Houses in the early fifties were certainly not safe havens – far from it!

The windows worked with a rope ’sash cord’ as it was called, like a pulley inside the window frame.  You pushed the bottom window up, or the top one down in order to open them.   As it was made from rope, it would gradually stretch and windows could often slowly fall down, and close with no help from you.  My sister Tina was playing close to the window one day and it suddenly dropped down with a bang.  The glass shattered and a piece landed straight in the top of her head.

There was no A & E in those days, no cars, no telephones, not much of anything really.  My Dad picked her up in his arms and rushed her down the stairs and out.  He ran with her, all the way to the nearest chemist, which was quite a distance.  No ‘Drug Stores’ in those days either, just a tiny little chemist shop.  It was a great place to go if you needed emergency treatment of any kind, and we certainly frequented it.  The chemist man was just like a family doctor, only you didn’t need an appointment, and there was no queue either.  His name was Mr Symms.  He was a kind man and we always felt safe in his hands.  He removed the glass from Tina’s head and fixed her up in no time.  No jabs, no follow-up appointment, we just got on with things in those days.

Tina a few years later

I have fond memories of dear old Mr Symms, like the day that large red spots appeared all over my arms when playing in the park.  My sister Sandie, being the oldest there at the time, took charge of the situation and promptly led us all out of the park and up to Mr Sims shop.  He wasted no time in discovering that I had been picking dandelions ‘wet-the-beds’ as we called them, and I’d had an allergic reaction to them.  He rubbed some cream into my arms and in no time the spots had gone.  He probably wasn’t so old really, but to a little girl, anyone older than a teenager seemed old.

I bet he would not believe, while spreading that cream on my arms, that I would remember him, let alone be writing about him more than fifty years later.  We never know how we touch peoples lives, or our real worth to others.

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