Chronicles of a Vicarage childhood

Eluned Rees takes her medicine

I was born and raised in the post-war era, which makes me feel old! The country was attempting to improve children’s health, especially, and I remember drinking sweet orange juice from a clinic regularly. A nurse came to the school to assess us, weigh and measure us and to examine our heads. This was the ‘nit nurse’!

A dentist also came to school and could give anaesthetic and extract teeth. Someone came to test our sight, and only after being referred to an optician, and given glasses, did I realise one could see leaves on trees and I could now see my father at the altar. A tree was a green shape until then. The world opened!

We were immunised and, when smallpox reared its head in 1962, we went with everyone else to queue outside Dr. Monty’s surgery in Spilman Street, Carmarthen.

We were healthy children. I recall the butcher in Morriston, Dewi, who spoke Welsh, telling my grandmother in his shop that we both looked so well and were obviously country children - another way of saying we were rather chubby.

I didn’t catch measles or chicken pox, only mumps . My father was obsessed with airing everything, especially bedclothes. His aunt, like many of her generation, had died young of TB. I think the damp walls of the vicarage were much more dangerous for us!

Many in our parishes believed in natural medicine. When Enfys woke, when very small, not being able to open her eyes, one of our parishioners gave us a bottle of May rainwater to put on them. She has seen perfectly ever since! Another lady in the village tried to help my mother’s bad arthritis by slapping her very hard until she was black and blue. Unfortunately this did not work.

I didn’t ever break a bone. But Enfys will be happy to tell you that I made her climb to the top of a wardrobe and she broke her leg, at four years old. I deny it all. She had to spend a night in hospital, and in those days, parents were not allowed to stay with children. How cruel. It took her years to recover from the trauma, and stay away from our parents. She has made up for it since!