Three weeks ago I had heard of Swine Flu but only in a general sense, in the same way I have heard of Alpha Centauri. It’s out there somewhere but doesn’t effect me. Then with the aid of instant world wide communication pictures arrived on the TV screen from Mexico followed almost immediately by the US Centre for Disease Control stating that there was now little chance of containing the flu epidemic that was about to go global. And that all happened less than two weeks ago. Unlike Bird flu which seemed to be around for years and never made the world tour so many ’experts’ pessimistically predicted. Now we have a case here in Torbay, it’s suddenly very close to home.

So now with the WHO moving us up to Scale 5, Pandemic imminent we have all gone from probably never having heard of Swine Flu to having it in our faces every time we listen to the radio, watch TV or read a newspaper. At least it has taken our minds of Global Finances. I have now made it through two flu pandemics one in 1957 when I was 13, a school boy at St Gregorys Technical High School in Manchester and the second in 1968 when I was taxi driver also in Manchester. The thing I remember most about these two pandemics is that we didn’t really know they were happening until people got sick in fairly large numbers in our own area. No instant world wide news coverage then. Back in 1957 all we noticed was more and more of our class mates were failing to attend school until one day when out of a class of 35 there were only 12 of us sitting in the class room waiting for the teacher to arrive, who didn’t actually arrive. The school didn’t close, we just carried on waiting for things to get back to normal. Then just as things were getting back to normal I went down with the flu. The day before I got sick I had taken a note to school saying I would be absent as we were moving house. When the removal van turned up to take all the furniture a mile or so to the new house I was not a well bunny. Fever, shakes, tiredness, a mad desire to curl up into a ball and switch the world off, permanently as far as I cared. We didn’t have a car back in those days so we would all have to walk to the house we were moving to but the van crew took pity on me and gave me a lift. Two and a half weeks of lying in bed staring at the ceiling before I got back to school. I even wanted to get back which shows how bad it had been.
The second in 1968 I only remember because my income suddenly went down as there were less people about. And I didn’t get sick.

One of the thing we can do to reduce the spread of swine flu is personal hygiene. The simplest is wash you hands as often as you can. When I trained to be a bus driver I spent the first week in a class room learning the theory and passing a couple of tests. The last thing the instructor said to us as he wished us luck in our new career was, “If you are running late don’t kill your self to get back on time. Don’t steal the company's money, they always find out and Wash your hands at every opportunity, you are handling money that has been through lots of grubby hands.“ Three good pieces of advice which I always followed. The bit about the washing hands has always been the most important of the three but has suddenly become even more important . I wonder how many places of work, not just bus depots, have large prominent notices stuck where everyone can see urging, no not urging, instructing staff to wash their hands. Is there such a notice where you work? If there is then good, if there isn’t then wash your hands anyway.