Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     Peter and Billy were two skinheads who read The News of The World. Peter had to give a urine sample before he went back to prison. He was in hospital for assessment. His problem was a black belt in kick boxing and a liking for other people’s cars. The staff called Peter and Billy a couple of queers because they massaged each other. They smoked roll ups. Billy used to wash lettuces at the Ritz.

     The doctor asked me which motorway bridge I had intended to jump from.

     The domestic staff wore purple uniforms. The TV was turned up for Top of the Pops. At meal times the potato was cross contaminated with cauliflower because of a shortage of serving spoons. The staff ate uncontaminated sausages in brown bread rolls or chips. There were frequent membership checks at the staff social club to stop infiltration by the patients. Pauline the round nursing assistant used to black up as a schoolgirl. Lord H, the former deputy leader of the Labour party criticised a black Labour candidate for having his children privately educated. Billy said ‘Abdulla will sell you a baby with boobs and a willy for 50p’. Wall Street closed for Martin Luther King Day. A comic on the ward TV joked about the British consul in Bradford.

     Steven who resembled the lead singer of Status Quo said he had been sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health act while mourning his father’s death ‘On top of that I’ve been evicted as well’, he asserted.

     The decorators began work in the dormitory before breakfast while patients were still in bed. They wore white overalls a little like stereotypical mental health nurses. I was glum at being transferred from a single room to the dormitory of Billy and Paul.

     The female nurses had black attack alarms. Catherine a plump patient carried a rape alarm. She breakfasted on several slices of toast with strawberry jam. Catherine was allergic to nature because a junkie had raped her in the countryside when she was 5. This experience had left her with a distaste for cuddling with most men. ‘Where did you find that marmalade?’ she asked me. The radio said spermicides were easy to confuse with toothpaste. On a shelf behind Catherine was a playboy jigsaw from which some crucial pieces were missing. On post breakfast TV there was an infidelity line. Billy said to me ‘I’d like to stick my Bunsen burner up Catherine’s...’ He wished the non cuddling lady would moan a little less however. Peter called her Mrs Bigmouth. The infidelity line had been replaced on the ward TV by a pregnant cow having acupuncture. Catherine asked the doctor if she could come off the medication because it was having a contraceptive effect.

     I dreamed I was rewarded with creme eggs for giving a talk on Radio 4.

     Mitch ‘Long Hair’ said the mortgage was the modern form of slavery and that we should go back to working on the land in a way undisciplined by the clock. Peter smoked and munched toast in bed. He had jumped from the first floor of a building while influenced by glue. The library was closed for golf.

     Obsessive-compulsive Sue took 9 hours, at home, to make the bed, and resented her husband Mick sleeping in it and depositing his hairs on her sheets. He visited her in hospital with ice-cream Magnums.

     Peter referred to me as ‘Next door’ because we were in adjacent beds and he could not recall my name. The Magnum vending machine short changed me, it was located on a corridor that was constantly being cleaned. When the actor Neil Morrissey had his fingers manicured he needed someone to undo his zip. While I was on ‘One to One’ I was always with a nurse even in the toilet, lest I attempt to drown myself in the WC.

     When a black female MP criticised the election of extreme right wing candidates in Austria, Mitch ‘Long Hair’ said ‘That shows how much respect you have for democracy.’ Steven agreed with him. A black patient asked them if they wanted to feel her breasts. Fanny Burney had a mastectomy without an anaesthetic.

     Peter and Billy disagreed about whether the windows were ever open on Grazely ward. Billy had been threatened with Grazely if he continued drinking. He was breathalysed to see if it was safe for him to take his medication. A nurse told him to surrender his whiskey or he would be sectioned and would cease to be a voluntary patient. The alcohol was in an orange Lucozade bottle.

     On the ward TV Bob Monkhouse paid £750 to a reincarnation society. He said its a lot of money but you only live once.