The industrial workshop was an airy modern annexe to an old wing of the main building. It smelled of something burning faintly nearby. It was set somewhere off the square at the centre of the hospital, exactly where I forget – it’s of no consequence. Inside, that morning, as on every morning, patients from other wards were already at their benches, or making innumerable trips to the toilets, or drinking water from an oily sink at the end of the workshop, or scouring the floors in their insatiable pursuit of cigarette butts which they would re-roll in strips of newspaper. Tanya began taking our men’s coats to put them on the already groaning pegs near the door when the IU Supervisor, I forget his name, Quinn I think, appeared, grumbling. ‘They can manage for themselves. They know where to hang their coats. Except for that one,’ he said pointing a freshly-lit cigarette at me. He watched with his customary bemusement as Tanya struggled with my too-small coat. ‘Here,’ he said as he came over. ‘Like this.’ He gave a sudden violent jerk on my sleeve to free my flaccid arm. ‘Thank you,’ said Tanya blushing. ‘You’re late,’ said Quinn. ‘It’ll be docked from their pay.’

I was wheeled to a table on which was a pile of white carrier bags. In a little cage on one corner of the table was a ball of string from which one man pulled and measured individual lengths between two screws in the table top before cutting them and laying them in the centre of the table. Next to him was an old woman who threaded the string into the tops of the carrier bags, knotting it to make a handle. Two men opposite performed the same task. Another, younger woman circulated about the table and my wheelchair collecting each carrier bag as it was finished, placing them on a stool, slipping a piece of paper between each ten until she had a pile of a hundred that she would scurry away with down the workshop. ‘Good morning Peter,’ said the old woman at the table. ‘Aren’t you going to say “good morning” to us, then, Peter?’ ‘He,’ said the man opposite, ‘never says anything, doesn’t Peter. Got his head screwed on, knows to keep his mouth shut. Best way.’ ‘That doesn’t mean’, said the woman, ‘that we shouldn’t be polite to him. I’m sure Peter has feelings, just like the rest of us and, if he could, if he wished to, I’m sure he would be delighted to say “good morning” to us and wish us all the very best of good wishes.’ ‘Humph,’ said the man.