ABSTRACT
Among the ambulant poor of my childhood on the post-war streets of bomb-blasted Birkenhead, I vividly remember (in my mind’s eye I can see them now) old men. They were never, for some reason, old women; maybe the latter were just less adventurous and stayed indoors, or were not obligatory bread-winners – unlike those fast-shuffling old men, blank of face, semi-stooped and bent forward, as if half-running so as not to fall over, so short were the steps they took. Sometime later, when old enough to appreciate the turning wheels of industry, I would occasionally be allowed to visit my father’s place of work – ‘The Works’, the Stork Margarine Works, where he was a maintenance engineer. Everywhere, huge tanks and pipes, the hum of pumps – and a choking smell of escaping ammonia, presumably a refrigerant. What might be the toxic connection?
