Dramatic consequences

Alright, I admit it. I just felt a new topic was needed, to jerk the needle from its groove.

In 1952 I got mumps and was confined to a sanatorium. We inmates played dramatic consequences. You wrote your contribution below the only revealed line on the scroll of paper, scrolled it further to reveal only your own entry, stuffed the scroll into a slipper and hurled it across the room to the next bed. This system was in fact a primitive forerunner of Aldershot and this blog. I cannot remember too clearly the plots of the dramatic works that emerged, but certain characters stick in the memory: Horrabin Duke of Bithynia, Isidore the Toothless, and the Blind Bard of Bushireh. And there were vultures.

Happy Christmas all.

In 1958 (I think it was) our GP decided that what my chronic asthma needed was a spell in a convalescent home by the sea. So I spent nine weeks in prison in Scarborough in October, November and December. Or was it February, March and April? I honestly don’t remember whether it was spring or autumn, but it was perishingly cold to be frog marched† along the cliff tops or the beach – alternate days – for an hour and a half* every day.

I remember a few things about that convalescent home. The wonderful climbing frame that we were allowed to use for half an hour* once a week*. The so-called food. And the song all the boys (there were no girls – they had a separate establishment somewhere else in town, I never knew where, but we frog marched past them marching resolutely in the opposite direction occasionally) sang:

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside
But I don’t like this convalescent home
The sister is so rotten
And the nurses spank your bottom
Beside the seaside
Beside the sea.

*Approximately. I had even less concept of time then than I do now, I could be out by a factor of three either way. But the frog marches really were every day.

†Okay, no, not literally.

One particular event during that nine week period – near the end, I think, but memory does not provide exact details on that point – that I do recall rather well was this.

My father had a job interview in Scarborough while I was there. The whole family came over in the Landrover for the day, and I was rescued from my prison for a while and we all spent the morning on the beach. I went paddling – going in fairly deep, with the water up around my knees. Then suddenly my foot disappeared into a hole, I did an involuntary head-over-heels, and ended up in the hole, with my head under water. Panic! I flailed, but couldn’t get out of the hole, or get my head up.

Luckily my father, in his interview suit and nicely polished shoes and sitting on a rock on the beach, saw me disappear (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) and charged into the sea and rescued me.

He did go for the interview. He didn’t get the job. He always claimed he didn’t really want it.

In September/October 1962 I had a bad attack of asthma and was admitted to hospital – not a long journey as we were living in the hospital grounds at the time. This being the days before inhalers it took a long time for me to recover, and although my condition was steadily improving I was in a hospital bed for several weeks – long enough that I started to worry that I’d not be home for Christmas (a big concern when you’re 7 years old). As it turned out, they did discharge me in early December.

One of the pieces of advice given by the doctors was to avoid polluted air, including tobacco smoke. Acting on this advice, my father – who up to that point had been a heavy smoker – gave up smoking immediately, and to the best of my knowledge never smoked again.

Well done those fathers. My wife gave up smoking soon after I met her in 1970, and has not smoked since. I avoid the company of smokers, just as I would not sit at the table of a man who was removing an ear with his cutlery. Tattoos bespeak improvidence. I cannot look at people who have inserted metal into their persons. When I was teaching, there were occasionally students at whom, for that reason, I could not bring myself to look.

One of the pieces of advice given by the doctors was to avoid polluted air,

We got that advice, too, and of course it’s excellent advice – for anyone, but especially asthmatics. I’m not sure cold, damp sea air is particularly good for asthmatics either, but there you go. And I’m only not sure: we spend roughly equal amounts of time in Ely, Cambs and Greenock, Inverclyde – and it’s very noticeable that I feel more comfortable in Greenock. Ely doesn’t give the impression of being especially polluted (although there can be agricultural pongs and there might be fragrance free agricultural pollution too) and Greenock does tend to be cold and damp – but it does have nice fresh air.

In May 1902 I died four times of choleric pestilence and was therefore sent to the Mare Imbrium, which wasn’t yet polluted at that time. (This discussion reminds me strongly of the Monty Python sketch about poverty…)

Allowing for only a very little poetic licence or a little shakiness of memory, I’m fairly sure that up until your post, Paul, they were all basically true 8~)

Mare Imbrium

Not that nice a place to visit. No atmosphere, y’see…

On the plus side, Mare Imbrium is relatively unspoiled (unlike some of the surrounding regions, which have suffered from tourists littering up the place).

Cambridge and the cold fen air straight from the Urals gave me sinusitis. My father, brought up in the Lake District, suffered from asthma. His parents sent him off, at six years old, to a boarding school at Ovingdean on the South Coast, in the belief that it would be good for his asthma. He was sent by train, from Grange-over-Sands to Paddington, with a label round his neck. A nurse was hired to get him and his luggage off the train at Paddington, convey him to Victoria station and put him on the train to Brighton, where he would be picked up by a member of the school staff.

This prompts me to remember that the word secure originally meant free from care .

In the 1930s, my father had a French penfriend, arranged through the schools. They kept in touch until the war prevented them, and picked up where they’d left off after the war. By that point, both of them were married. My parents rode their tandem from London to Dover, then from Calais all the way to Douarnenez in Brittany to visit them, my elder sister, then a toddler, in a sidecar.

That same sister subsequently went to stay with the French family to improve her French, travelling all the way from Yorkshire where we were living by then to Brittany, and later back again, alone. She was twelve years old. We had relatives in London, with whom she may have stayed the night on the way each way, but I don’t know. I probably never did know, never thought about it.

My father and Yves remained firm friends until my father’s death in 1993. The two families – three generations of each – had a grand reunion to celebrate 50 years of their friendship in 1986.

On Monday I came down with what I think is viral bronchitis. Lots of feeling freezing cold, completely messed up head (I had to drive into town to hand over a signed off work form, I’m surprised I didn’t crash, barely remember any of it). Basically been lying in bed, in a lot of muscular pain, since then, feeling like I was falling, falling. Didn’t read. Didn’t watch anything. Didn’t listen to anything. Some times, didn’t even know who I was. And didn’t always stay conscious.
Today is the first day I’ve eaten anything since Sunday. No appetite whatsoever, but I figure I’d better at least try to do something to make the dizziness go away.

So for the other thread, somewhere, I’d always believed (and stand by) S bring British and Z being American, and I predate Microsoft. Maybe it’s a regional thing? I dunno.

And as to the twelve year old traveling alone – back in those days one didn’t have a problem with weirdo predators targeting young people. These days, hell, even the royal family are at it…

Just finished a sweet runny porridge, so now I’m going to turn off the light and lie here… Like I have for pretty much the last 100 or so hours.

Good night.

Maybe it’s a regional thing?

Looking at the various sources, it appears to be an Oxford vs. Cambridge thing – Oxford University Press always liked Z, Cambridge University Press liked S.

back in those days one didn’t have a problem with weirdo predators targeting young people

Or at least, we didn’t know about it. http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Photos/India/TwoGirls.html

Basically been lying in bed, in a lot of muscular pain, since then, feeling like I was falling, falling.

There’s a magic medicine for “les vertiges”. Ask the doctor for it!

I had a reserve stock in France, but I’m afraid it’s gone now.

But there is a really efficacious drug available, so ask!

Looking at the various sources, it appears to be an Oxford vs. Cambridge thing – Oxford University Press always liked Z, Cambridge University Press liked S.

Yes, well, I believe Cambridge is the younger college.