Windows of Madness (Part 12)

The Unit
2007

Only ten minutes to go, and the office clock seemed to stop. The five minute variations from clock to clock around the unit assumed great significance, and we scurried around the ground floor making sure the pots were washed, the patients were dry and the desk was tolerably tidy. Newly arrived staff were always either deliriously happy because they hadn’t yet started, or morose and snappy because they were about to. The latter group were often extremely touchy and pedantic about the state of the unit on arrival, and this was the main reason that last minute spring-cleaning tended to occur. One right-headed staff member described this process as sprinkling dog dirt with sequins.
Thinking about the relief staff, my mind wandered off and recalled the last night duty I’d done at the unit, and how numbingly typical it was.
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Artefact
Seen in a night nurse’s locker

 7 tins of rice pudding
 1 packet of chocolate digestive biscuits
 1 copy of ‘Tit Bits’ magazine, circa 1968
 1 quotation taped to the inside of the locker door:

“Vote for insanity – you know it makes sense”

The Monster Raving Loony Party
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I left the house when the kids were going to bed, scraped the sleet off the car and drove past the snug little bungalows with their billiard table lawns and miniature wishing-wells; my mind going forwards and the world going backwards. It was too soon for revellers and too late for shoppers, leaving the dark streets lanced by yellow beams, deserted and sad, washed by filthy rain, and swept of meaning.
Even before I entered, the wails and monotones reached out of the unit’s front door like a monastic chant, but I forced a grin at the annoying levity of staff on their eager way home, as the old tired rituals began once again.
After three hours had passed, I watched the last chain-smoker going to bed, wishing I was in mine, and I flinched as the gathering silence was shattered by a patient deciding to run a bath at midnight. There was more silence, more doors, more wandering souls, then a period of tenuous tranquillity as the clock moved slowly on to 2.00a.m. Armies of unseasonable flies, wasps, mosquitoes and moths floated and buzzed around the hot reviving lights, while my eyes struggled to concentrate on a Bronte classic rendered meaningless by fatigue. Needing to walk around just to stay awake, I inspected the tightly screwed on, plastic covered prints of impressionist scenes for the tenth time that night, and heard every snore, sigh and mumble in the building – not because they were near, but because I was sensitised to the slightest sound, like an unwilling guard dog.
Thinking of the people who’d died at the unit over the years and the ghost stories that occasionally circulated, I heard the fire door on the landing creak open and I waited to see who would come down, but no one did. Blaming the wind, I walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and turned around to discover Cecilia standing right in front of me like silent death. The small hairs lifted on the back of my neck and an electric current shot up my spine, reverberating around the limbic systems of my brain like shellshock. Disguising my horror, I privately wondered if these experiences were making me go prematurely grey, or shortening my life in some invisible way.
Cecilia returned to her bed after receiving a drink, then proceeded to crash her bedroom door shut twice, totally indifferent to the others sleeping. The house of cards trembled, but luck remained with me, and the patients continued to snore and groan while my radar scanned the floorboards for signs of imminent eruption. I claimed my break, and laid on the stinking settee, listening to the wasps circling far above my head with the lights turned off, and wondering if one would be sociable enough to visit me. I looked up at the ceiling ‘planetarium’, with its red flashing smoke alarm bulbs, the little green glows of the antiseptic dispensers, and the residual fluorescence of the main tubes, feeling like a long-term prisoner seeing things on a blank wall. I jumped as the hot carcass of the television cracked violently in the flow of cold air from an open window, waking me from my half sleep. And I smiled because the conditions were so perfect for not sleeping, while David talked to himself upstairs; living a nocturnal life in preference to the challenging day.
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Break Time in the Madhouse

