A head which looked as if it was about to burst
When I was about eight years old I went with my parents and sister to visit a local residential home for the mentally handicapped (or Learning disabilities as it's known now)...

Things were rather horrific before we even went inside - huge Victorian gothic building which had probably been a workhouse as some point...

High ceilinged cold green corridors that smelled of disinfectant, boiled cabbage and a mix of unpleasant body odours. We walked through the maze of corridors until we came to the children's' ward.

Remember all the stuff some years back about Romanian Orphanages? It was almost the same in the UK a couple of decades ago...

A long ward of metal cage style cots with sad faced inmates sitting inside them....

I remember one child wearing a crash helmet because he constantly bashed his head against the bars.

But the one that frightened me so much that I had nightmares for a very long time was a poor soul who had hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and as a consequence his head was far, far too big for his tiny body. Added to which he also had a port wine birth mark covering his entire face. This meant that to the eight year old me this child looked as if he'd held his breath for far too long and his head was about to burst any moment. Which sounds funny now...But when you're eight that's just a terrifying prospect.

Hated that place.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 22 Jun 2007, 11:13, Reply)