Tanya sighed behind me as she pushed me into the dining-room thinking, perhaps, that she too, in her newness, her conspicuous unfamiliarity with the ways of the ward, would also, somehow, have to absorb part of this unhappiness, this agitation which changed the colour of the air, which was irrational and frightening. The daily routine was in a loathsome chaos - half-way through the morning and not a breakfast had been served nor a pill dispensed. In the cheerless, spotless dining-room arguments were brewing between some of my fellow residents, with disjointed insults and the gobbledygook of our kind being garbled into table tops and against cream-glossed walls. Some, having helped themselves, sat behind mountainous servings of scrambled egg, some eating, some wondering if they should dare. It would be a bad day all round and I would be glad when it was over, I seem to remember thinking. Staff appeared, drafted in from other wards, marching through the doors, their very presence placating the unrest as they seated men at tables, gently but firmly asked for quiet, then began dishing food out from the trolley. Tanya went to it and filled a bowl with the watery residue of the egg which that day would serve as my breakfast. This, as with all my food, was given to me by means of a large syringe inserted into the side of my mouth where once there had been teeth. Since my tongue was a dead thing, resting, glued to the bottom of my mouth, I had developed a contractural action using the back of my throat which worked in relation to my breathing out, allowing the passage of small amounts of fluid into my stomach. I did not ask for more, nor did I seem to need it, and this satisfied the staff too since they could be seen to be doing their best with a difficult case, sustaining him with, as they saw it, intense individual attention. My belly growled as the lukewarm, bitty fluid burned a little track down my throat.

Soon slowcoaches and malingerers feigning illness were being chivvied and got ready for the trek through the snow to the Industrial Unit. I too attended this place every week-day, and Tanya wheeled me back to the locked ward doors where she left me to go in search of a coat. She returned and, with the assistance of one of the young men, began prising the ridiculously short garment over my arms, for I was tall if not too fleshily endowed. Then we were out, a party of twelve or so, Tanya with us as one of the more compliant patients pushed me through the slush, against razored blasts of wind, under yellow clouds pencilled with grey.