My parents' cure for most ailments was a bread poultice
The Postie Notes by Peter Malone
I received my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine just a couple of months after getting the flu jab and it got me thinking about some of the childhood illnesses which we no longer have to put up with.
Readers of an older persuasion may, like me, have suffered from illnesses such as chickenpox, measles, mumps, German measles, or perhaps worst of all whooping cough and diphtheria.
The TB test we all got at secondary school raised a painful swelling on the upper arm. Boys being boys, we delighted in hitting friends on the sore spot to inflict pain on each other.
I remember having mumps as a child and being confined to bed with a bandage wrapped around my head and jaw. I am not sure why. Perhaps it was my parents' futile attempt to shut me up or there may have been a hot bread poultice involved as my mother and father were great believers in the healing properties of the poultice – hot and cold.
Everything from burns and stings to toothache was treated with a bread poultice of the correct temperature and I am sure that if I had had a broken limb, at some point in my recovery, a poultice would have been strapped to the offending injury.
The only thing which was not treated with a poultice was a bleeding nose in which case the largest, coldest key in the house would be placed on your back to stem the bleeding.
I don’t remember my brothers or sisters having childhood ailments but as we came from the hand-me-down generation where everything was passed from eldest to youngest – clothes, toys, books, and shoes, particularly Wellington boots – then we must have had the same philosophy when it came to diseases.
I got my Covid jag in the newly built Armadale Village Hall. It’s only the third or fourth time I have been to the village hall and the only time it hasn’t been packed to the rafters.
The first time was to “Big Neil’s” 80th birthday and again the hall was heaving. It was a good night and we were regaled with stories of how Neil used to frighten his friends with tales of all the ghosts and bogles living in the village.
The highlight for me was the dancing. Neil’s favourite was the Canadian Barn Dance and, although he himself wasn’t fit enough to take to the floor, we were encouraged to participate.
With the hall so full and space so limited it was a little bit like trying to dance in the central aisle of a tightly crowded bus – but still great fun.
My most recent visit was for a charity bingo night where players were squeezed into the hall like sardines. The hall was demolished just after that event and the rebuild started.
The new hall is a credit to the team involved in funding and building it and has ample space fur future barn dances.
The medical staff were fantastic and I’d like to thank them all for the work they have done throughout this crisis. The vaccination itself was a pain free matter of moments. So far so good and in nine or 10 weeks I should get the second booster shot.
The vaccine is a light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. We all want a return to a more normal life where we can meet friends and village hall dances to celebrate a birthday are commonplace again. If you get the chance get the jag and who knows – maybe we’ll dance a jig together in celebration.
Pete Malone is a postman working out of Bettyhill.
