We are extremely lucky to have Colonel Custard visit. I tend not to tell the children that he is coming until he arrives as I want to see the surprise and pleasure on their faces when he enters the bay or room and believe me it is priceless! If I could bottle their reaction and sell it, I think I could retire now! His smile and presence light up the space and the children and their parents get extremely excited when he comes in. We have patients who come in for day surgery and patients who sometimes spend days or weeks or months here. Some of them come in for a few hours and some are spending some of the last of their days here and Colonel Custard treats every one of them with respect and kindness.

He gets even the teenagers who are glued to their phones, to interact with him. They are dumfounded and amazed by his magic tricks. He does tricks with phones, pens, Wikipedia, and these ropes that he calls Mummy, Daddy and Baby yet they all end up the same size. How does that happen? His balloons are amazing, and he keeps learning new animals all the time. When he asked one boy what his favourite animal was, and he said an Emu I fell about laughing and I thought that this would be another one I could put on my list of the ones he couldn’t do. Oh no, he practically made a life size version of an Emu, and the boy laid it beside him in his bed. It was hilarious but the boy and his dad were really impressed as were the rest of the patients in the bay. I would have liked to have seen how he managed to get it in the car as he was being discharged later in the day.