On Sneezing and False Teeth

 Getting over my latest bout of gastritis - the fourth in three months. This time I was in sufficient pain to be whisked to our local A&E. These days it's not a place for the faint-hearted. The staff were run off their feet, and as I was waiting for a taxi to get home, a bloke who looked about 40 was ejected, complaining that 'all the fucking foreign people' were being seen before him. He was going to WRITE TO HIS MP. The nurse accompanying an elderly woman who was waiting for her husband to pick her up looked at me and rolled her eyes. I bet they hear that all the time. 

I was pleased to see the new Banksy that's appeared on a house at the bottom of Vale Street in Totterdown. (The steepest residential street in the country, don't you know.) It's of a woman sneezing her false teeth out, and it reminds me of a story my late Uncle Noel tells in his book about my grandmother, Hilda Hill, and her neighbours in Douglas Road, Horfield in the 1920s:

'Then Mrs Amor, further down the street. Kath to her friends. Born to well-to-do parents but somehow ending up in Douglas Road with her second husband. Very smart but with a slight flavour of 'no better than she ought to be' about her. Given to muttered conversations with Mum that suddenly seemed to stop if I entered the room. Don't know what they were about, but suspect that Les Dawson used to have the same subjects under consideration when he did his sketches for the television. My favourite story of Mrs Amor concerned a visit to town with my mother: when walking up Union Street, Kath sneezed suddenly and her dentures flew from her mouth and landed in one of the numerous heaps of horse manure common in the streets in those days. Faced with a choice between such weighty considerations of hygiene and vanity, Kath opted for the vanity and replaced the dentures.' 

Here's a photo of Vale Street back in September. You can just see the house that now bears a Banksy at the end of the road on the right, in the centre of the photo. 

Hearses, Nurses and Curses of Affliction

Last Saturday there was an exhibition of Victorian medical photos of largely undiagnosed conditions at our local Victorian garden cemetery. A must see for my retired nurse friend, Cathy, and me. Or so we decided.

Upon our arrival at our designated parking spot, we stopped to enjoy the great views from the other, less familiar side of our home city, including the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the distance ... 

... and Vale Street, Totterdown, which is apparently the steepest residential road in the country. 

We didn't have to walk up it, however. Our route took us along here. 

First, we had a poke around in one of the crypts, where lots of redundant grave paraphernalia  had been stored. 

Outside, I learnt what Dru Marland's Morris Traveller wants to be when it grows up. 

There was also a Chevrolet with swagged curtains and a coronet of funerary bling in incredibly bad taste welded to the roof. 

This is the Reverend John Adey Pratt checking the shower is warm enough.  

Not Ted.

After a cup of tea and a shared slice of lemon drizzle cake in the sunny garden of the cemetery cafe, we finally came across the exhibition.

It was rather small, which was just as well, as I'm not sure how I feel about it, really. Of the ten photos on display, one or two people appeared to have conditions which would be easily rectified today - extensive varicose veins and webbed fingers. Another seemed to be suffering from hyperthyroidism.  

The rest were more difficult to contemplate. Obviously the subjects are all long dead, but looking at photos of them did feel prurient. I won't share them here.