Jonathan leaves at midnight and I do a bit of unpacking, but it’s late and I’m tired and drunk, so I leave most of it in a heap in the middle of the floor. It can wait until the morning. The cocaine is wearing off but I don’t feel like going to bed, not least because I won’t actually have a bed until Monday, and so I decide to stay up and write this blog instead.

One

The first thing we had to do today was a Freedom from Infection parade, which meant we all lined up in nothing but our ‘drawers, cellular, green’ so that the Chief Medical Officer and the nursing orderly could lecture and examine us. It was much like being back at school, lining up to take a shower after games, and there was the same amount of fooling around and jostling and name-calling, the big difference being that we’re all young men now, all over eighteen, and no longer children. There were as many different types of body as there were accents. Some looked as if they had stepped straight off the pages of Health and Strength. Others must have bribed their way through the medical, because if they’re fit for service I’d hate to see the ones that got rejected. Some were short, some were tall. Some were broad at the shoulder and slim at the hips, others were as wide as they were high. There were hairy ones and smooth ones, pale ones and dark ones, even a couple of black ones, who attracted a certain amount of curiosity. There was blond hair, brown hair, black hair, red hair, curly and straight, thick and thinning – all of it shorn within half an inch of its life at the barbershop yesterday. Someone had written on the wall in pencil ‘This is just a fucking farce, they shave you like a duck’s arse.’

I wished I had my sketch book or my camera with me, because waiting in line for sick parade was like a life class with a hundred different models, every physical type, every imaginable pose – leaning against pillars, standing tall and straight, arms folded, arms hanging, sometimes sitting or squatting, running on the spot to keep warm, clutching hands under armpits to thaw cold fingers. There was much banter about the cold, and how it would make things shrink – ‘the old feller’, ‘the todger’, ‘the willy’ (this was from some of the posher lads) and ‘the cock/ prick/dick’ (from the cockneys, Scousers, Geordies and so on). ‘That nurse is going to be disappointed,’ said one, looking down his pants and scowling. There was a great deal of laughter because the nurse, of course, was a man, and the general idea seems to be that all male nurses are queer. I joined in the laughter, but of course one of the reasons why I’m glad to be here, at RAF Reville, a medical base, is precisely because the medical corps has ‘that’ reputation. And that’s why this diary will remain hidden in the lining of my suitcase, along with the copies of Health and Strength and Man’s World that I brought with me. If anyone asks, they’re to help with my art studies. If anyone reads the diary, God help me. I’ll end up in the loony bin.