St. Mary's October 2016 Magazine

In My Day
the ramblings of Hubert James
In my day it was about this time of
year that we’d start getting the
Sniffles, and everybody went around
saying ‘coughs and sneezes spreads
diseases’. Life was much more poetic
then.
My old Grandma was always
prepared for a thick head or dribbling
nose. She always kept a bottle of
eucalyptus oil in the kitchen. She said
it had been distilled from Koala Bear
sweat on Ayres Rock. She could be a
bit bemused.
What she would do was fill a washing
up bowl with boiling water and add a
few drops of the oil. Then she would
drape a tea towel over her head and
lean into the bowl and inhale. I still
have nightmares about going to see
her as a child and finding a very
damp red faced lady with matted hair,
runny nose, smelling slightly fresh
and sporting the recipe for Welsh
Cakes on her head. But it worked.
Course, this was before she
discovered Beecham’s Powders
(other powders are available). They
were a strange remedy. They came in
a neatly folded piece of paper. You
had to carefully unwrap it then by
putting your head back you could
poor it into your mouth. Disgusting.
Once you’d done all that, you had
usually forgotten that you had a cold.
13
Nowadays you can get a flu jab from
the nurse and you are ready to take
on all viruses for the next six months.
I know folk think this is new but we
had something similar back in my
day.
A bloke called Len along Sibley Road
reckoned he could prevent colds
using the excretions of a hedgehog.
He said the oils on the spikes could
prevent the flu. He justified this by
offering a £5 prize to anyone who
brought him a hedgehog with a chest
infection.
Some people tried it. Len would roll a
hedgehog up and down your arm until
it pricked the skin. Although, Len tried
to get credibility by saying the spines
had to ‘lance’ the skin. He thought
lance sounded like Lancet which gave
it medical credence. Apparently, it
worked but he had to stop treatment
when the hedgehog population
hibernated just when we needed
them most.
But for a while Len’s Prickly Come
Lancing was very popular.
Religious Cowboy
The devout cowboy lost his favourite
Bible while he was mending fences
out on the range.
Three weeks later, a hedgehog
walked up to him carrying the Bible in
its mouth.
The cowboy couldn't believe his eyes.
He took the precious book out of the
hedgehog's mouth, raised his eyes
heavenward and exclaimed, "It's a
miracle!" "Not really," said the
hedgehog. "Your name is written
inside the cover."