Monday, August 31, 2009

The Hairdresser

Mum and Dad moved to North Wales around 1978 and settled in to a coastal life, with an attempt at another shop, this time a little grocery store, however, as with a lot of small shopkeepers of that time they struggled against the introduction of the big supermarkets. In the case of Arthur and Dorothy, they had little chance of profit from the cash and carry "wholesalers" who were undercut by a newly built Asda superstore.

Mum started cutting hair again, it was an ideal opportunity to get to know people in the new community. Just to show that you can't keep a good hairdresser down, Dorothy returned to her "roots", bought a moped with a carrier box and set off around Kinmel bay to quaff "doos". She was born in 1930 and was buzzing around Rhyl in 1982 (at the ripe old age of 52) to sort out blue rinses and split ends.

Mum used to drink a lot of Malibu back then, but I don't think it's related to the following :

It was exactly this time that, after an afternoon of cutting hair, she parked her moped in the front garden at the house (which was called Korner because it was on the corner) in Kinmel bay and uncontrollably dropped to her knees. Arthur found her passed out in the garden and rushed her over to Glan Clwyd hospital, St Asaph.

I was informed by my boss at the time, Bob Morris of APPH, Speke that there was an urgent phone call. I rushed down to Wales to the Hospital where I found mum in bad shape, basically paralysed and unable to coherently speak. It was the nightmare situation and it was happening to my mum, it looked like she had a major stroke.

There was some discussion and for some reason, the Doctors, who seemed clueless at that point, decided to do a spinal tap as they suspected viral meningitis (not normally done with supposed 'stroke' victims) - they did this and almost instantaneously Dorothy's power of speach returned, they rationalised that the spinal tap process actually released pressure on the brain. I tend to think that mum found the whole process so unbearable that she decided to not go through it again.

In a miraculous fashion, A few days later she was shaken but fine.

She never used the moped again...

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