Snapped! Changing face of childhood
insinuation that it was a wife’s job to do this.
This mother-in-law describes her son — Miss Apter’s husband — as ‘no trouble at all’ as a child. Maybe Miss Apter would have preferred to have her husband described as a knife-wielding gang member in his teens?
And the truly awful gesture of collecting coupons to help the couple buy a new vacuum cleaner was greeted with rude rejection, and the coupons were thrown in the bin.
Yes, some mothers-in-law need to accept their daughters-in-law will have different methods of childcare and will gravitate to their own mothers for help.
But what a shame it took so many years before Miss Apter matured enough to recognise her mother-in-law was acting out of love. LEE JANOGLY, London N2. THE recent letters about disciplining children have made me think about our changing attitudes. On my wall I have class photographs of infants at Trowbridge schools dated about 1903, featuring my grandparents. Though beautifully turned out — the boys’ hair smoothed down, the girls wearing bows — not one of those children is smiling, and the male teachers
Boyhood memories
What a beautiful descriptive article John MacLeod (Mail) wrote on autumn. It brought back memories of boyhood.
KEN McMORRAN, via email. JOHN MacLeod’s autumn feature – exquisite. CHRISTINE MARTIN,
via email.
Naked ambition
SO Boris Johnson saved Brexit – according, of course, look stern. Next to those photos are pictures of my two grandchildren, Lexie, aged eight, at her First Holy Communion, and Noah, four, in his nursery photo — and they are both smiling happily. Looking at the 1903 photos, you feel life is about surviving and you think of the horrors of World War I to come, which some of those young boys might not have survived. My grandfather, Clarence, was in the trenches and had a ‘whiff of gas’, as the family called it, which damaged his lungs. to Boris Johnson. But Brexit has not happened yet and the Foreign Secretary’s naked ambition could yet wreck the Tory Party.
Should Boris become leader, decades of rehabilitating and detoxifying the party would be swept away at a stroke.
NEIL CLARK, Ayr.
A pain in the neck
I WAS a victim of whiplash last year and am awaiting surgery to replace four discs, fuse Looking at the modern photos, I see joy as these young children know they are surrounded by people who love them. But I question whether indulging every whim of today’s children is the right way to prepare them for adulthood. Loving family history, I often talk about my old photos to Lexie so she can see who her ancestors are and understand they were real people, too. ISABEL WOODWARD,
Trowbridge, Wilts. my neck and fit titanium rods to protect my spinal cord.
But the health board has only one surgeon capable of carrying out my operation and he only works part-time. My GP referred me in February, and I should have been on the road to recovery by now. Instead, I’m in a queue.
Then there’s the stress of being off work, not being able to drive, and coping with loss of feeling in my hands.
Name supplied, Borehamwood, Herts.