blood

it seems my head needs tidying up. things that are happening now are pulling up memories that i haven't tidied away properly. a very wise person has explained to me how our minds sort out memories and why it is important that they are processed and put to bed. it seems that minds collect things into clusters. these clusters are not always totally logical. sometimes things get clustered with other things for no obvious reason. but there will be a reason, even if we can't see it. there will be a common thread. maybe a smell that was there when things happened. maybe the light was a particular way. i am going to try and sort out my memories, in the hope that they will haunt me less if they are tidy. my mind is very visual. my memories are like pictures. so this is going to be like putting them into albums instead of stuffed into a big shoebox.

the most powerful cluster that i am conscious of is blood. it is a theme that has been there at many times in my life when i have felt afraid.

i am 6. i find a piece of pretty blue glass in the ground in my friend's garden. their house is new and the garden is still being made. part of the glass has bubbles in it. i decide to snap the bubbly bit off so it will fit in my pocket. the glass bites into my finger, very deep, and blood pours out. i don't understand why. my friend's mum patches me up and i am sent home. it should have been stitched. there is still a scar and a piece of finger with no sensation, over 40 years later.

i am 7. i am playing in the garden of a house called glebe cottage. it is where maria and her daughters, mitt and teeny, live. maria is my dad's girlfriend. later she will become my stepmum. she is a doctor and glebe cottage belongs to the hospital where she works. mitt and teeny and i are in the hedge. it is huge and dark and dusty. i am wearing flip flops. i run along beside the fence. suddenly there is a sharp pain in my foot. i look down and i have trodden on a nail in a broken down bit of fence. i can see it sticking up in the skin on my instep, although it hasn't broken through, just stretched it up in a point. i scream and pull my foot away. we go inside and maria puts a plaster on it. a couple of days later i am at home with my mum. my foot aches and she takes me to the hospital. i am given a tetanus jab and my foot is cleaned up and bandaged with a huge white bandage. after the plaster this looks odd. at school everyone wants to be my friend because i have a bandage.

i am 7. i am staying the night with maria and the girls. my dad is at work. it is hot and humid. we go to bed. there is a lot of noise downstairs and maria comes up and tells us that dad has been in a car crash. he has gone to have his head stitched up. later we hear him come in. i sit up in bed as he pushes open the door. i scream. he has 2 black eyes and his head is swollen and square, with 13 stitches across the top that look like barbed wire. he is like frankenstein. he is soaked in blood from head to toe. it seems he has severed an artery in his head. he laughs and tells me the blood was squirting 6 feet in the air but that it is ok. i can't bear to hug him with the blood. it smells of rust.

i am 8. i have moved in with my dad and maria. i go on holiday in north wales with my mum. we stay at my gran's. my cousin kelvin is killed by a car. he was the same age as me but i didn't know him. all the adults are broken. they cry and stare into space.

i am 11. now i live with maria and my dad and mitt and teeny. we live in a tiny cottage called hillside which also belongs to the hospital. no-one is really interested in the garden apart from me. i have a patch where i plant things that i have bought with my pocket money. one day my dad has a cut arm and has to have it bandaged. maria tells us he cut himself with the sickle while he was trimming the hedge. but when the bandage comes off we see there is more than one cut. and no-one trims a hedge with a sickle.

i am 12. i find blood in my knickers. maria says i have become a woman. we have a special red meal to celebrate, steak and red wine and red cabbage. this celebration of my blood has a profound effect on me. i never feel my periods are a 'curse' as my mum called them. they are a special thing, a sign i am a woman.

i am 14. my mum has a new husband. they live in a flat at the top of a tall house in canynge square, in bristol. my aunt tells me that the new husband is dangerous. he has been in prison for 'bottling' his wife's lover. at first i think this means the same as bottling fruit but it turns out he cut his face with a broken bottle. i am afraid for my mum. when i ask her she tells me that he was in prison for blowing up water mains as part of the free wales army. neither of these quite rings true to me.

i am 15. i get home from school. my dad's mg is in the drive. no-one is in the house. on the mantlepiece is an envelope addressed to maria in my dad's square draughtsman's capitals. my stomach lurches. i know something is not right. i run upstairs and into my dad and maria's room. on the bedside table is my dad's watch and his loose change. the sheets are pulled back and there is blood. i run downstairs and ring maria at work. she says she will come home. it turns out my dad has taken an overdose of morphine sulphate that would have killed a horse and gone away to die. we find this out when a man rings. he had been walking his dog and found my dad under a bush. i go in the ambulance with him. my ears are ringing. when we go back to school maria tells them that my dad had pneumonia.

