I watched a programme last week about the battle to beat polio.
Apparently, if it had not been for the rivalry of celebrity scientists, a vaccine against it could have been created much earlier.
At primary school I had a friend who had had this dreadful disease as a baby. At the swimming baths Linda would remove the calliper from her wasted leg before getting in the water. She never made a fuss, so we didn’t either.
It made me wonder what it would be like for Linda were she a child now. As a society we are more sensitive about physical disabilities, and definitely more inclusive. We applaud athletes at the Paralympics, fundraise for disability charities, and have ditched Dickensian terms like ‘cripple’, along with racist and sexist language.
But we now have Trolls, the name given to cowardly people who target the most vulnerable via the internet. They are vicious and usually anonymous, so are rarely prosecuted.
As a small child I was always freaked out by the Billy Goats Gruff story, but the Troll who lived under the bridge was a pussy cat compared to these monsters.
How depressing was the recent vitriol directed at Stephen Sutton who raised money for teenage cancer sufferers like himself. He was driven to deny he was exaggerating his condition, because he’d been allowed home from hospital just days before he died.
We are lucky to belong to the generation that was vaccinated against polio. Our children of course had the magic potion shovelled into them on a spoonful of sugar that we all know – thanks to Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins – helps the medicine go down.
Only now of course it’s not polio that’s the enemy, it’s the sugar which is giving us all diabetes, cancer and heart problems. Oh Lordy.
Well done to the parents who received certificates for the training they have completed at Barra Hall, Belmore, Charville, McMillan, Nestles, Pinkwell, Uxbridge College and Yeading Children’s Centres in Hayes, under the Jigsaw scheme.
The courses build self-esteem and confidence, and ease people back into learning, but the ceremony wasn’t all serious.
The atmosphere was fun, with everyone wearing their party best, including the Mayor and Mayoress, Councillor Allan and Lynne Kauffman, who are the best double act since Morecambe and Wise.
