Mary Russell visited Helen House, the first hospice for children in the world.
You have to be a very special child to holiday at the comfortingly small red and yellow complex in Oxford, its entrance guarded by two bright rowan trees.
Inside, there's a spa room with stars twinkling overhead and a lighthouse flashing. There's a sound room, where young rockers can record while creating as many decibels as they wish. There's a multi-sensory room with bouncy cushions, a water bed and light patterns rotating on the ceiling. There's a PlayStation, computer consoles and aromatherapy for anyone who wants it.
And if that's not enough, outings can include horse riding, airplane trips - pilots have been known to dip their wings right and left on hearing boisterous commands from the young passengers - and a chance to meet famous people, such as Bill Clinton.
Visiting children are given a list of things to pack for their stay, but look closely: this no ordinary list. Included on it are suction catheters, wheelchair chargers and spare gastronomy tubes.
To qualify for a place, you need to be aged up to 18 and have a life-limiting condition. Helen House is a respite home for children, many of whom will never reach adulthood.
The idea for this unique hospice grew from a friendship between Frances Dominica, a Church of England nun, and the parents of a small child, Helen, who had massive brain tumours and whose condition was incurable.
To help the parents, Frances used to take Helen to spend a night or two in the convent, giving her the 24-hour care she needed, while at the same time affording the parents a short break.
Later, the idea of extending the supportive hand of friendship to other parents was mooted and less than three years later the world's first respite home for children was up and running. That was 22 years ago and although Helen has since died, her memory is enshrined in Helen House.
Frances Dominica, a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. In 1966, she joined the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, an Anglican order founded in 1851. Her experience as Mother Superior meant she already had considerable management and accounting skills by the time she started the drive to set up Helen House in 1982.
In the early stages, there were two staff and a part-time secretary.
Now, there are 54 on the payroll and the purpose-built hospice offers holistic and palliative care to eight children, although there are anything up to 150 children and their families receiving support of some sort at any one time.
When children come to stay, they do so with one parent, both parents or indeed the whole family. There are four self-contained family flats at Helen House and because these life-limiting conditions often run in the family there may be more than one sick child to cater for.
Life-limiting conditions include multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS and spinal cord damage.
Each child has their "own" member of staff, who provides round-the-clock care. The family is given a key worker who acts as a link and offers advice on terminal care and bereavement support. Make no mistake about it, although Helen House is a bright, happy place, death is a constant presence.
"We don't have the answer to the big question," says Frances "and when it comes to religion - and we take all religions and those with no religion - we have links with all the churches so that the local rabbi and imam is always only a phone call away. What we offer, as well as professional care, is friendship. It can be very lonely, you know, being a parent of a sick child and we want people to know that if they need to talk, they can ring us up day or night. We also have to build up a relationship of trust because parents need to know their child is safe and cherished.
"These conditions are often genetic as well as rare - leukaemia accounts for only 12 per cent of cases - which is why some parents blame themselves and therefore feel guilty if they're not spending every hour caring for their child."
Although half of the staff are medically trained, others work as music and art therapists.
What she looks for in her staff is that they are fully paid-up members of the human race. By this she means they must be able to laugh and cry, have a sense of humour and a good dollop of both common sense and compassion.
She herself is clearly well endowed with all these qualities. But she is a formidable fundraiser too, figuring in the press receiving an honorary degree one day, posing with Graham Norton the next, wearing an evening dress at one "do" and her religious habit at another.
Flexibility is part of her ethos: "It's one of our main guiding principles. That, and accepting that the family always knows what is best for their child. They are the experts."
She herself has been able to learn from the families. At one end of Helen House is the room - known as "the little room" - where children are taken when they die.
The room is air-conditioned and the bereaved family is encouraged to arrange it as they wish. Close by is a sitting room with a telephone where family and friends can gather. The idea of "the little room" came to her from an Irish woman whose child had died and who didn't want to rush the last precious days the family had with their dead child so that, in a sense, "the little room" is for wakes.
Bereavement support continues for all members of the family, as long as they feel they need it. There is a rose garden, where children's ashes may be scattered and twice a year, families who have lost children return to Helen House for a Remembrance Weekend.
The annual running costs of Helen House amount to £1.5 million sterling, which comes from donations large and small.
A woman who used to have a collecting tin for Helen House in her shop in Oxford's famous Covered Market, died and left not one, but two shops to the hospice. Frances smiles serenely at this stroke of generosity.
But so far, there has been no financial support from either the British government or the National Lottery.
In any case, she doesn't like the idea of bureaucrats making decisions about the care of children when those decisions should be taken by their parents.
Two years ago, in recognition of her work, she was appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Oxfordshire, the first nun to be so honoured.
She has had various honorary degrees bestowed on her - a cause of some glee since, in her youth, she had to struggle to get five 0-levels.
The fruit of her work, of course, is seen in the faces of the children visiting Helen House.
And not only there.
Next door is the newly opened Douglas House, which caters for people aged from 18-40.
For these children and young people, life may be short, but Frances Dominica and her team ensure each life is lived to its full.