i am 17. i have a cz motorbike which is my pride and joy. one night i go out with my boyfriend tom on the back. we are following some friends to a country pub. they are in a car. suddenly the bike slews across the road. we have hit mud. there is a huge crash and i feel a sharp pain in my face. i sit up and put my hands to my face. they are covered in blood. i scream for tom but i can't see him. he comes out from behind the hedge. he is ok. my face is plastered in blood and i think only about my looks. our friends in the car come back for us. when we get to the pub my teeth are chattering. the only injury is a tiny cut on my upper lip. when i get home my dad shouts at me. maria says this is just because he is worried.

i am 18. i am living in a house with my dad. he has left maria and is now going out with linda, who later becomes his third wife. he is out. i go to bed and dream he has hung himself. later maria and her friend carol come to the door. it is 3am. they tell me that my dad has crashed his car and is in intensive care. as we drive back to portsmouth it becomes clear that he crashed his car on purpose. this is not one that can be explained as an accident. he drove his soft-top mg into a parked articulated lorry on the other side of the road at 80 mph. there are no skid marks. he severs an artery in his neck and his legs are crushed by the engine. he is in intensive care for a long time. i did not see any of this blood. i could not face seeing him so i sat outside while my boyfriend tom sat with him. in some ways imagining the blood is worse.

i am 19. i am at college in kingston, studying law. a girl in our year is in a car crash in her mini and dies. she is a friend but not a close friend. however i feel i have to do something. i organise for a tree to be planted and a plaque made to remember her. years later there is an article in the law society gazette about kingston, with a picture on the front page. the tree is in full bloom.

i am 21. i am at my dad and linda's flat in southampton. it looks out over a wood. there is a phone call. my cousin andrew has been run over by a car on his 21st birthday. he dies 2 days later. when we were kids we went on holiday together. he baked green cakes.

i am 22. tom and i live in a bedsit in a huge house. it is chaotic and dirty and one of the other tenants sets the house on fire 3 times in a short space of time. the police investigate and find who it is. in the tenant's room is a shoebox with a turd inside. the landlord tells him to leave. they are on the stairs. the tenant hits the landlord and the landlord pushes him away. he falls against the window which breaks. like everything else in the house, it doesn't get fixed. a few days later our cat cuts his front leg on the broken window. it is a real mess and needs to be stitched up. i make him a little denim trouser to stop him chewing the stitches.

i am 34. i am married to mike. we live in a little cottage on a main road. i discover i am pregnant. we are overjoyed. i take special care of myself, do everything i can to make my body a good place to grow the baby. 10 weeks into my pregnancy i start to bleed. the doctor sends me for a scan. the ultrasound lady is called mary. she is quietly spoken and gentle. she is silent for a long time as she moves the ultrasound thing over me. she looks up and tells us that there is no baby. i am puzzled. she says i have already started to miscarry and it has moved from view. it will come out over the next few days. we are numb with grief. i ring my friend tina, who has gypsy blood and knows things and has known me since we were 12. she says that i will think i am bleeding to death but that it is better to stay home sitting on a towel than go into hospital, unless i get really ill. her sister had a miscarriage so she knows. we try to get on with daily life. we go shopping to a large tescos with our neighbour. as we stand in the queue i feel cramps. we get home as fast as we can. mike lights a fire in the bedroom and i go to bed. i ring friends, trying to take my mind off what will happen. one friend says 'at least it shows you can conceive'. i know she is trying to be kind but it cuts me. our doctor comes to see me. he is irish and has a ginger beard. he does not seem to notice the threadbare carpet on the floor of our bedroom. he goes straight to the fire to warm his hands and says he had a fire just like it in dublin when he was a student. he is kind and human. i say that i can't understand why i am so upset as it is just a tiny thing we are losing. he says it is not a tiny thing, it is our hopes, our dreams, of our child. it is imagining our child growing up, playing on the beach, running, laughing. it is imagining our child as an adult, making a life. this strikes me as incredibly wise and helps enormously with the pain. later that night the little thing is gone. there was indeed a lot of blood but it felt right to sit in my own bed, in a room lit only by firelight, holding the hand of the man i love.

