I opened up the latest copy of my magazine and started to flip through, as I usually do, when I came across ‘A Word to the Unwise’ (Miscellany, WM Sept).
As somebody who suffered with their speech, I could not pronounce s. Although I was only young, I still remember being bullied and being asked to say words that began with s and sounded like f. While I loved the taste of Smarties, I still cringe at the memory of other children’s laughter. I used to lie in bed at night practising my s until, one day, they came out correctly and I hurtled into my parent’s bedroom to tell them my achievement. Mum managed a tired, ‘that’s nice’.