Broken Glass

The “loss” of power to the hand and fingers was accepted. The surgeon’s worry was that as a young child (6 years going on 7) the nerves that were very badly damaged and possibly not developed enough. So even after an operation, the use of the right hand could not be guaranteed. The surgeons were additionally worried that the use of the lower arm would fail and had no idea whether even after physiotherapy a full recovery would result. It really was painful to do anything. The arm was in plaster for 3 months. You could only imagine how itchy this became and it was impossible to scratch as the plaster was so tightly moulded.

As a seven year old boy I was playing gleefully in the school playground. It was East Oxford Junior School. It was a tarmac playground with lots of painted areas on the tarmac, like hop scotch, but there was a “direct run” through all the play areas and I was full of energy and raring to go. I had been given my quart pint of milk just after 11:00am. In the 70’s all children had free milk at school and it was some Labour gimmick to please the voters with a free handout to every child in primary school.

My school dinner was at 12:00 noon and for 10pence you had to produce a pink paper dinner-ticket in the subsidised canteen. It was checked and collected at the till by the cashier. If you didn’t have a pink ticket you would have to pay 15 pence for your meal. Children who had neither the pink paper ticket nor cash would wait and if there were left-overs they may share it out among the kids and those fall under that category were really skinny kids. It was a different type of dinner lady in those days and they actually worked for the school and education authority, unlike nowadays where most staff are contracted or supply staff to provide a limited service. However, these dinner ladies were compassionate and considerate and never liked to turn down any poor kid.

I played tag for a while, burning the energy up, my energy tank was still full up and fast running was not having an impact. I did the rounds again, then a game of alphabets on the squares. At that age you never even thought of how you ended up with so much energy all the time, but small children have loads!




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