DOCTOR’S ORDERS 1950s
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| Mass incolulations. |
The last was the worst; big blisters in a line from the
chest to the back. The story goes that, if they meet you’re done for. Mine
didn’t meet, for which I’m grateful. Whether or not it is the reason I am still
extant, it did at least leave me one side to lie on.
The quack usually came out to you in those days, even for
the things everyone got, and left the distraught parent with a free
prescription for some kind of concoction. Cherry linctus was the best. I can
taste it now. That much sugar was never going to convert to alcohol, but more
than enough did to give us a serious taste for it.
When you got really pissed off with doing stuff - especially
school stuff - if you were lucky, the doc would declare you anaemic and
prescribe something that tasted like essence of iron bar; like the smell on
your hands after going on the climbing frame, only bottled.
Probably something to do with going from a fat baby to a
beanpole in what seemed like minutes, I had a weakness in my knees, so was
taken to the surgery to find gentle old Tommy Sutton Coulson had gone off on
holiday leaving some latter day Boadicea in charge. She laid me on the couch
and mangled my legs in all directions before declaring in foghorn tones that
there was ‘nothing wrong with them that a good game of rugby wouldn’t cure’.
I had two spells in hospital, both in Newton Abbot. One was
for a hernia operation, the other to do something to resolve the ‘lazy eye’.
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| Children's ward. |
The children’s ward was a twenty-four hour a day nightmare
in the fifties. Visiting hours were strictly adhered to and, to a child, the
wait from afternoon to afternoon was interminable. The nurses were pleasant
enough, but also strictly business, especially when the fearsomely starched
matron was about.
Night times were full of piteous screams, of pain and fear,
nightmares and serious injury. We tried to cover our ears and eyes to shut it
out and get some sleep. It seemed that nurses only visited at intervals, even
though a child had been rushed in by ambulance men and wailed inconsolably for
hours. I never saw their parents brought to them or allowed to stay in the
hallowed chambers of misery and horror. I think we all knew what the ensuing
silence and the rolled up mattress betokened.
The ward must have been single sex because the only friend I
made was a poorly looking red haired girl in a faded red dressing gown. Apart
from visits and telling the nurses I didn’t want a bath, she was the only
person I can recall talking to. She was pleased for me when my parents sprung
me, but terribly sad with it. I felt awful about leaving her in that place.
I was a great fan of Russ Conway, whom I would miss playing
at the Pavilion. My parents even tried to get him to visit the ward, but it
wasn’t possible. He did send me a get well message though. I can still play
Sidesaddle and Roulette as badly as I did then; more Eric Morecambe than Mr Conway.
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| Russ Conway. |
I came out of the hernia op with a great gash across my
abdomen held together with industrial stitches and a long thin regular
Elastoplast. The holes from the stitches never completely healed up. Luckily
they are mostly covered by the undergrowth.
My treat for surviving the eye operation was to be collected
in Syd Wilkes’s proper American pre-war Chrysler with its cool whitewall tyres
and V8 engine. They left the stitches in that time. It was difficult for anyone
to judge the success of the operation because my right eye had a big pad over
it and I was constantly aware of whatever they’d left in it, which felt like a
telegraph pole.
The stitches were removed some time later.
I was never told the prognosis for the operation. It had
cured a droopy eyelid, but seemed a bit over the top for that purpose. I was
accordingly horrible to my mother for putting me through it, but I daresay it
was worth it.
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| V8 Chrysler. |
I’d made something of a habit of falling on my head as a
child, but I think medical intervention was minimal compared to the seriousness
with which such things are treated today. Luckily I only went a bit weird as a result.
With time, my knees even got better.
My dad never had too much time for doctors and brought me up
in that part of his image. Tommy Sutton Coulson had told him aeons ago that he
had a thyroid condition and treated him accordingly. Half a lifetime later when
Dad was in the convalescent hospital in Kings Ash, recovering from bronchial
pneumonia, the doc took him aside and said, ‘You know, Ron, I don’t think you
ever had a thyroid condition.’
‘Bloody idiot,’ came the reply.
From the time Dad took over the catering at Hoyles Road, we
went on to a kind of set menu. The chicken that was roasted for Sunday would
provide the makings of an omelette on Monday. Macaroni cheese followed on
Tuesday and so on round to Saturday when we would all return from lunchtime in
the Vic with boil-in-the-bag Bird’s Eye cod.
On Monday nights, there was still enough meat on the chicken
carcass for me to pick while sitting through Come Dancing with Peter West. Not
a celebrity spectacle in those days, but a competition between ballroom dance
groups, such as Midland Counties (South). The ritual of the chicken picking was
gradually accompanied by a ritual toothache. It only happened at that time on a
Monday night, and a single Anadin tablet from the family pharmacy was
sufficient to allay it.
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| Cricket commentator and Come Dancing presenter, Peter West. |
One Monday, the cupboard was bare. Somebody had swallowed
the last pill. Almost without thought, I filled a glass of water from the tap
and pretended to take an Anadin. The relief was identical. I had experienced the
placebo effect at first hand.
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