A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Uncle Jim
Uncle Jim would take me (Josie my elder sister had just started school) to Whitstable to collect the cockles and whelks: down the Drunken Sailor road with its weavings and wobblings that joined Herne Bay and Tankerton; then on to Whitstable and the harbour where the smell of newly cooked shellfish held me in the balance between nausea and pleasure. Oh, but to taste a whelk, still warm, teased out of its shell with good malt vinegar - though we used acetic acid in those days with a dash of colouring. It would come in huge glass jars with a cork stopper, to be watered down. Dried chillies were added to give it punch - as a pleasure not to be sniffed at. I liked the small, sweet ones the best. The bigger ones tended to be tough, as opposed to tender.
I would fall asleep on the way back, fall asleep standing up, leaning on my Uncle Jim’s shoulder, sucking my third and forth fingers, as he drove, carefully, not wishing to wake me, back to Herne Bay. Uncle Jim was one of those breed of men whom you just called `uncle`. You knew that he wasn’t a real uncle. But out of politeness for his station we children called him uncle. He was a good, kind man, was Uncle Jim.
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