THE bright lights of London beckoned for Alison Caple, who arrived in the capital with aspirations to follow a family friend into district nursing.

Her destination was, in fact, Eastcote but it did little to dampen the Welsh teenager’s spirits.

“My mam saw me off at Llanelli station. I’d never been to London before, so it was a real adventure. I remember being so excited on the trip up here in 1978,” she recalled.

Alison did a pre-nursing course at St Vincent’s Orthopaedic Hospital, Eastcote, and started general nurse training at Ealing Hospital two years later.

She went on to work as a district nurse for 18 years. Her duties in the early days often included having to make breakfast for patients at the weekend - and they weren’t always grateful.

Alison said: “One elderly lady used to call me ‘four eyes’ and would constantly complain about everything. I remember arriving one day to find her in tears crying that someone called Peter had died in the flat.

“I asked where he was only to find her pet budgerigar had expired. I had to bury him in the garden and then go out and buy a new bird.”

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It was while working in the predominantly Asian community of Southall that she began to develop atninterest in diabetes as she noticed how many people lived with the condition.

The area was previously part of a landmark study on diabetes, which involved calling on every household in the neighbourhood to gauge how many were affected by iy.

Alison eventually returned to Ealing Hospital as a diabetes nurse specialist in 2003.

She focuses on more complex cases, though her favourite group of patients to work with are young adults.

Alison added: “It’s tough to live with the condition at that age, especially Type1 diabetes, which is life-long and requires self-administered injections of insulin.”

It’s time to retire next month and she and her husband have bought a camper van to explore the UK.

“We’re really looking forward to going on the road, though I still live in Eastcote after all these years!” she added.