Pav’s Patch; Butter made the lumps vanish

WHEN I was a child it was not unknown for me, or indeed for one of my friends to bump our heads. Day-long games of cowboys and indians could be dangerous pastimes.

And the scenario would always be the same. You would be taken crying to your mother, who would proceed to smear a knob of butter on the lump.

Now, what I would like to know, is why? In Dukinfield it was received wisdom that you put butter on bumped heads, but who made the rule?

What does the butter do to the lump? Should we now be using a low-fat option such as Flora lite? And do football sponge men have it in their bags?

Here’s another one. My mother always said that the best way to stop a nosebleed was to put a key down someone’s back. Once again, why?

Were those of us living in Dukinfield in the 1960s only one step away from snake oil and other forms of quackery?

Another thing that used to affect me as a child was travel sickness.

We didn’t have a car which meant that whenever we went out on a Sunday it meant long bus journeys to places like Rochdale or Halifax.

My dad’s answer to my constant complaints of feeling queasy was to tell me I didn’t feel ill and to belt up — it was a “sort of stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” mentality.

It may have worked, because I haven’t felt travel sick in years. Yet it was cured, at least in the short term, by my Aunty Florrie, who said I should sit on a newspaper.

Now who on earth could have come up with that one? On the other hand, perhaps two-day-old newsprint percolating through your short pants offset the sickly odour of bus diesel.

And my mother had a thing about rubber — shoes that is. I was never allowed to wear wellies as she said they would draw the feet. What, like Rolf Harris?

She said the same about pumps, which had its advantages because it got me out of doing PE at junior school — a subject which did not take in the term health and safety.

Apparatus — strange metal structures — were set up in the playground and if you fell off it was about 4ft to the ground.

If you got hurt you had to rely on the school first-aid department, which comprised the head master, Pop Scholes, who had a box of plasters and some iodine in his cupboard.