I’m not kidding, she was wearing boxing gloves, and it looked to me like they were taped on.

So I was standing there with this woman, thinking, ‘What the hell?’ And waiting to see what she was going to say. But she didn’t say anything to me, she just looked at me with her mad eyes – she didn’t take her eyes off me the whole time – and then she put the boxing gloves up, not in a punching way, but with the thumbs facing me, like she was making cat paws. Obviously we hadn’t been taught anything in nursing school about how to deal with that so I just kind of stood there. Then I realised she wasn’t going to move, so after a while I started sort of edging my way around her and under the arch and into the reception.

Later on, when I was in the staff room being introduced to everyone as one of the ‘new nurses’ with the ‘new program’, I said something like, ‘I noticed one of your patients, the woman with the boxing gloves . . .’ And one of the big male nurses – they were mostly male nurses and they were all big, because who else was going to be able to handle people on the mental ward? – said, ‘Oh, that’s Madam Ali.’

I said, ‘Madam Ali? What’s a Madam Ali?’ And the male nurse said, ‘You know, like Muhammad Ali?’

I couldn’t work out what he was getting at, so I said, ‘She’s a boxer?’ And they all thought that was so funny. The male nurse was laughing and saying, ‘She’s not a boxer! But she’s got to wear the boxing gloves every day, and because she wears the boxing gloves we call her Ali, like Muhammad Ali.’

I still didn’t get it so I said, ‘But why does she have to wear the boxing gloves every day?’ And the male nurse said, ‘Because if we take them off she’d try to take her eyeballs out, and yours too if you’re not careful.’

Maybe you’re wondering if I started to have second thoughts about that time, but I didn’t, I was outraged like only somebody who is straight out of college can be outraged. Everybody thought this woman was funny and the best way to treat her was to put boxing gloves on her. I was thinking, ‘Okay, so they were right about Caloola, it’s got some nasty people working here,’ because basically I couldn’t believe how they could be so cruel to somebody with a mental problem, and laugh at her like that.

So that should give you an idea of how much I had to learn, Jack.

I had a lot to learn.

Anyway, I decided on my second day at Caloola to pin up a piece of cardboard on the noticeboard to show people that because I was one of the new Normalisation Aides, I would be doing things differently, and maybe they could do the same if they wanted to make Caloola a place where we were all proud to work, and blah blah.