‘The Fruit and the Pee’ diorama depicts my life in hospital in 1980 as an 11-year-old boy. It’s in a blue cabinet with green details. At the top and bottom it has a carved green pattern in a kind of half-wheel shape. These are like the giant viruses that are all around the gallery. The scene inside the cabinet shows a hospital room and a figure in a bed. Around the front edges are broken-off blue bricks. It’s like we’re looking through a hole which has been punched in a wall. Behind the bricks there’s a narrow bed, the end of it closest to us. Big bare feet are sticking up. The bed at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield became my home for a year.
The figure in the bed has a large head wrapped in a bandage, and he’s looking to the right, towards the bedside table. It has a fruit bowl on it, and a urine bottle half full of pee. I saw the world go by from that bed.
Because I couldn’t move, I yearned for any opportunity to carry out small acts of rebellion. I was a cheeky chappie, and the new disability and lack of mobility had done nothing to stop that. In fact, it had somewhat enhanced my spirit of rebellion.
The twice-daily visits from family was the only thing that stopped me from being bored. These visiting times were wonderful, because I laughed and was able to be part of my family. They never treated me any differently. So, on one such visit, it was the turn of my sister Linda and her husband Ernest to come and visit me. Ernest was a bit of a cheeky chap himself and had a habit of helping himself to the fruit in the bowl beside my bed. On this occasion he made his move for the greenest apple at the top. But what he didn’t know was that an hour before visiting time, my urine bottle had been spilt all over it. So I watched Ernest whilst he tucked into the apple. He was loving it.
I waited until he finished and then very quietly said, “The nurse spilt my bottle of urine over that apple.”
That tiny incident is still spoken about and has become part of family folklore. It proved that I was still able to be mischievous and it was a small act of rebellion against my ‘internment’ in the hospital bed.
I’ve added a big colourful hand on the top-right corner, which is pointing down at the urine bottle. It’s got “This way” written on it. There’s another hand in the bottom left, pointing up at me in the bed. It says “Welcome”.
There’s a lot going on in that room. Pink and green jellyfish and blobby green viruses are floating around, and a green soldier is standing on the bricks in the bottom right-hand corner. He’s giving us a salute.