Another scare hare is running on the possible harmful effects on children of mobile phones. David Spiegelhalter & Steven Novella are among those who have expressed their scepticism about this.
It is however perfectly natural to worry at least a little bit about the possible effects of the force of new technology. It was electricity when I was a little girl. We were enjoined, in no uncertain terms, NEVER to touch anything electrical.
There was a lot of sense in this in the days when children could be electrocuted by sticking enquiring fingers into a socket & the technology of insulation generally was not nearly so well developed as it is now.
Nevertheless by the age of 3 or 4 I had decided that it must be perfectly safe just to switch the radio on or turn the dial to a new station, & would sometimes disobey, if it were time for Listen With Mother or Toytown.
But my first real disobedience, which finally removed the injunction, came when I was 6 years old.
I was jealous of a friend who, almost exactly my age, was already seasoned in the business of helping her mother with the ironing. They were much poorer than us – she already had three younger siblings; another cause of jealousy had been the sugar sandwiches they had for tea – a single slice of bread, scraped with margarine &a tiny sprinkling of sugar – but my jealousy disappeared after I realised that dripping sometimes replaced the sugar & mummy explained that that was because they couldn’t afford all the sorts of things we had on sandwiches.
But I still pestered to be allowed to help with the ironing.
The problem was our iron was an electric one; my friend’s mummy still used old-fashioned flat irons – the sort that had to be heated up on top of the stove or over the fire, their temperature tested with spittle. You would, if you could afford it, have two of them, so that one could be being heated up while the other was in use.
Surely the real danger was burning yourself, & I understood that I must not touch the hot part of the iron. Ours even had an insulated handle, one you didn’t have to carefully wrap a cloth round before lifting it off the fire. If my friend could manage that …
N O spells no.
Then one day, after mummy had finished all the ironing, except for the sash for my party frock which could continue to sit & wait in the bottom of the ironing basket, she decided to pop next door for something & went out, leaving the ironing board standing. I saw my chance.
The sash was a perfectly straight band of crepe de chine about 3 inches wide in a fetching shade of eau de nile; it would be passed round the waist of my white organdie dress & tied in a big bow at the back. As an exercise in ironing, nothing could be simpler.
So I stood very carefully on the chair & inserted the plug in the socket which was placed quite high in the wall. I made sure that the thermostat was at its lowest setting (I had obviously been observing & asking questions about all these mysteries) & had a go. It was easy!
When I had finished I carefully unplugged, leaving the sash on the board & awaited my fate. With luck mummy might think that she had just ironed it herself.
But no. Who ironed this?
To my immense relief there was no punishment & from then on I was allowed to help & trained in the correct techniques – to this day I cannot bear to see a crease ironed down the centre of the sleeve.
In fact my mother hated ironing, while I found it immensely satisfying, & by the time I was about 8 years old I was doing all the ironing - & being paid piecework to do it.
Funnily enough I still feel a tiny frisson at the sight of a small child turning on a television, an atavistic instinct to reach out & knock the little hand away from something dangerous.
