My World: June 2021…

This is part of a series of articles where our contributors describe how they think things will look a year from now.

Having reached the age of seventy six I can put the Covid-19 pandemic into some kind of historical context by just using my memory.

Not only do I remember the early days of post-second world war Britain, I can recall talking to people, who worked in the family business, who had survived the trenches of the first. I can even remember talking to men who had fought in the Boer War. I remember my grandmother describing Queen Victoria’s jubilee. At Oxford, I was taught naval history by an old tutor who’s great uncle had been a powder monkey at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. When I start thinking about it I am a primary source for a span of history which is textbook stuff taught in schools.

Back in the 1950s, before the vaccines for whooping cough, measles, and mumps were  introduced, I caught all three in quick succession. This was regarded as normal for children and nobody seemed too worried about me. Then in 1953 there was an outbreak of ear infections in children. In serious cases it led to mastoiditis, usually in one ear. I got it in both. I learned later that the doctor thought I might die, my parents thought I would die, and I was in such pain that I wanted to die. I was saved by penicillin, the first antibiotic,  still in its early stages of development.