Fish can kill me!

When I was very small (maybe 3 or 4 years old) my grandfather, who lost the sight of one eye from a bullet fired by a German sniper (fortunately not a very good one) during the Battle of the Somme in World War 1, wiped my face with the corner of his apron, an apron he had used to wipe his filleting knife on. He was a grocery shopkeeper who specialized in wet fish.I can remember the instantaneous pain and swelling in my eyes, the panic-driven breathlessness, the weeping blindness. The shouting, the accusations, my parent’s panic. My poor grandfather was only trying to clean the face of his grubby grandson. My parents were in fear of loosing their only child, the one who was given hours to live a few years earlier……saved by a young doctor who refused to let my parents watch me die and insisted I had a tracheotomy……thirty or so years later the doctor was knighted and became Sir Michael……Now I have children of my own.