The word “nosebleed” has not appeared on this Blog until now. I find the Search option on this site very useful. Sometimes I am about to draft something that has been playing on my mind and find that I have already drafted and posted it, maybe years earlier. But there’s been nothing so far about nosebleeds.

I had a nosebleed today, the afternoon of Saturday 17 June 2023. I had one a few weeks ago, not sure when. I didn’t make a note of it. Both times I had to lie on the sofa with my head back waiting for the bleeding to subside.

While doing so I inevitably thought back to previous times in my life when I, or my son, have had more than the occasional nosebleed. We have been prone to them more often than my wife or daughter, but they are still rare enough for me to take a few minutes to piece together those previous times.

I recall a few occasions in my early 20s, returning from work in Mayfair. At least twice (and maybe it was only twice) my nose started to bleed while I was travelling between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner on the Piccadilly Line. I got off at Hyde Park Corner and leaned my head back as best I could without lying flat on the bench. I was relieved, each time, that I had a packet of tissues in my coat pocket (probably Handy Andies in those days). Within 10 minutes I was back on a Piccadilly Line heading west again. I wondered if there was a link to my working environment on those days, air-conditioned rooms with no outside windows. If there was, it didn’t last. I spent many subsequent working days in similar environments without the same results.

There must be something about Hyde Park Corner. On at least three occasions, when my son was 5 or 6 and we were travelling into town, he needed to use the loo right there. No other stations, just Hyde Park Corner. At around the same age he went through a phase of nosebleeds, including one memorable time at an Italian restaurant in East Finchley. That one lasted the longest, as I recall. We figured that there seemed to be a link with food that was high in salt, which was always more likely at grown-up restaurants. There had been a few times when he had salted pretzels not long before bedtime, and that might have triggered nosebleeds. Not always, otherwise we would have recognized the pattern sooner.

On the rare occasions when I had nosebleeds as a child my father would tell me about someone he knew back in Ireland who was convinced that they were beneficial. He would force his nose to bleed at least once a month, for the health benefits. I doubt that there is any evidence for this but it crosses my mind whenever I am lying with my head back, waiting for the bleeding to subside. And it always does, within 10 minutes.

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