i am 35. i am pregnant again. i find out i am pregnant the week the other baby would have been born. i don't have the same optimism for this baby. i feel my body is unworthy and unsafe for a baby. i decide that taking care didn't work before so i am just going to carry on as normal and leave things to fate. luckily my body knows better and i go off wine and coffee and eggs and all sorts of things that might not be good for the baby. at about 10 weeks i start to bleed. i feel cold and numb. every time i go to the loo i look for signs. i am working as a lawyer, trying to keep it together. i park my car outside my friend's house every day. one morning i am bleeding and i go in and burst into tears. i am wearing a blue and white stripy dress. she hugs me. the bleeding stops, then starts, then stops. i cannot bear it. at about 18 weeks i am at work and i start to really bleed. bright red, pouring blood. i ring mike. he comes to get me and takes me home. (later one of the partners at work comments about me leaving suddenly and i tell him sarcastically that i didn't want to ruin the office chair). we have another scan. this time mary smiles. the baby's heart is still beating. we go home. the bleeding comes and goes. it is not what is known as spotting. it is more pouring. but this time the baby stays. at 7 months and a bit he decides he has had enough waiting. with quite a lot of drama and trauma and fear, my son is born. it takes me a very long time to get over all the fear and believe that he will live.

i am 39. we have an airedale terrier, the sort of dog you push around one wheels when you are small. she would more properly be called an airedale terror as she is wild. one day we get home and she has jumped up at the glass doors, going straight through the glass and cutting her front legs and shoulders to ribbons. i ring the vet. as the bleeding has slowed they say to bring her in in a couple of hours so they can stitch her up. i make her comfortable in the bedroom. the wounds are raw flesh. it seems wrong for her to be open to the air like this, but i know she is better waiting for the operating theatre at home rather than in an unfamiliar place. she needs 48 stitches in all.

i am 41. i am at work when i get a phone call. it is our neighbour the builder, who mike is doing casual work for. there has been an accident. mike is on the way to worthing hospital in an ambulance. i run out of the office, shouting to my colleagues. i jump into my car and bang the door so hard the handle comes off. i drive to the hospital very fast. i get there before the ambulance. this terrifies me. the only reason i can think of that i would have got there first is that he has died so they are no longer hurrying. the ambulance arrives and mike is carried in. his clothes are covered in blood and his arm is wrapped in a huge bloodstained pad. we are taken to a cubicle. t he doctor pulls the pad back to have a look. it is like meat and my legs buckle. i am far more shocked than mike is. he is making jokes. he is x-rayed as the cut may have gone through the bone. it turns out that he was pulling down the wall of a shower cubicle when it sheared along the join of the plasterboard and the edge of the broken tiles cut deep into mike's arm. carl, the neighbour, tells me the bathroom was like the shower scene from psycho. his tool box was full of blood. mike tells me that if he hadn't moved his head the tiles would have gone into his skull. i don't want to think about this. as mike's kidneys are not stable they cannot operate for 2 days. he has the arm bandaged up but i can't help thinking it is meat under there. we don't know if his arm will work again. it has cut right through the muscle and most of the nerves. i go to get our son from school and then a friend comes to sit with him so i can go back to the hospital. as i drive i think we will have to get an automatic car. that night and the next i don't bath, i sleep in my clothes with the dog on the bed. the house becomes a tip. we look like we have been burgled. my son and i eat rice and cheese, our comfort food. we go to see mike in hospital. the man in the next bed has a drain into a bag. our son watches the blood drip into the bag.

i am 42. i am up on the downs with our lurcher. he runs across a field and when he comes back i notice he has cut his foot and that it is dripping. i tie it up with a plastic bag and ring my husband to meet me at the car park with a first aid kit. we bandage up the dog and i take him to the vet. as it is sunday we have to ring the vet first. it turns out the dog has cut an artery in his leg. the vet stitches him up and gives him a blood transfusion from her own dog. i marvel at this. he is soon better.

i am 42. since my son was born i have bled more and more with each period. it is called flooding. it is likely that i will have to have a hysterectomy. one day my son and i go to a garden centre. i go to the loo and change my tampon and pads. we drive up the road and i feel the blood pouring onto the car seat. we pull over in a lay-by and i mop up as best as i can and put in another duvet-sized pad. my son watches in interest. i ponder on the effect that this will have on him - he will never be squeamish about periods around the women he knows. our wonderful gp ( a new one as we have moved) puts a tiny coil inside me a few days later and the whole thing stops. it is pure magic. i can keep my womb.

