Wednesday 28 November 2007

Lead astray.

Memories, a lead story if ever there was one.


It makes me wonder how much danger I was in as an infant, child and then an adult, for:-

Like many of my era I was born at the outbreak of WW2 into a house that was plumbed entirely with lead. My wooden cot was painted with lead paint which I chewed relentlessly. I helped my uncle Sid cast lead soldiers using wire-bound iron moulds, with lead boiled in a small crucible on an open fire in front of a blackleaded cast iron fireplace (he took precautions to protect the peg-rug from the hot smoking liquid lead by utilising a sheet of asbestos).

We had a fireplace very similar at our own home which I helped blacklead on numerous occasions while growing up. The blacklead did cover my eager little hands and got under my fingernails but a bit of hard scrubbing plus a dab of butter and a quick rinse under the tap did help get most of it off. I chewed the rest of it out from under my fingernails.

I loved helping my uncle Sid making those lead toy soldiers and cowboys and indians. He would innocently give me a couple to fettle and play with whilst they were still too warm to decorate with lead paint. I helped with that too, before I was packed off to my lead paint painted bedroom with a still tacky lead paint painted indian.

In my teens and with the wages I got as a painter and decorator (lead paint of course) I got myself an airgun which fired lead pellets and I acquired the habit of holding a few pellets in my mouth rolling them around under my tongue ready to make a fast reload when necessary. I may even have swallowed one or two, I know I chewed some. That was when I wasn't out fishing using split lead shot which I opened up using my teeth and closed tightly to the line in the same manner.

If you include the lead content that was in petrol for decades and the lead in many cosmetic products, one can only marvel that I didn't grow up to be as healthy as I am and not suffer some sort of serious illness or brain calamity.

Having said that, I do have had bouts of depression, insecurity, mania, insomnia, paranoia, short term memory loss, serious lapses in concentration.................................................. and, oh yes, a strong urge to invade Poland. I've also lost most of my teeth.

But despite that it isn't all bad news. I've been happily married to my first real love for most of our forty-eight years together. We have four marvellous daughters all happily married, twelve wonderful granchildren and one spectacularly beautiful great granddaughter so I've not been too lead astray.

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Mansfield, United Kingdom
I am over 79. Up to a couple of years ago I'd have described myself as fit and decisive. Now I'm not so sure. I am into DIY. If my wife asks me to do something I say; "Do It Yourself".....Click on my Older Posts for more reading. Or try: http://www.chrisbeach.co.uk/viewQuotes.php