A wayward growing up..? 18 3 6 (18) 25 1 31
Well I don't know what it was like in France for
example but when I was a kid growing up in suburban North West England most of
the kids were what you have to describe as somewhat wayward apart from kids like
my older brother for he was more reserved and didn't mix so much with all the
other kids as I did...
My condition wasn't helped by the fact that our
father didn't return home from the War with all the other fathers in 1945 and
thereafter because I could have benefited from a stronger hand to rein me in at
times, though most of the mischief we got up to was harmless enough. It was just
that looking back on it now I can't believe we survived that kind of childhood.
I mean like having to go to the loo when there wasn't one for miles around and
not being able to do it in a sanitary way: washing one's hands and stuff..? Of
course all the kids in the neighbourhood used to get "worms" from
time to time which could be seen squirming in and out of one's faeces, when
these would be reported to one's mother in my case, and she would take the
requisite action: supplying the de-worming powder or whatever, a common remedy
one would buy from a herbalist or some such corner shop, no need to go
troubling a doctor of medicine for such trivia, amongst a hoard of stuff that
could go wrong with growing up. Measles mumps chicken pox coughs and colds
ear aches were also common place. Occasionally one heard of some kid or other
being asthmatic but that was a rarity.
Now fast forward to the early part of the 21st
century and every other child seems to come down with one type of allergy or
another and one gets to challenge the circumstances in which people grow up
today compared to my day all those years ago beginning in war torn Britain..? Getting worms and the like as a child is now being said to do wonders for one's immune system for the rest of one's life..?
A-E my wife being born here in Scandinavia of more
well to do parents and being a girl into the bargain had an altogether more
sheltered upbringing and whether as a consequence she grew up with all kinds of
allergies, although in the years after I met her, I can’t recall them being so serious
as they are today. Now when she is unable to put her hands in water, and since
Christmastime when she picked up a chest infection visiting our younger son and his
family during a pre-Christmas visit to UK, which just this past week has begun
to subside with some chance of permanence..? In the meantime it was as if it was
too much for her to go on living in our house of 29 years: there was something
that was causing her to experience breathing difficulties as evidenced by being
happier outside that inside the house..?
Well I have done my best to help her over these
difficulties and began by clearing our living spaces of all the books rugs
carpets cluttering the place, and in a word will end in the biggest of spring
cleans the house has known since we moved in here. Yesterday she had our
Insurers’ Inspectors visit our house taking measurements of moisture levels throughout its wooden construction when they discovered some mould in a small area of the outside cellar
wall, which they advised would need to be treated with a chlorine-based cleaner..? It is as if my wife is gifted in her sense of smell to be like one of those dogs which sniffs out drugs at airports, her nose and respiratory system has become
so sensitized..?
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