15 Things. Corner Shop.

Two things to tell you about today. One is about Fifteen Things Not To Do With A Baby, which just got a fantastic review in the Independent on Sunday. It's also one of the recommended books for The Summer Reading Challenge for 2015. All because of LOS talking about putting babies on washing lines!

Thank you for all your kind wishes and wise advice about What To Do With A Grumpy Sneezy Author. (I got quite dopey and sleepy too, perhaps I was turning into 4/7 of a set of dwarves.) I'm fit for human company now.

Song Morning gave advice about gargling with salt water. I hadn't thought of this, but I should have done. A few years ago I learned about this method of curing a throat infection, and this is how it happened.

We were living in Yorkshire and LOS was away at university in Newcastle, living in a shared house. At various times in our lives we find we're fighting our way through thorn bushes, and LOS was having a thorn bush time, what with his course and everything. On top of this he was getting constant painful throat infections. He tried medicated sweets, he tried the famous Northern 'Black Bullets' which cure lots of things, he tried medicines and everything. Nothing worked for long. Sore throats, as you all know, are miserable things. In our phone chats I suggested honey, warm water with honey, warm water with lemon and honey, honey and honey, thyme and honey. Nothing did any good. I can't remember if he saw a doctor - I think he must have done - but nothing helped. Soon, almost every other day he was traipsing down to the corner shop and buying more throat lozenges. But then the motherly woman behind the counter noticed the young student who was always buying throat sweets and asked him if they were doing any good. After a few more questions she told him not to bother with them any more. Having talked him out of spending money in her shop she explained all about how to gargle with salt water (much as Song Morning explained it to me).

Reader, it worked. It worked wonderfully, like a charm. Suddenly we had a happy and greatly relieved LOS, and his whole world started to look brighter.

I know almost nothing about this lady. I know that she ran a corner shop in inner-city Newcastle, that like most city corner shop keepers she was Asian, probably Pakistani, and that she was kind. Now, remembering that story, my heart goes out to her again as it did then, in heartfelt gratitude to this woman who looked after my son when I couldn't.

And that's what makes the world go round.