A true story
So I escaped. Well, it wasn’t my fault someone left a dirty great bunch of keys in the soap well of the sink in the ward office. I spotted them and Wallop mate – I was off and headed straight for the locked ward door…
Once outside and past the reception, I threw the keys into a mass of bushes and proceeded to stroll down the half-mile road which led to the main gates of the ‘Fun factory’. On reaching the entrance I had a quick shufti to find that, so far, I hadn’t been followed and when I looked over the road there was a site to behold – a pub.
Ambling into the car park I noticed a black London cab and the drivers’ door slightly ajar. The temptation to climb in and mess about with the instrumentation on the dash board was far stronger than my medication.
After much pushing, touching and fiddling I got out and made my way to the pub door. I may have been mental and heavily medicated, but I still had a few ‘normal’ marbles left in reserve. So, to satisfy my worst fear, I touched the pub’s brickwork just to check it wasn’t a mirage, nope it was rock solid.
It must have been near closing time, as I could see the staff clearing up. Undeterred, I entered my oasis and ordered a pint of Guinness. As the barman placed it on the bar I said, “Can I owe you for that, only I haven’t got any money on me at the moment.” By the look on the bar steward’s face I could see he wasn’t too pleased with my request.
As quickly as he poured it, the accommodating sod chucked the pint down the sink. Six weeks without a beer had made tetchy, so, gutted by his unfriendly nature, I left the bar and decided to stir things up in the car park.
I spied a brand new 4×4 Land Rover and thought I would test out its suspension. For a short time I jumped up and down on the running board on the drivers’ side. After a while this felt a bit tame, so I climbed onto the roof via a small ladder on the back of the vehicle and had a proper bounce about. Oh yes, this was much more aesthetically pleasing. At this point of the proceedings, a gin sodden old bint stuck her head out of an upstairs window.
Her opening gambit was most unbecoming of a lady, and in true fishwife style she hurled a volley of abuse at me. I must have answered her back, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I said, more’s the pity. I presumed that this ravishing, Gordon’s gin blue-eyed beauty queen, 1947-1987, was the landlord’s wife, poor bugger.
Jesus it was a state. She had a face like a clear plastic bag full of crushed walnuts which had been ravaged by time and alcohol. I was soon joined in the car park by the publican and his young son, to the shriek of, “Look Bert, he’s climbing all over our new Motor”, spoken in a heavy cockney accent. I thought he was going to ask me in for a night-cap.
But no, instead he was offering to rip off both of my arms and beat me to death with them. Some people just can’t take a joke! Somebody must have phoned the hospital because a Ford Transit van pulled up and out stepped four familiar faces from N2’s night-staff.
I was ‘helped’ into the van and returned to the ward. I tried to do a runner from the main corridor but the nurses were all over me like a rash, and a bit later I was asked the whereabouts of the ward keys. I told them roughly where I’d aimed them, but the trouble was there were literally thousands of bushes in the grounds of the hospital. I said they had more chance of setting up a threesome with a couple of novice nuns than retrieving the lost keys, but they would insist we searched for them.
So off we trotted into the night with a couple of torches and hope in our hearts! After 20 minutes of fruitless scavenging through the undergrowth the search was abandoned. I was frog-marched back to a single bed side-room on my ward, restrained and injected. [Part II to follow]
Adapted from chapter three of Bi Polar Expedition
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