Pin Back Your Ears

Recent email correspondence with Mrs Quilt stirred some childhood memories.

I was born with bat wing ears.  My Uncle Laurie was supposedly the same, but he was said to have flattened his as a child by sitting reading with his hands pressed against his ears.

Believing that as a baby the cartilage behind my ears was soft enough to mould, Mum tried all ways to flatten them.  I still have the surgical cap she bought for 5/6 (5 shillings and 6 pence) if the almost illegible pencil on this photo is correct.  She even tried sticking them down with Elastoplast, but the screaming when she, or I, pulled it off was too much, and she gave up.

When I was six and had tonsillitis Dr Davies called.   

I remember him and Mum either side of the bed and him saying “... you can’t let a girl go through life with ears like this.”

“But doctor we haven't the money for plastic surgery.”

“They can be done on the National Health if they’re bad enough.”

He set things in motion and we eventually saw a constulant, Mr Schofield, who agreed to do them when I was slightly older and my head nearer its adult size.

When I was nine my parents took me to St Lawrence Hospital Chepstow and left me in the children’s plastic surgery ward.  

These days it’s almost a two hour drive from Llandeilo to Chepstow: on the A roads of 1965 it must have taken a lot longer.   

Parents did not stay with their child in hospital in the sixties.   

Visiting was Wednesday and weekend afternoons; they drove over for every one.   

Dad was a postman so they could start off after he'd finished the morning shift and get there in time.  I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn’t a bit of shift shifting between the blokes in the Llandeilo sorting office to facilitate him.  It was that sort of a place: favours given knowing they'd be returned in good time when needed.

I think I was there for nine or ten days, certainly until the stitches were out and I'd learned to tie a bandage turban on my head for bed.  I don’t remember feeling lonely or afraid but as Mrs Quilt says “at least you'd have been an intelligent fairly self-reliant girl by that age.”  I was also a big reader and most of the ‘girls’ books available to me involved boarding schools, so I was used to the idea of being away and alone.   

It was an adventure.

St Lawrence Hospital was the burns unit for South Wales, and also provided plastic/limb surgery for injured miners, steelworkers etc.  It was one of those establishments where each ward was a separate building with a covered open corridor running between. 

I remember a nurse chatting to a good looking young man (possibly a miner) through an open window.  He tried to lean his elbow on the outside sill, and suddenly realised he no longer had a lower arm or elbow to lean on on that side. 

There was one child who had been wearing a nylon nightie too near an electric fire.   

Her face, hands and feet were unmarked but the rest of her body looked like a very old woman's face; just wrinkles.

There was a gorgeous looking lively little girl (about three) who always wanted to sit on Mum's lap when she visited.  She had no visitors and never spoke.  She had curly blond hair with a bald patch bigger than an old penny in the middle of it.  Mum supposed it was the result of some sort of birth defect, disease or accident.  The little girl tolerated Dad but hated men.  Sitting on Mum's lap one visit she leant over and bit the thigh of the man visiting the next bed.  You can imagine the horror and embarrassment.   

Until Mum and Dad, with the help of one of the nurses, understood her hair loss was due to abuse.  Clumps of it had literally been pulled out by, presumably, her father. 

I learnt a lot in a short time, and came to respect fire and fire safety more than most.

These memories were prompted by a conversation about home-made facemasks.  I’ve made mine out of recycled cotton boxer-shorts and polycotton sheeting.  Having my ears pinned back has left me with an anathema to hooking things behind them.   

That and Mum telling me not to push my hair behind me ears from then on.   

Which is why I used the waistband to make behind the head straps; these brings the mask nice and neat under the chin too.  

I have a slight issue with glasses fogging but not as long as I remember 'in through the nose, out through the mouth'.

We should remember face coverings are for protecting others from our viruses not vice versa.