Those on night duty were entitled to an hour’s break during the ten hour shift, although many preferred to reverse this ratio, cramming the entire workload into two thirty minute sprints (one at the beginning, another at the end) and ‘resting’ for the interim. Some would sleep like the dead for long periods, apparently immune to the surrounding fumes and prehistoric noises, while others would remain in a half-conscious stupor; suspended somewhere between slumber and a hypnotic trance.
The first group could be creative to the point of genius in their construction of suitable sleeping quarters. In scenes reminiscent of the ‘Krypton Factor’, they would expertly transform jumbles of chairs, cushions, sheets and coffee tables into magnificent double beds, rarely seen outside the confines of a lush BBC costume drama. Although wary neophytes might content themselves with rolling out state-of-the-art sleeping bags, or adopting a variety of unlikely yogic positions on the small sofas, the most decadent staff of all would simply commandeer spare bedrooms upstairs, set their alarm clocks, and disappear. If both staff members fell into this ‘sleep’ category, it would seem like a very short shift indeed, but on the down side they might wake up at 0600 hours to discover the unit had been burgled, important telephone calls had been unheard, or the manager on call had been unable to check the unit (oops).
But they never missed the pizza man when he turned up with their supper.
Those who chose instead to stay ‘awake’ in a curious state of suspended animation, would normally sink into a capacious easy chair, put their feet up on a footstool, and cover themselves in three or four hairy blankets like a chrysalis in the corner of a doorframe. They would then remain immobile for the entire night in front of the flickering, inaudible TV set, just occasionally showing signs of life by moving a scaly, telescopic arm towards the cornucopia of food and drink conveniently parked on an adjacent coffee table. Their senses were so finely tuned to signs of unrest upstairs, that they would remain completely unaware of other staff members if they walked into the room.
Almost as if they were asleep too.
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At 4.00a.m, I heard the first few early risers shifting around their wardrobes and running their taps to let us know that they were up, while the rest turned off their radios and began to settle down for a morning in bed. There was a crescendo of shouting, hooting, soiling, wetting and washing as the patients were ‘assisted’, and then we dragged our bodies to the office ready for release. A recently bathed patient appeared at the office door with a fresh brown wet patch on the back of his trousers just as the early staff arrived, and snide accusations of indolence rained down on us like shrapnel, from a choral row of saintly know-it-all faces.
Thinking how easily our explanations had been dismissed, I chipped the opaque frost from the windscreen of my car and watched the world wake around me; a fox scavenging in the bins and the first siren of the day. The hydraulic tappets clattered and I pulled away onto the street, passing the man with the dog who always waved even though I didn’t know him, and the man without a dog who never waved, even though he was our next-door neighbour.
I bounced over the 4” traffic calming humps and dropped down the 3” sunken drainage covers, wondering why they’d bothered relaying the roads when the original potholes had provided a better surface. I took a slalom course around the deepest pits on the main road, looked out for tank drivers testing their vehicles, and remembered how my kids called this the Grand National, whooping with joy at the water jump.
Arriving home at last, I parked the car in the garage, and then reversed it out again because I couldn’t open the driver’s door far enough to get out. I thought how the garage was probably more suitable for a Doberman than a car and I saluted the people who had become so very rich with all those saved bricks, as I shuffled out sideways like a half dead crab. I went to bed as the kids were getting up, attempted to sleep while the neighbour mowed his lawn, the window cleaner watched me closely, and the latest conservatory went up around the corner. I felt my body saying night time and my mind saying daytime, while the kids were saying “hello, where have you been?”

“Buzzzzzzzz!”
But of course I wasn’t home yet, and the bell summoned me back to the present. It was one of those little ironies of unit life that when you were desperate to leave, you often inadvertently locked the doors so that the relief staff couldn’t get in. I unlatched the door, apologised to the nurses on the step and led the way to the office for the hand over. The qualified nurse was something of a smart Alick, and I recalled once asking staff members why he practised limbo dancing so much.
“Oh, he’s not limbo dancing, it’s just his normal swagger” they replied.
“Hello, Alec” I said “You certainly look smart this evening.
“I not only look smart, I am smart” he smirked, utterly oblivious to my knight’s move attack.
He then announced that he’d finally discovered his true vocation, and when I enquired what this important work was, he said triumphantly:
“Sperm donor.”
“Well, you’re certainly a wanker” I observed. “So you should at least make a commercial success of it.”
Many years ago a casual psychometric test had soon disinterred his personality:
“Your favourite fruit?”
“Melons and bananas.”
“Favourite vegetable?”
“Cucumber.”
“Favourite car?”
“Anything with a long bonnet.”
“Favourite song?”
“Ding Dong Merrily on High.”
In fact, he always entertained new female nursing assistants by demonstrating that he was taller lying on his back, than standing up (providing he had an erection).
This evening he was dressed in a loud multicoloured, large-lapelled suit, with matching oversized spectacles and permanent, insane grin. There was a rubber spider hanging from his male breast pocket and a phallic shaped water pistol sticking out of his half open flies.
“Don’t tell me. You’re either auditioning for the circus, or just trying to blend in.”
“You’re not far off. Actually, I’ve just been interviewed for a senior presenting role on Saturday night T.V”.
“Splendid. What fun you’ll have.”
“Yeah, it should be a fantastic laugh.”
“Saturday night fun. Fun, fun, fun, fun and more fun.”
“Toddlers falling over on video.”
“Ha ha.”
“Frighteningly untalented people convinced they can sing.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“Coloured balls going round and round in the machine”
“Ha ha ha ha.”
“Thick sweaty people arguing in a room.”
“Ha ha ha ha” we hooted, holding our sides.
Somewhat winded by this mutually therapeutic hilarity, I gave the report, which was virtually indistinguishable from yesterday’s report, except of course for Cecilia’s wholesale demolition of her room. I’d called the emergency glazier and asked him to board up the window, but otherwise there had been no time to reverse the mayhem and Cecilia would have to spend the night in a spare room. This said, we bid each other goodnight, and I moved towards the front door.

It was then that I noticed a crumpled heap of limbs and cloth resting in a dark red stain, half way down the bottom flight of stairs.
“Christ!”
It was the lady herself.

I’d seen this sort of thing many times before (and worse), but for some reason this particular scene stunned me. I stood shell-shocked, sick and tired, wet with sweat and numb, like a mortician at the end of a messy career, I felt my limbs gently tremble.

