Paint - 4
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“No, I can probably help you,” I said. “I’m from health and safety”.
I could almost read his mind, ‘Bl***y interfering lot.’
“I have to tell you that arc welding using that chlorinated leak detector is dangerous.”
“Why not? It’s bl**dy good, the best I could find.”
“Agreed, but it also releases a toxic gas called ‘Mustard gas’, which endangers you and your colleagues … and me. The gas was used extensively in the First World War. I shall be going to see the doctor right now and advise you to do the same.”
- Category: True Stories Told As Fiction
4 comments add one below
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Richard Hunt 7 months ago
Amazing though it may seem, this is all true. My mother’s father had been gassed during the First World War and it left him - a lucky one - with a persistent hacking cough.
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Neville Hunt 7 months ago
Wow! I bet they loved you, Richard! That explains his constant coughing.
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Richard Hunt 7 months ago
Yes, that was when it started, apparently, although before he got ‘home’, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and spent some time in a prison camp. As a result, he had a hatred of guns, any guns, even our toy ones, so they were banned from number 8. To continue with him …
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Richard Hunt 7 months ago
… during his POW time, was when ‘Mum and me’ ie Annie and Irene stayed in a camp for relatives of POW’s at Shepreth. Each time we drove her up the A10 she saw the sign for Shepreth … “That’s where me and mum lived during the war” (14-18). My PTSD is starting to take over, need to stop.
