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| Yikes! |
When I was young, I was taught that honest endeavour and hard work would always be rewarded. No doubt kids nowadays are taught the same thing. Our American kinfolk have a pithy retort – ‘Suckers!’
This was brought home to me when I was 11 years old, and in my first year at Grammar School. I was enthusiastic but useless at all sports. However, rugby, at that age, was a great leveller of talent, simply because nobody particularly had any (I exempt Ronnie Buller – see Issue No. 16).
Therefore it was to everyone’s surprise that, at the end of a morning’s PE lesson, during which we played a game of rugby, I was selected to play for the school’s Under 12s (First Year) Rugby Team. I recall that the only thing of note I did that whole match was to pick up the ball and run like hell for the white line in the distance. I was no sprinter, and the leading attack dogs of the baying pack caught me a few feet short. My shirt was grabbed and ripped; I was scratched and punched and I flailed my arms in response, punching back. I saw the line and lunged over it, scoring the only ‘try’ of my whole school career. Only I didn’t. In the excitement, confusion and heat of the moment, I had, inadvertently, run straight across and not up the field and had dived over the sideline. Oh well! However, the PE teachers must have been impressed with my tenacity if not my sense of direction and selected me for the school team. Sporting fame (or any fame) at last beckoned.
The first competitive game was against Southmoor School in nearby Sunderland. I did nothing remarkable at all during the game. In fact, I can hardly recall touching the ball more than twice. I consoled myself that everyone else, on both teams, was equally incompetent. The score ended three points apiece. About five minutes before the end, one of the Southmoor lads kicked me in the shin and drew blood. I thought nothing of it at the time but, by Sunday night, the wound had turned septic. A couple of days later a few boils appeared, oozing puss (especially if you squeezed them hard!).
Most mothers would have taken their kids to the doctor and had some antibiotics prescribed. Not my Mam. Instead, she decided to cure the problem by applying scalding hot bread poultices in order, she said, to draw out the infection. Really, this was just an acute form of child abuse. The infection wasn’t drawn out but the process was. The torture of having hot poultices applied three times a day went on for weeks and weeks. The boils didn’t go away; they grew and multiplied, obviously enjoying the steamy heat. Eventually, the infection and the boils did recede. I guess they had simply run their course.
Mam was puzzled as to why the poultices didn’t work quicker. She speculated: Could the cloths have been hotter (you must be kidding!)? Should she have also used mustard (or jam)? Should it have been brown bread instead of white? Never once did it occur to her, during or after my weeks of agony, that maybe she should seek medical advice. In her own mind the poultices did work because the infection eventually cleared up.
By the way, I don’t want you to get the impression that Mam was into homeopathy in any way – she wasn’t. The only herb she’d heard about was the good looking trumpeter who fronted The Tijuana Brass. Mam was more into hot water and steam. Bread poultices were one manifestation. Another was me sitting with a towel over both my head and a steaming bowl of hot water to cure my sinus problems (it didn’t!). Yet another was the insistence that she had properly tested my bath water on a Sunday night, after my usual sweaty and muddy game of football, only for me to step into a bubbling cauldron. I never cleared any scum off the sides of the bath afterwards but rather a whole layer of boiled epidermis.
I couldn’t play any sports because of my enduring injury and my debut game for the school team was also my last. I tried my best but was never able to regain my place in that year or all the succeeding years of my time at Grammar School. Sucker!
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