* * *

But Cecilia’s downfall didn’t cause much of a stir with the night nurses, because things of this sort were always happening, and there was a constant shuttle service of ambulances from our psychiatric hospital to the General, often running on a more regular basis than the local buses. After she’d gone, we sat around the biscuit tin and justified ourselves a bit. One nurse said:
“Well, something was bound to happen to Cecilia. She was getting more and more agitated and the drugs just didn’t do anything for her.”
“I’m afraid it was a bit of poetic justice really” I said.
“Yes, she got away with bloody murder” said Alec. “It would have been different if she was my daughter.”
“She’s got a basic personality problem, and the drugs don’t make a scrap of difference to that.”
“A bit more discipline earlier in life might have helped.”
“Or even now” I commented. “She’s already kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach and broken someone’s arm on this unit, but the police don’t want to know about it.”
“On the acute unit, one of their nurses got a broken nose, so they took the person to court. The judge threw the case out, even though the Consultant told him the patient knew exactly what they were doing at the time.”
“Yeah, being in a mental hospital gives you more immunity than a foreign diplomat with seventeen inoculations.”
“No wonder it’s becoming so popular.”
“One tearaway I know makes for the community team every time he assaults someone. By the time the police get to him, he’s always incoherently ‘hypo-manic’ in hospital - case dropped.”
“Yeah, it’s easy to forget that some people are mad and bad.”
“ And some people are just plain bad.”

That was finally it, so I stood on the threshold of the unit blinking in the moonlight, like a newly released prisoner unsure of what to do next. I was there but not there, feeling almost disembodied, ready for nothing.
“I need a cigarette now!” rasped in my left ear.
“Don’t follow me then!” I spat back to the empty doorway.
I was beginning to get frightened by the voices and the other odd things that were happening to me, but I put it down to bad fatigue and a few worries, and I marched on. The air was icy and invigorating, and it filled me with a second wind as I set off across the car park towards home and hearth. Bleak streets were covered in half frozen slush and peppered with the yellow stains of dog and cat, while complaining drains choked and spluttered under their seasonal load of floodwater, crisp packets and grime. Yet attitude is everything, and by simply walking out of the prison door I could now imbue these mundane sights with a wonderful piquancy; a sort of thrilling aesthetic so different from the useless, pointless farce of the last twelve hours. I had a little bit of freedom, however cold and damp the streets were, and it stretched like a thrilling rainbow away from the confines and contrivances of the psychiatric policy world I had just left. I drew the air in hungrily, and walked away from the hospital, my spirit flickering back on.
Yes, spirituality. The Chelsea pensioner in this society of narcissists.

I passed the duplex (or should it be duplo) apartment blocks, and the space that was once occupied by a fine Regency hotel, and I wondered why our town had to be like everybody else’s. I felt some change jingling in my pocket, looked at the cheap breeze-blocks stacked in a corner, and intuited the answer. An original sandstone wall still stood defiantly around the cleared area, and I felt pleased that this tiny piece of my childhood had escaped the reclamation yard, even though it now doubled as a white board for dullards’ ‘tags’.
Around the corner a whole avenue of Georgian buildings had remained intact, but they had been inhabited by D.S.S. colonists and now the option was clear; flaking paint, rotting timber, the odd boarded window, and groups of unemployable wastrels wandering back from the off licence with gallons of cider, baseball caps, and guttural voices. An old lady was outside clearing the slush and litter off her doorstep, while two fine youths with lager cans sat opposite in the concrete portico of the community centre, aiming obscenities at her. The icy pavements had apparently been polished by a proud council.
The cadaverous form of my neighbour approached again, and this time I blocked his progress with some clever American footballer tactics, until he was forced to reward my extravagant salutations with an incoherent grunt. Twizzle-headed people with laser eyes dissected me as I passed, and bumptious heroes with blimp egos and bold postures filled the bars. Audiences and stars assembled on every street corner, and the news boards spread joy:
“Thugs kill hamster by tying it to a Catherine Wheel firework”
“Pity the hamster couldn’t return the favour” I commented to a mute passer by.
“Huge rise in youth crime” crackled a distant radio.
I gladly left the area, but after a short time I brushed the edge of a nearby council estate, and saw the blue glow of police lights reflecting off the night sky, like the aurora borealis of a penal planet. This area had degenerated into a post-apocalyptic bomb site, with decent people held prisoner in their own homes by roaming bands of giro-paid thugs, intent on vandalising cars, stoning windows, dismantling ‘bus shelters and burning wheelie bins. With ultimate pathos, a few brave souls continued to cultivate their gardens amidst the wilderness, but these little refuges were routinely devastated every weekend by gladiators returning from the well-patronised pubs. Just now and again somebody would come out to remonstrate with the chanting heroes, and they would be rewarded for their courage with a relentless campaign of unremitting violence, or arson. The police were well aware of the situation and a new community constable now met the Residents’ Association and Play Group once a month, while the estate burned around them.
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Sunday Sensation, 25th March 2005
Growth of Parasite Culture

