Fleet Ward (home to yours truly for the time being) is located directly opposite Effra Ward, one of four acute psychiatric wards in the notably knackered and unattractive Shackleton Unit – the dedicated Mental Health Facility at Hendon Community Hospital. Fleet – don’t ask me, the names are something to do with lost rivers of London – is a mixed ward that can take up to twenty-one patients at a push, but usually holds somewhere between fifteen to eighteen. Normally, there’s more or less a fifty-fifty split between men and women, and around the same when it comes to the voluntary patients – the ‘Informals’ – and those who had no say-so in the matter.

Those of us who were dragged here, kicking and screaming.

Or were tricked into it.

Or don’t even remember.

I don’t tend to hang around much with the voluntary lot, because there doesn’t seem any point trying to get to know them. Most of the time, they’re only in for a few days and some of them are only here at all because they’re homeless and fancy a bed for a couple of nights and four meals a day. ‘Revolving door’ patients, that’s what the nurses call them. In, out, then back in again, when they get fed up with cardboard mattresses and getting pissed on by arseholes in the middle of the night. When it all gets too much or there’s a cold snap.

Fair play to them, they’re probably every bit as messed up as the rest of us, but as far as the business with Kevin and everything that happened afterwards goes, they’re not that important.

So, for now I’ll stick to talking about those who were around at the time and, in most cases, still are. The strangest of the strangers who, ironically, stop me going mad. My fellow Fleet Ward Fuck-Ups. My best friends and, every now and again, worst enemies. My tribe . . . my family.

This wild and wet-brained gang of giddy kippers I knock about with.

The sectioned . . .

So, to coin a poncey phrase . . . allow me to introduce the ladies and gentlemen of the chorus.

Blokes to begin with, I think, because there’s a fair few to remember.