i am 43. my husband is out with our dogs. i have a soak in the bath. my son is playing on his computer. it is a lovely warm day. i wander round the house, feeling calm and good. the phone rings. it is someone i don't know. he says that he has found a dog with our phone number on it. it has been in an accident. i am confused and start to say that our dogs are with my husband but i realise something has happened. i find out where the man is and pull on some clothes. my son picks up the urgency and we run out to the car. it is my husbands car as he has mine. we screech off to the place where the man said the dog was. on the way i ring the vet and alert them so they can meet us at the surgery. as we get out of the car we see our beautiful lurcher lying panting in a huge pool of blood. it seems impossible that so much blood can fit into such a thin dog. there are other people there; an old man who was driving the car that hit the dog, and a couple with a bmw, as well as the man who phoned. i tell the couple that my son is autistic and ask them to watch him with the road. i tell my son to look at a particular tree and not to look away until i tell him. the man and i roll the dog onto a picnic rug and into the back seat of my husband's car. the man says i can keep it - he is part of a family with a local pet shop and they get them free from the manufacturers. i tell my son to get in the car and we race off to the vets. the vet is there and we carry the dog in. he is still bleeding but more slowly. i tell my son to look at a lab coat on the wall and not to look away. the vet tells me to press on the wound. she is working on the dog. when we have the bleeding under control she rings the other vet who comes in. they tell us to come back when they ring us. i am shaking like a leaf. i am so proud of my son. when we get home we cannot find my husband. his phone is at home. our neighbour goes out to look for him. eventually he comes home - he has been looking for the dog. it turns out the dog has chased a deer over a mile to where he was run over. when we bring him home he is very weak. it is touch and go for several days. i sleep on the floor with him the first night, holding his paw so he knows i am there.

i am 44. one day my sister is staying over and we all plan to go swimming. we take the dog in the car to give him a walk on the way. we all climb out of the car and let him off the lead in the woods. almost immediately my son falls over and cuts his hand. he is screaming with fear at the sight of his own blood. we try to calm him. just then a huge stag bolts past us and over into a ploughed field the other side of the road. it is followed by our dog at full speed. we watch in horror as our dog brings down the stag, tearing out its throat. it is in slow motion. the stag runs across the field, bleeding, the dog catches it again and brings it down. we can see it from a distance. my husband is trying to calm our son down - he is hysterical at the sight of his blood. my sister tells me to stay with my son and runs over the field to where the stag is now on the ground. we can see the dog going at it. my sister stops near the dog and the stag and throws up. she grabs the dog's collar and pulls him off. he keeps trying to get at the stag. my sister throws up again. she staggers back across the ploughed field with the blood-soaked dog. the stag drags itself into the woods. the dog has cut his front leg and is bleeding badly. my sister alternates between crying and shouting at the dog. we all get in the car. we drive round trying to find the stag. then we start on the way to the vets. i ring the rspca to see if they can come and put the stag down, and the vet to arrange for them to be there as it is a sunday. my son wails that he thought we were going swimming. as my sister and i wait in the vet's waiting room we see that the bone in the dog's leg is exposed. my sister rushes to be sick again.

i am 46. my work takes me into some grim places. they are the homes of people who have fallen to drugs. sometimes they are in prison, sometimes they have run away. sometime they have been moved to places of safety. sometimes they are dead. my camera is one of the tools of my trade. it records these places, to show to the judge. i hide behind it, seeing the world one step removed. somehow it makes these places more bearable. but when i get back to the office and look at the pictures on the screen, they are larger than life. images that sum up more than anything the depravity of people's lives. a blood-stained hammer, a bullwhip and a thong, all in a pool of blood which has dried to rust. a champagne bucket, full of sharp knives, soaking in water with congealed blood floating on it, in a kitchen where no-one has cooked anything except crack for a very long time. a barbie doll, face down on a blood-stained floor. blood-soaked pillows in a house where a 15 year old boy cut his own throat in despair. so much blood, leaking out, like tears.

i am 48. things have been tough. for some reason this seems like a good time to adopt another dog. i locate a female lurcher who needs a home and drive down to devon to fetch her. when our lurcher meets her he is aggressive. she is very smelly and it is probably this which causes it. on a walk a few days later he snaps at her and she snaps back. we do not notice at the time but she has broken the skin. by christmas he is very ill. we put him on anti-biotics and painkillers and he perks up a bit. after christmas he has to have an operation. he comes home in a blood-soaked t-shirt to catch the drips from the drain that is in the wound. i swap his fleecy blanket for a cheap duvet covered with a red sheet to hide the blood. the wound doesn't heal well and he has to have a second, more major operation. there is a bigger drain and a lot more blood. i ring my friend, a doctor, to see how much blood there should be. she says it doesn't sound like too much but that i should ring the vet if he seems weak or pale. days go by and the wound carries on leaking, but more slowly. it doesn't heal and the vet says he may have to go to a vetarinary hospital for plastic surgery. one afternoon the dog scratches his shoulder and opens up the wound again. it gapes but does not bleed much. the vet staples him up with metal staples. we are expecting the worst and begin to research places to stay in newmarket, where the vet hospital is. but a miracle happens and the wound heals. not totally, but enough to feel hopeful that it will all be ok. i put his fleecy blanket back on his bed and throw away the red sheet.