A family of 9 in the M------- area are receiving almost £40,000 a year in State benefits, while a working family around the corner receive only £30,000, it was reported yesterday. A combination of child benefit, incapacity benefit, income support, housing benefit and other ‘special payments’ easily trumps the double earned income of their neighbours.
The ‘bread winner’ of the subsidised family is on long-term sick leave due to stress, but his family remain optimistic with a £120 a week smoking habit and a £60 a week bingo investment. They keep busy by educating some of their children at home.
Fiona D------
Social Services Reporter
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It was really getting too dangerous to walk home at night, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the blue glow faded, and I entered respectable suburbia. The first telephone box was smashed to pieces as usual, and every garden wall had spray paint running along the top like a child’s railway line. Broken conifer branches lay about, while traffic cones had been removed from the nearby road works and redistributed on peoples’ front lawns. It was clear that the hooliganism was growing relentlessly beyond its original borders, and that I needed to calculate how long it would take to reach our cul-de-sac a mile further on. Given that some of our new neighbours managed to communicate by stringing four-letter words into sentences, and their kids made cannibals look like urbane lounge lizards, I estimated about one year to removal time.
At last the rows of brown dog kennels and silver German cars which comprised our estate appeared, and I could smell sanctuary. Like Quasimodo dodging the whips, I broke into a loping gait and made for the furthest reaches of the sprawling mass before me. It wasn’t Enid Blyton or John Constable, but it would do, and as I looked over the roofs towards the outline of an escarpment, and the moors beyond it, I breathed a sigh of relief. Some of my favourite walks lay in that direction, and for a few moments a montage of pleasant memories filled my mind; bike rides with the kids, tea rooms in historic places, quiet strolls in sylvan settings, and collecting shells on breezy beaches. Life wasn’t all bad, and the prospect of a few days off began to thaw my frozen sensibilities and lift my affect. A little freedom was in sight, and I would savour every atom of it.
Bolstered by these thoughts, I strode on towards our house, and the drizzle seemed marginally warmer. A firework went off somewhere to my left, reminding me of Bonfire Night two weeks ago, and my thoughts wheeled on to Christmas. ‘Money’ automatically sprang to mind, and I looked across at a nearby £350,000 villa which was just five years old and had already received three new bathrooms and two new kitchens from three different owners. The house was currently owned by two very busy professional people who spent 85% of their time working, sleeping or on holiday, and only 15% of their time actually awake in the house. Spending so little free time in their home, they had to pay a gardener £25 a week to do the lawns, hedges and weeding, a ‘morning’ lady £30 a week to do the washing and ironing, a nanny £150 a week to look after the children, and an odd job man £20 a week to do the small household repairs and walk the dog. Once, in a rash moment, I’d told the owner that for £50 a week I would occupy his house during the evenings and save him the trouble of living there at all.
He thought for a while and smilingly offered me £40.
Yet, it wasn’t a happy marriage (if that’s what you’d call a big business deal on the skids) and tonight I couldn’t help noticing a pterodactyl fastened to someone’s neck in the kitchen. Or that’s what it sounded like.
Most of the houses had their downstairs lights on with curtains well drawn back so that casual observers on the street could admire the latest chain store colour schemes and prominent recent acquisitions. It was probably only a matter of time before the retired Major at number 7 would jump to his feet when he heard footsteps outside, and use his Malacca cane to point out treasured objects to interested parties in the garden:
“Pay attention you chaps next to the elm tree. On a recent reconnaissance operation to British Home Stores we secured these highly prized objects (wafting the Malacca cane about the lounge). We have now put the enemy next door at a serious strategic disadvantage….”
To one half of the population, society had become a collection of audiences, and to the other half, a collection of charities.
The street was like a building site as usual, with people constantly competing to distort their homes with as many horrendous extensions as possible, apparently aiming to swallow up their entire gardens and meet in the middle. In another ten years the place would be like some Fritz Lang megalopolis, with every ‘detached’ house linked by a series of arches and tunnels, and every window within a metre of somebody else’s; the owners glaring at each other like fighting cocks, and their children wondering what ‘green’ used to look like. Everybody in the estate seemed to be basing their lives on a series of glossy magazine articles which helpfully told them what to want, and then led them down the main shopping street with Saturday metronome regularity. On average, each household now had one and a half children, three cars and a permanent skip.
Nearly there, I passed the house with the ’his and hers’ matching BMW’s, went a bit further, and almost turned in at the wrong gate. The next-door neighbours were so fascinated by our trail blazing consumerist tastes that they had spent the last three years unconsciously echoing them. We had finished up with similar black cars, similar gravel paths, similar house paint jobs, similar fences, and even similar house names. His wife had an identical hairstyle to my wife’s, their kids changed bikes precisely one week after ours, and they appeared to be equally interested in ‘Next’ catalogue clothes. There was certainly no need to bother with genetic cloning in our street because we achieved the same ends by cultural means, and I toyed again with the idea of equipping our family with yellow plastic Macs and top hats to see if the neighbours would start copying that too. Well, at least we weren’t fighting each other over the height of conifers, and they’d been good enough to invite us to a house party next week. They had of course been across to our house for a drink a month ago, and now their decorators had just finished…… but surely there was no connection. Perhaps we’d be better off like the neighbours at number 11, who always charged a small entrance fee for their parties.
This was cuckoo clock culture, where every social action was repeated through the weeks with fiercely guarded pinpoint accuracy. Cars were washed on Saturday, gardens tended on Sunday, wheelie bins emptied on Tuesday, dogs walked at 0600 and 1800 hours, nights out were arranged for midweek, houses and cars were changed every two years, and people always died five years after retirement. I could already feel the invisible wooden rod pushing me out through the tiny door as the clock struck nine, and I prepared for conjugal warfare.
“Cuckoo.”
Looking up at the deaf widow’s permanently ringing burglar alarm, I went through the correct gate, found the front and back doors bolted on the inside and wondered if it was indeed the right gate after all. But the rear fortifications were eventually dismantled by my indignant spouse who would probably have greeted me with well- practised indifference, if she’d bothered to open the door as well as unbolt it. I went upstairs to get changed, said a silent “goodnight” to the children in bed, and wondered what they’d been doing all week. On my return to the lounge I was castigated at great length for working too much, and then reminded that we needed more money.
“Will you please bugger off, and stay buggered off!” I snapped back to her stunned face.
I had, after all, completely redecorated the kids’ bedrooms with 500 of their stockpiled school certificates – what more did she want?
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Minor Annoyance Disorder (M.A.D.)

