Doctor.

One of my earliest memories is the need to have a doctor called out one night because I was running a high temperature.

Between the doctor being called and him arriving to draw the heat out of my body with his magical instruments, my condition improved somewhat. I'd recovered enough to be able to hold a conversation, and I remember the first words I said to him after he'd finished discussing my health issues with my parents.

It hadn't escaped my attention that the GP had an enormous white beard, covering most of the lower half of his face. I imagine that I associated this with either Jesus or Santa Claus, because I declared: "God, you're old!"

This wonderful man's reply has stayed with me throughout the years since, and I still get reminded of it now: "Yes, son, I'm 103." Not only did you come to douse the flames engulfing a child's body, but you permitted the spark which had associated Jesus and your face to catch fire.

If the consumption of the body by disease is unbearable agony, then the submission of the mind to the tongues of fantasy is unbearably beautiful. You allowed me that beauty, even at your own expense. I have never forgotten it.

How sad I am to learn that you died last week. I probably met you three times in my life; you humoured hundreds of mocking young patients, and I'm certain you'd not even recall a routine visit to the boy with the temperature which had escalated off the thermometer.

When I heard the news, I felt it deeply. You came to - without knowing it - define a part of my life; a part that wishes to be brave and creative. I've never really done it. All I ever do is jealously guard whatever crumbs of originality I might have struggled to come up with, but the intention has always been there to be bolder, more colourful, more expressive.

Hearing your name transports me back to a place as distant as East Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia. Like them, you live on in the memories of those of us old enough to remember your significance.

Like Yugoslavia, I form a picture of you in my mind from the limited exposure I have had. The unreality of the composite image I form makes you all the more distant, and yet all the more longed for.