21st C
You never think it will happen to you but today it did. A 999 call and the ambulance outrider was outside the door while my friend and neighbour was still speaking to the operator.
Within minutes I was strapped into a chair, carried downstairs, trundled over the icy pavement to the waiting ambulance, blue lights flashing, lighting up The Circus. How many neighours were watching? Not many I guess, at 6.30 am on a freezing winter morning.
All tests are over now, but an overnight stay in a medical assessment ward is mandatory. In this area of the hospital there is no access to radio or television, no flowers allowed, but patients are permitted to use mobile phones. A few books would be welcome, but I must make do with a magazine from the hospital shop.
There is a screamer in the bed next to mine, a mature Italian woman who fights the staff and screams blue murder whenever a nurse or doctor tries to administer to her. She sounds like a wounded animal in pain, deeply disconcerting to all within earshot.
I wish doctors would return to wearing white coats. They walk the wards in street clothes and consequently bring street germs in with them. Young female doctors are often fashionably dressed, many of them wearing shoulder bags stuffed with pens and notebooks as well as makeup and mobile phones, stethoscopes looped around the neck as a necessary accessory. One, long dark hair flying over her shoulders, wears a course knitted woollen coat, so hairy I swear you can see infectious bugs clinging to the fibres just waiting to fall on to patient's bedcovers.
BUT the care and attention of all staff inv0lved was invariably kind and concerned. I left feeling deeply grateful to the NHS.
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LIVING WITH MRS THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH IN THE CIRCUS, BATH, 18TH /21ST C By VIVIENNE RAE-ELLIS The following is a work in progress, to be published here in instalments. The manuscript has not been submitted to any publisher. References and bibliography will be published following the final chapter. 1) go to the Manuscript below right.. 2) Start from the top entry.. 3) Read down through the manuscript
The Circus
About Me
- Vivienne Rae-Ellis FRGS
- I am an ex-pat Tasmanian author who has lived in England since 1987. I have had eleven books published in seventeen editions by publishers who include Faber&Faber, Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton, Robert Hale, University Of Melbourne, University of Yale, Angus Robertson and the Australian Institute Of Aboriginal Studies. Subjects include biographies of three famous Australians: Trucanini, the last Aboriginal Tasmanian to live and die on the island; Louisa Anne Meredith, Australia's first resident female author, and George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the 1830's. Published work includes books for adults and for children based on the history of Australia; the paranormal;and Public Libraries.