I read somewhere in a glossy magazine that experts have now identified a marital problem called Minor Annoyance Disorder (MAD). A series of repeated irritating behaviours such as leaving the toilet seat up or putting wet towels on the bed may, over a period of years, propel the marriage towards the rocks. Although at first sight divorce would appear to be totally out of proportion to the trivial causes, these minor conflicts often disguise major underlying difficulties which the partners won’t face (e.g. financial or sexual problems). It was the serious unacknowledged problems which led to surface strife.
At least Carol and I didn’t suffer from this disorder.
Our big problems disguised the little ones.
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One famous T.V. character always had the vision of a rhinoceros’s backside whenever he thought about his mother-in-law, and it was the same with me whenever I thought of Carol. Except in my case I also imagined peppering the offending posterior with birdseed discharged from a large antique elephant gun. On my last birthday she had given me a second hand copy of ‘Das Capital’ with the top right hand corner gnawed off by a family pet and a faint stamp on the inside cover saying ‘N----- Library –withdrawn/30p’. When her birthday came around I was tempted to retaliate with a gift-wrapped nit comb, but conscience got the better of me and I shoved a £10 pound note in the kids’ handmade card instead.
“You need a haircut” she would snipe in the morning.
“You need a better barber” she would point out in the evening.
Her instinct for conflict was virtually paranormal, and whenever I inadvertently broke wind in the house I knew that she would almost instantly materialise behind me – nose wrinkled in disgust and an accusatory remark primed and ready. Even if I had seen her at the bottom of the garden ten seconds earlier, she would somehow manage to navigate three flower beds, cross two rooms and scale a staircase before the offending emissions dispersed, pinning herself to my back like a Mitsubishi Zero pilot going for kill number 9. These weren’t even psychological games any more; they were just expressions of almost perfect, intuitive antipathy.
And to think that once, a very long time ago, I called her by a pet name.
‘Christmas’.

My head throbbed painfully and I lay back in the chair, allowing the unit and the world to f-f-ade away. I began drifting towards sleep and the unit appeared in front of my closed eyes like a bizarre horror show curiously suspended in a Victorian ‘what the butler saw’ machine; but then the truth occurred to me. Far from being a fairground contrivance, the unit was really just a fearful exaggeration of the ‘normal’ conventional life we all led, where physical decay, political correctness, bureaucracy, consumerism, selfishness, wastage, puerility and stress had sprouted with unusual vigour, but the same genus.
The unit was in many ways, just life under a microscope.
I absentmindedly swatted a tiny surviving black fly that had wandered across from the pot plant, absolutely blind to my own precarious nature. I was light-headed and very tired, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep.
I needed Kate, badly.
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Kate
2007

