"Pretend" operations

We lived in fear of being sent to Sully “for an operation”.

And to help us cope emotionally and psychologically, though we never thought of it in those terms, we used to role play what we saw as an inevitable event.

This is a photo of me in bed with the other girls on Ward 2 balcony about to perform an ”operation”.

Where did we get hold of such a huge carving knife?

As it happened I did not get sent to Sully then but five years later when I had a relapse.

And I discovered, contrary to the wild stories circulating around Craig-y-nos about the butchery regime at Sully, that it was a warm and pleasant place beside the seaside.