start running short on sleep, and you end up desperately short on sleep. I ended up understanding those who hit small babes because I stopped myself with my arm drawn back to strike. Ashamed, and frightened of what I could have potentially done, I have never judged a parent since.

The girls were teething, and one night one of our two cried to be nursed. I put her to my wife’s breast, and later put her back in her cot. I then put her sister to the breast and then back to bed. The whole while my wife never woke. That is tired. I ended up going to our doctor who fortunately for us was an understanding woman. I explained the situation to her, and, said, “We need something to help us deal with it, or something to help the girls sleep so we can get some sleep.” Our doctor used a scatter-gun approach, and gave us something for the girls and something for us.

Unfortunately it made no difference. My granny who was a very old lady suggested “If the new ways don’t work try the old ones. Leave a chicken leg bone in a glass of whisky, it will absorb a tiny bit, give it to the babes to gum. It worked with you and your cousins.” God bless Granny.

When the twins were a little older if one were being nursed the other created so much fuss that it was impossible to live with. “You’re supposed to be a clever man think of something,” my wife told me. The only solution I could envisage meant both twins being able to nurse at the same time.

At the time we had a three piece suite with wings on the chairs. I had a wide oaken plank which I cut slots out of to fit the wings. With a bit of work and some polishing I created a twin nursing platform. My wife sat in the chair, I positioned the plank and handed her the girls one after the other. She could sit the girls on the plank to nurse and both her elbows were supported.

I’m eighty six now. It’s more than sixty years since my wife left me without warning for someone else when the twins were nearly three and our other two girls two and one respectively. I went home after work one day to a completely empty house. She moved several hundred miles away from where we had lived, and I only found that out years later. I never saw any of them again not even in court and I still don’t know why.

The court gave me no contact with my daughters, and I have no photographs of them. I moved abroad for work and never returned to the UK. I’ve lived and worked here in Iceland ever since. I still have the plank, but now it’s polished and on a stainless steel chain hanging on the wall. It is all I have left of the four little girls I loved so much who I have not seen for three-quarters of my life.

Decades ago the Salvation Army contacted my daughters for me, but none wanted to meet me or even write to me. Some time ago I was told I have sixteen grandchildren, it may be more now, but I don’t even know any of their names However, maybe some of their children will be in contact sometime, but I don’t expect it to happen as I only have six months left.

My second wife, who I have been married to for over fifty years, and I did well together and we are wealthy. Our estates will run to well over a million sterling each, before the government takes it’s share. She is going to leave her estate to members of her family. I have no family to leave my estate to, but I’ve been an insulin dependent diabetic from an early age, and my wife is happy that I shall leave my estate to Diabetes UK, which being a charity will yield the government nothing. My only regret is I have no one to leave the plank to who will love it as I have done all these years, so I’m going to have it buried with me.