Putting on my shoes again, I slipped out of the silent house, and retraced my steps to town. Kate’s light was on, and I hovered outside like a peeping tom, wondering if she was alone, or whether she would just slam the door in my face. We hadn’t contacted each other since that night at the club. No ‘phone calls, nothing.
“Knock, knock”
(silence)
“knock, knock.”
The door creaked open onto its restraining chain, and Kate’s cold eyes surveyed me through the gap.
“Oh, Steve…..what do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“There’s nothing to discuss, Steve. Don’t make it harder than it already is.”
“Please……a few minutes won’t do any harm. I’m totally screwed up at the moment.”
“You look like hell.”
“I know.”
“A few minutes then. That’s all.”
The door swung back, and I trudged in, full of good intentions, but awash with self-pity; the most unattractive trait known to womankind. I gave a predictable dissertation about the state of my marriage, frustrations at work, the vileness of society and my regrets about our weekend away, but her eyes remained passionless and distant, as she tapped the table irritably, clearly waiting for me to end.
“Look Steve, I’m sorry about all this, but you already know what I think about it. You’ve brought a lot of this trouble on yourself and you just won’t bend. Maybe we could have had some sort of future together, but I know now you’ll never leave Carol, and you won’t compromise over anything else…….. We’re just prolonging the agony here.”
“You’re right…I know that…but I’m trapped Kate.”
She looked at me, and something like the old concern passed fleetingly over her face.
“You can sleep on the sofa tonight Steve, but that’s it. Then maybe you’ll accept that it’s finished, and we can both move on.”
(silence)
“Steve?”
“Okay…. Yes…thanks.”
She brought in a spare duvet, said a flat goodnight, and retired to the bedroom. The lock turned, which really hurt, and a few minutes later I heard her mobile playing ‘The Laughing Policeman’. A third of one side of the conversation made it through the acoustics of the wall.
“Sorry………..nothing I could do…………see you tomorrow.”
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The Mad Doctor

Seeing a staircase, I walked up it and searched around for something familiar I could pin my rather confused senses to. I spotted Richard’s office and pulled open the door, seeing before me a massive wall of bulging filing cabinets totally blocking the way in. From his perch on the top cabinet, Richard looked down on me, and grinned.
“Ah, hello old boy. We’ve finally cracked it. Everything that’s ever happened in this unit in the last fifteen years has been documented on these forms. There’s even a file for how many times staff have farted since their contracts commenced. The inspectors should be absolutely thrilled.”
“Yes, things are well in hand here alright” I agreed, as I carefully pushed over the nearest cabinet and watched the whole lot fall like a house of cards, burying Richard up to his crimson neck.
Taking a coloured divider out of one of the files, I marked it ‘ Waste of Space’ and popped it neatly between Richard’s trembling jaws, pressing the top of his head like a hole-puncher, before closing the door quietly as I left.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough” I said.
More than enough.
And with adrenaline flowing through my veins like rocket fuel, I suddenly realised that I had somehow been given the power to overturn this insane world, and trample its vacuous conventions into the dust. I could turn my thoughts into instantaneous action, impose my will on every situation, and imagine the wildest scenario and see it happen. I was imbued with supernatural strengths and transcendental powers. I even had the ability to make something vaguely sensible happen for once.
In the mood to take all before me, I flew downstairs and entered the dining room, where Sidney appeared at my shoulder wearing an immaculate waiter’s outfit, red carnation in his button hole and hair slicked back with pomade.
“Would sir prefer the larks tongue, or caviar vole-au-vents, this morning?” he mewled pitifully.
“You can stuff that for a bunch of soldiers” I replied tetchily, looking over his shoulder.
Behind him, the residents were all sat around the dining room dressed in shooting tweeds and plus fours, barking instructions in our direction.
“Hurry up, you slackers! We’ve got a bed to catch.”
“Who do you think you are? We’ve got our rights you know.”
“Step on it, or there’ll be an official complaint.”
“Chop! Chop!”
Seeing the monstrous meal re-heating machine vibrating in the corner, I had a flash of inspiration, and armed with my new superpowers I quickly reprogrammed the fan-assisted warmer to ‘turbo suck’. Pointing the machine towards the carping crowd, I opening the aluminium door and watched them all disappear into its welcoming bowels, each delivering a parting comment as they went:
“It’s too hot in here!”
“It’s too cold in here!”
“Where’s the juice?”
“I didn’t order this!”
“These chairs aren’t very comfortable!”
I then whisked the machine down to the postal area, and taking a large white address sticker from my utility belt, wrote:
Please deliver this urgently to -
The Workers’ Co-operative Community,
Somewhere in Wales.
Returning to the main corridor, I then observed Cecilia systematically kicking and punching great holes in the walls as she proceeded towards me with a menacing, Mephistophelian leer on her face. Instantly, I summoned up a large metal grab of the sort seen in car crushing yards, seized her firmly (but gently) by the hood of her Marks and Sparks jacket, and manoeuvred her through the nearest window into a large blue bottle bank, on which I pasted the address slip:
Officer-in-Charge
Public Protection Unit.
The Shetlands.

