A life in letters: Agarol

A laxative used by my parents when I was a child. (To me, a gentler alternative called Figeen was administered on a spoon, brown and sweet, when it was required.) I remember the Agarol bottle with its white screw cap, its label half scratched off. When I went to nursery school in the building with the green door in the lane running parallel to Maxwell Avenue I would take the bottle with me, filled with milk in the kitchen by my mum. Sometimes when snack-time came, the cap was too firmly tightened for my fingers to open, and I’d have to seek help. What I took along to eat, I can’t remember, but the word ‘Agarol’ had a certain intriguing mystique to a four-year-old, so I have never forgotten that bottle.