Barred windows, bedlam, and all that mashed potato. I am mashed also, stale holocaust bread without milk. The autumn leaf which blows its tiny way through the wonderful universe before streams sweep it into nowhere. No milk, just water with the dosage, urine. No wine. But that is the curse of the Demon who shall always be known as The One With the Mouth filled with Rustling, Restless and Relentless Blades. The wine comes complete with salt! Drink at your own expense, but lap that brine. Suck the Dead Sea dry and imagine it best burgundy. In the hospital, locked and barred in the Harding Ward, up the redbrown carpet into the first floor mental asylum, away from the ground floor ward of patients under section, with a blue carpet, with a phone, as in telephone, booth working, first charge 20p, 10p not enough, 10p to the red telephone company and 10p to the new trust, which frankly seemed minimal, even the most heroic twig of my family’s tree died for want of mashed spuds in Cork on the blanket on a prison bedbunk, it’s all on the gravy train of pills down the dry throat and the mashed taties a comforting white collar.