“Believe it or not Cecilia, other people have rights too”.
Depositing the bottle bank next to the meal warmer in the outside postal area, I next used effortless telekinesis to summon up a private militia, which I despatched into town to round up the large group of staff members who were currently on pseudo sick leave. After a short while, the malingerers appeared, variously dressed in pyjamas, nightdresses, bondage gear, gorilla suits and other items of regular midday wear.
“Ladies and gentlemen” I began. ”From now on, receiving £1,200 a month for sitting at home with your finger up your bum is no longer a career option. You will either return to work immediately, or you will exchange your houses for tents. Do I have your full co-operation?”
“Yes! Yes! We have seen the error of our ways!” they squealed, going on to demonstrate their fitness by lifting barbells, doing press ups and adopting Mr. and Mrs. Universe poses.
“Congratulations and well done ” I rejoined, shaking each one of them by the hand. “I have arranged your transport”.
“Transport?”
They were then whizzed into the two large recycling bins at the rear of the unit, and addressed to:
Fast Track Convalescence,
Bolivian Iron Ore Mines,
Bolivia.
Taking a look around, I was pleased to see that the unit was now quiet and peaceful at last. Like no man’s land after a terrifying artillery barrage had ceased, the world stood still, and a profound silence baffled the senses. The clocks had stopped, the T.V. sets were dead, the activity board was blank, and there was not a person to be seen. It was obviously time for a well-deserved break and so I sat downstairs drinking champagne, eating truffles, and watching the manager’s favourite Marilyn Monroe video; until the feeling slowly returned that something was still wrong.
Something remained unresolved.

