For people my age, who live in Australia - they would remember the catch-cry of the 1950/60's house wife - what I need is a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down. There were mothers, in aprons and rollers and hairnets, all up and down this country lamenting this when it all got too much for them. And I can image that it did get too much - cricket teams of kids, cooking every meal from scratch, cleaning devices that were the neanderthal version of a 'Dyson', husbands that could avoid all this by staying back at work until the kids were in bed - and I am surprised that Bex didn't contain something a little more robust!
The advertising campaign was actually this : "Stressful Day? What you need is a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down" It obviously worked as most mothers took the advice. I suspect the cup of tea and the lie down did as much, if not more, good as the Bex powder did - it was a combination of asprin, analgesic and caffeine. I recall the way it was packaged - a white powder, neatly folded up in a little paper envelope. Not that I know much about drugs, but I have seen the movies, and isn't that how they package cocaine?
By the time it was my turn to be a mother, Bex had long gone. Ever resourceful, I found a clear liquid called Gin as its replacement. My mother would come over some afternoons and say she needed some tonic water as it had quinine in it - great to replenish lost salts when you had been sweating (they used this in India during the British Raj era - thus the name Bombay Sapphire Gin). You can't be as uncultured as to just drink tonic water, it must be taken properly as a Gin and Tonic, with lemon and ice.
We would say 'just the one and then I will start dinner' and sit on the back lawn, watching the boys run about and exhaust themselves (this was a theory, not a fact - little boys never exhaust themselves). The 'just the one' would go down very quickly, so would become 'awww go on then, one more wont hurt'. We would drink the second one much slower, that way you could really feel the medicinal effect of wobbly legs and who-the-hell-wants-dinner-anyway.
By the third one, we would call Mr K and my Dad and giggle and shout for them to bring home fish and chips. The boys would be filthy, and having a ball, and we could not give a flying Bex!
Ahhh, the good ole days.
