NOTHING TO SEE HERE..

Speaking of gloom, I read somewhere that 60 years ago today, the great London Smog of December 1952 had just descended on the capital, where it would stay for some time.   My father had just been made redundant from his job at the BOAC Flying Boat maintenance depot at Hythe on Southampton Water.  My parents then decided to enter what was then - and still might be - known as `the licensed trade.`  The phrase has always puzzled me, as it kind of implies that other trades might be unlicensed and thus a touch on the shady side.

Anyway, as part of their learning curve we found ourselves in an Off-Licence in a back street of Catford in south east London - a far cry from the Solent shores for a callow youth of 13 - and it was there and then that the great smog arrived.   I remember not only the fact that you literally struggled to see a hand in front of your face but also that you could actually taste it.   It had an acrid taste, reminiscent of some weird foreign gastronomic concoction which is probably why I eschew any `foreign` food even to this day.   The smog seemed to be yellow, we all had to wear `smog masks` and hundreds if not thousands of Londoners either died from or were seriously affected by acute respiratory problems.

Having been born just before the outbreak of WW 2, I slept for most of my first five or six years in a bed under the stairs in a house along the Solent shore, hearing the nightly bombing of Southampton and being convinced, in the absence of any other experience, that that was just how life was.   At the age of seven, I contracted a serious disease that kept me in Southampton Children's Hospital for six months and off school for a whole year.

So by the time I was 13, I had had the bombing, the serious illness and then the smog and so I sometimes think it`s a wonder I`m still here. All of which probably accounts for my smog ridden brain, my increasing deafness and my pathological aversion to anything medical.  Formative years indeed.