Cynara's Note # 40 1972.

I wanted the snow back, wanted that whiteness back. I stood at the window before breakfast searching for a hint of snow returning, but none came. Breakfast was the usual blandness, thick porridge and limp toast drowned in butter. I spent most of the morning walking up and down the passageway of the locked ward, gazing out of each window I went past, looking out at the dull sky. Vincent stood beside me gazing out, silent, deep in thought. I spoke to him, but he did not reply. Blue, my favourite nurse, couldn’t see Van Gogh, even if he was standing right in front of her though. She gave me a cigarette and she walked on. Dinnertime I sat beside the new woman, she said nothing, but stared out in space with a haunted look about her face. Dinner was some boiled crap with lumpy potatoes and over-cooked cabbage. In the afternoon the new woman attempted to hang herself in the toilets by one of her stockings from the pipe by the cistern, but one of the women saw her and called for a nurse who with the help of the other woman got her down before she succeeded. She was taken to the hospital for a check up. She never came back. Alun puked up the dinner in the evening, the smell drifted along the passageway from the toilet. Lucy sat next to me in the lounge watching some funny film on the TV, and now and then she’d kiss me.