Mostly Feet

There has been a bit of a pause because all the reasons why I should not be writing this Blog gained the upper hand for a few days. Self criticism is all very well, but it should never get to the stage when you ask yourself 'What is the point of what I am doing?' or even worse 'I'm making a bit of an idiot of myself.' Did I have these feelings as a kid? Probably, but I've just conveniently forgotten about them. But having said all that, if I could have a few comments about how relevant or interesting it is, (or isn't) I would redouble my efforts.
In spite of the last section being called 'Doctors and Dentists' I had so much to write about dentists that I didn't get round to anything else. Actually, apart from my teeth I must have been a fairly healthy child. It is just as well, as on the occasions that we did visit our local GP, we had a very long wait. I just remember there being a gas fire, one of those old-fashioned zissy ones, and that I learned that you could not throw bits of paper into it, the way we could with our kitchen range at home.
I was lucky, in that the only childhood illness I had was chicken pox. In those days there was still no defence against potentially dangerous illnesses such as measles and whooping cough, although I had been innoculated against killers such as diphtheria and scarlet fever. My mother remembered till the end of her life, when she was in hospital with diphtheria as a tiny child, and how she was forced to eat a huge lump of fatty gristle. Her older sister was in hospital with scarlet fever, an illness from which she not only survived but lived on until she was only two weeks off her hundredth birthday. All through my own childhood, I was most disappointed that I was never ill enough to justify a stay in hospital , and have a red blanket on my bed.

Probably the worst thing that happened to me healthwise, was a verucca on the ball of my right foot. For ages I thought I just had a splinter in it, and apart from giving it a periodic poke with a needle that had been put in a gas flame to sterilise it, I just put up with the discomfort.
My favourite shoes for playing out, were black lace-up plimsoles, when I was allowed to wear them, which was not very often. There were no elastic-sided plimsoles or ones with velcro fastenings, back then. In fact, I don't think that velcro had even been invented. It was necessary to learn to tie laces as early as possible.
My winter shoes were always brown, lace-ups too. But I had my special method to deal with the difficulty of a shoe-lace coming undone while I was out. That was to tie a loose double knot and then poke the ends through the middle of the knot. I could do this as long as the ends still had the stiff bits in them, but if not, the loose double knot invariably became a very tight double knot by the time I got home.
Yes I had two pairs of shoes a year, and a pair of plimsoles. The shoes were Start-Rite, the best my mother could buy. She always suffered dreadfully from a painful bunion, caused by her shoes not being fitted properly as a child, and she was determined that the same was not going to happen to me. I've inherited her rather large feet, size 7-8, depending on the fit of the shoe, it is true, but thanks to her care I have never had any corns or bunions and my toes are straight.

I used to enjoy my visits to the shoe shop. They would have an x-ray machine which I found absolutely fascinating. I would climb the two steps up to it, put my feet underneath, as far as they would go, then look through the top. Magic! My bones and the outline of the shoe would show up white and everything else would be green. It was even better when I wriggled my toes, or tapped my feet a bit, and I would always make sure that I would have at least one unsolicited visit, if not several, while the grown-ups were busy doing boring grown-up things like paying for the shoes. They probably cost half of my mother's week's wages, but I was oblivious to such details. When I think, however, how much unnecessay radiation I subjected myself to I become quite thoughtful. Those x-ray machines in shoe shops have been gone for a long time, and there must have been a good reason.
But, back then, as we emerged from the shoe shop clutching a brown-paper bag containing either yet another pair of winter, brown lace-ups or a pair of red or brown summer sandals, such thoughts were far from my mind. Summer sandals did not have peak-toes in the fifties. Instead, mine had lots and lots of little diamond-shaped holes on the front, a T-shaped strap and metal buckle fasteners. The crepe soles were much better than the leather soles of my winter shoes for outdoor activities that i particularly enjoyed, such as tree-climbing, hop-scotch and running, so they mostly met with my approval, especially if they were red.
I always remember the Start-Rite advertisement in the London underground - a huge poster, stuck on the opposite side of the tunnel, which you looked at while you waited for the train. A small boy and girl, with knitted pointy hats would be wandering up an endless, tree-lined road that stretched to its vanishing point in the distance; both shod in Start-Rite of course, but not an adult in sight. Even as a young child, I found this advertisement strangely disquietening, although I could not have told you why.
Anyway, back to my verucca, which by this time is about a year old and has reproduced itself enthusiastically on both feet. The trouble was, that not many people had heard of veruccas in those days. They had tried cutting it out but that hadn't worked. For that procedure I had gone to the little outpatients' hospital in Camden Town. It is long closed down now, and I can't even remember where it was exactly. But I do remember what a novel experience it was to have my foot frozen with ice so it wouldn't hurt, and afterwards, limping home with my foot swathed in bandages. That put me out of action for a few days. And actually the cure was so simple, only we didn't find this out for a few more months. Once we did and we had bathed my feet every evening in hot water and afterwards, painted on the magic tincture, I was completely cured in a matter of weeks. The original verucca, and all its offspring did not stand a chance, and came out leaving numerous holes of varying sizes, all over the balls of my feet.