“Open the door” a voice rasped.
There was indeed a violet coloured door on my left, and with heart bounding, breath shortening and flesh creeping, I moved reluctantly but inexorably towards it. In best horror movie style, it swung open of its own accord and I was pulled into a dark chamber by invisible hands. The flickering light was provided by three or four black candelabra set on crumbling stone walls, before which I perceived a large Jacobean table surrounded by a dozen satanic forms. Looking like a group of gigantic ravens they wore sable cloaks, and peered at me through leather masks with hard, black eyes.
“Good grief, what a ridiculous getup” I said irreverently.
“Silence!” boomed the head honcho. “You are here to be sentenced for the most heinous crimes known to HealthTrust law. Now, kneel before your masters!”
“Piss off you pretentious sod” I responded. “And take off those masks, so I can see my accusers.”
Stripping off their masks with a synchronised flourish, the satanic beings revealed a row of hideous, slavering animal faces.
“Ah… ha! I thought as much – the senior managers making a rare clinical visit” I said “What can I do for you?”
“Silence microbe! We are here to dispense omniscient justice!”
Although I should have been quaking in my boots, I couldn’t help noticing that the weird animal faces were actually more recognisable than the managers’ everyday physiognomy. Their true personalities shone through the grey, anonymous uniformity of their normal appearances, and I gazed with growing interest at the mean-looking weasel, the breast-beating baboon, the assortment of over-promoted aardvarks, and the strange hunched creature from the Island of Dr. Moreau, who said:
“You are charged and convicted of (a) insisting that patients take more responsibility for their own lives, (b) arguing that paper work is less important than effective clinical care, (c) suggesting that managers are overpaid, out of touch poseurs, and (d) implying that staff who receive £1,200 a month for not being at work should be sacked. …….This is unspeakable blasphemy of the highest conceivable order, and you are therefore sentenced to the most ghastly punishment it is in our power to inflict.”
“And what is that?” I enquired.
“You will continue to work at the hospital’s Psychiatric Rehabilitation Unit until the day you croak”
“Aaaaaarrrrrrcccchh!!! No! No! No! Not that, you vile fiends” I shrieked in despair and outrage.
“Yes! Yes! Until the day you croak!” the drooling managers chanted, beating their fists on the table, and wetting themselves with delight.
“Please don’t make me angry” I warned in a deepening voice, my pupils involuntarily dilating, and my shirt splitting open to reveal a barrel of bulging green muscle above modesty-preserving elasticated trousers. “Oh, too late! Now it’s your turn for a bit of natural justice!”
Seizing the oak table with irresistible force, I whirled it around my head and watched the managers hanging onto it like bats in a tornado. On and on I span the table, seeing their puke pebble-dash the walls and their dribble splash the floor, thinking of the time and money these prize buffoons had wasted, enjoying every little moment of their overdue comeuppance, until at last I flung the table down into a dim, slimy corner; the perfect resting place for their ilk. But the managers had been carefully selected for their mindless obduracy, and I watched with interest as the table scuttled out of the room, propelled by pairs of cockroach legs, scurrying for freedom, pausing only briefly at the coffee machine.
“Hang on a minute” I said.
And there was just time to stick on the address:
Flip Chart Heaven,
Pie in the Sky,
Never Never Land.
Punching the air like a triumphant quarterback, I revelled in the emptiness of the unit and the cathartic moment. At last I was free, and the quivering front door appeared in the distance like an approaching star gate, but when I got near enough to touch it, all I could see was a massive grey portal towering above me at an impossible height. Devastated, I wondered why fate had dealt me such a cruel blow at such a late stage; until a spectral hand rested on my shoulder and made my soul jump through my throat:
“I need a cigarette now!” roared a familiar voice in my ear.
“Then I’m afraid you’re going to be bloody disappointed for once” I said.
“What! I need a cigarette now! Now! Now!” she yelled.
“Not now” I whispered.
“Now! Now! Now! Now!” she chanted, as I turned my back, and waited for providence.
“Now! Now! NOW! NOW! NOW!…… BANG!”
My head jerked around and I saw that the lady was no longer there. Instead, a huge effigy sparked and flashed, sending plumes of white fire into the air, filling the corridor with acrid smoke and thick soot. The door swung open and I fled.
Silently, I watched the flames licking the gable ends of the empty unit, the windows cracking and the walls going slowly black. Resisting the temptation to bring a toasting fork and loaf of bread, I contented myself with warming my hands on the inferno, singing one chorus of ‘Roasting Chestnuts on an Open Fire’, and walking past the nearby telephone box without delay. Richard and some of the other stragglers stood next to his customised bubble car with Roll Royce grill, looking like stunned survivors of a broken Chinese terracotta army, and decidedly ill. Saying nothing.
From then on it was easy. My magical powers were unstoppable, and as I strode through the frozen streets my imagination performed effortless miracles of reform and revision. The moon became full and bathed the town in friendly light, a warm breeze began to thaw winter’s grip, and curtains were opened revealing cheerful families with smiley faces. Children played without being cruel, adults waved without design, and dogs approached with wagging tails and no bite. I replaced every cheap and nasty concrete carbuncle with wonderfully restored period buildings, emptying Swiss bank accounts to pay for it. I removed all signs of graffiti by organising chain gangs of graffiti artists to lick the buildings clean, and I ensured that every scrap of litter was returned to the perpetrators, through their letterboxes.
All those who continued to fill the town with their pets’ dung, woke up to find the excreta occupying their living room carpets, and every criminal was automatically victim to the same crime themselves until they stopped. There was no more career unemployment with twenty-five year old men skate boarding all day, no more compensation for being stupid and falling over a matchstick, no more sick pay for professional hypochondriacs, and no benefits for those who only used their walking sticks when somebody was looking.
People stopped climbing over each other in their thirst for toys, they accepted they weren’t always right, they grew up and had a sense of history, tradition, nationhood and community. They gave up wearing baseball caps and living off their parents until they were 40, they stopped talking about things instead of doing them, and they promised to forget about money for at least ten minutes every day. They rediscovered the idea of God, thought about how feeble and short-lived human beings really were, and put arrogant sneers and smart suits into smart perspective. ‘Fat cats’ were put on crash diets, and golden handshakes for corporate failures were re-routed to state pensions for ordinary heroes. ‘The Age of the Ego’ was reviled, outlawed and forgotten.
Well, that was the long-term plan.
On my way down the street, I noticed the old lady brushing the pavement in front of her house again, while the two post-punk wastrels were once more spending their valuable time taunting the old dear with monosyllabic insults and girlish tittering. Without further ado, I arranged for these fine young people to be escorted to the public toilets by four nightclub bouncers, who carefully supervised them cleaning the urinals with cotton wool buds, before enlisting them in the army. I then marched steadfastly on towards the council estate - ready to face my greatest challenge.
Happily, my super powers did not fail me, and I surged through the streets erasing graffiti, repairing fences, replanting shrubs, replacing broken windows, and sweeping up seas of glass shards and rubbish, like Robocop on a mission. The blue police lights were again illuminating the sky above the pubs and shops in the centre, and I observed an embattled young constable trying to control a mass of braying half-wits by wagging his finger at them. It was time for real action, and I transported the policeman to a safe position outside the estate, replacing him with a battalion of seasoned commandos who easily rounded up the gurning thugs and took them away in cattle trucks for a year’s moral retraining on Dartmoor. One jug-eared oaf temporarily escaped, and complained:
“This ain’t fair! They must be breaking some law doing this!”
Pointing out his hypocrisy in seeking shelter from the very law he had flouted with contempt all his half-life, I sent him spinning towards his whining chums with a contemptuous flick of my finger. The last truck moved off with shrill piglet screams emanating from the back, and rousing applause echoing down the streets as grateful residents reclaimed their lives for the first time since 1991. Handing my garlands to a young girl with large green eyes and raven ringlets, I then quitted the estate like Elvis Presley leaving Hawaii, and set sail for home at last.
A heady combination of fairground lights, perfumed air, and the stentorian boom of my own heartbeat, propelled me along the roads of Edwardian houses and down the gentle slope to our little ‘neighbourhood watch’ retreat. I put pink spots on the matching silver cars, introduced the workaholic man to his workaholic wife, and changed our three bed-roomed house to a four bed-roomed villa so that the copyists across the road would have an interesting experience the following morning. I strode into the house, found Carol waiting patiently for me in her dominatrix outfit, and gratefully accepted a glass of vintage claret which she handed across to me, whilst winking a welcome at my hump-fronted trousers.
“Welcome home esteemed husband. May I give you succour?”
“By all means, my dear.”
I settled back and watched the hypnotic grind of her athletic white flanks, while Motorhead played sweetly through my headphones, and a Cuban cigar sat snugly behind my right ear.
“I’m going to discharge myself, in a minute” I said.
All was well with the world; and perversely I slept.
---------------------------------------------------

“Wake up” said a distant voice.
“WAKE UP!”
The problem was, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.
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(to be continued)
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