Those were the days

On Sundays there is nothing I like more than buying a Sunday paper, putting some good music on, and sitting in the kitchen with a coffee, reading it from cover to cover while trying to ignore the children. I don’t have a newspaper delivery because I never know which mood I’m going to be in and therefore choose my paper that day to what seems to fit; clever and posh (Times), like to think I’m clever and posh and also fancy being riled to fever point about the state of government/NHS/judicial system (Mail), clever and a little bit pompous (Telegraph), clever and like to think I’m different when really I’m the same (Independent), can’t be bothered with pretending I’m clever or different and just want to read who’s had a dodgy boob job/spent too much money/left their wife (tabloids). Anyway, my choice this week was the Sunday Mail, not actually because I fancied getting paranoid at the state of our nation, or because I was in the mood to tell myself I was posh or clever, but because I’m skint and it was one of the cheapest (and it also had half price restaurant vouchers advertised on the front - which incidentally, I’ll never get to use because I’m too skint).

Inside there was a brilliant article about old home remedies. Some of the best ones included hanging a dead mole around the neck of a teething baby to relieve teething pain, sticking the head of a child with whooping cough into a hole in a local field, opium for nervous dispositions (I’ll bet) and praying. I am not a huge history fan, because look past the romanticism of the pretty dresses, elegant manners and comely male heroes all you’ve really got is uncomfortable underwear, a depressingly short life span and bad dental hygiene. But the simple, non hysterical and totally uncontrolled nature of their approach to medical problems seemed really refreshing. A world away from the way we live right now.

Just buying paracetemol and Anthisan (a cream for bites, stings and nettle rash, highly necessary given the top end of my garden has weeds and nettles taller than son two) from Tesco requires involvement from a pharmacist. I have to get paracetemol over the counter because apparently without speaking to a pharmacist we are not qualified to purchase more than 8 doses in one go (I have two young boys, 8 doses of paracetemol is about a weeks worth if I’m lucky, so I get the “big” pack from over the counter which lasts me ten days instead of six). When I asked for them yesterday, the pharmacist said “have you used both these medications before?” What state are we in as a nation if the powers that be have decided that we are unable to purchase basic medical supplies without proving we have used them before without inadvertently killing ourselves? Is it just where I've been reading The Mail or does that seem a little scandalous to you?

And this was just for basic painkillers and nettle rash cream, it is nothing compared to the grilling you get if you are attempting to buy medicine for children, particularly cough and cold medicines. For those of you unaware, they have recently and very rapidly changed the age limits on cold medicine for children. One particular brand (come on Mums we all know the one), went from suitable from 3 months to being unavailable to any child under six, in the space of about one year. Because, apparently, all mums were force feeding it to their babies so they would be knocked out for twelve hours and the mum could have some peace and quiet, or that is what you are made to feel each time you buy it.

Sometimes I long for the simplicity of the old approaches to non-emergency medical care. Yesterday son two (running around in the jungle garden wearing nothing but a nappy and welly boots) came running to me screaming because he had been stung by a stinging nettle. Going for the old school method, I looked for a dock leaf. As I rubbed the leaf onto his bare skin his screaming did not abate, I said “any better?” “Nooooooooooooo” he cried. And there explains why we no longer hang dead moles around the necks of teething babies. The old school methods might be simple, uncontrolled and a little bit exciting but most of them just didn’t work. Shame really, because I would have loved to have shown up at a mother and baby group when my boys were teething with them adorned with dead rodents. It may even have caught on, because at least in the procurement of dead moles mums would not have had to get past prickly pharmacists. Not like the old days though, when they would have just been on the shelf alongside the opium: “Ounce of opium and three dead moles please” Those were the days.