Cynara's Note #41 1972.

A young woman in a locked psychiatric ward.

The morning began as usual, but quickly turned sour. I had a run in with blood Hepworth and all over whose soap I had used in the washroom. She slapped my face quite suddenly and I saw red and attacked her grabbing her hair and dragging her to the ground and there we tussled until two nurses came and parted us and I swore at the b***h and spat at her. The nurses took me off and along the cooling down room and locked me in.  I stood by the corked- lined wall and stared at the door. Vincent stood there and shook his head. I became silent and he moved along the wall, all the time looking at me with those piercing eyes. Then he was gone and just the wall was there. Half an hour later the nurse Blue let me out and gave me a cigarette and we stood in the passageway looking out the window at the frosty grass out in the grounds. I never told her about Van Gogh I saw. Dinner was some kind of stew with boring potatoes and veg. Hepworth sat at the far end of the table avoiding me. I noticed she had a black eye. In the afternoon I walked up and down the passageway stopping now and then to gaze out the window. The frost had gone. Loony Lucy came and stood next to me. She laid her head on my shoulder and said nothing, just hummed a melody. Tea was the usual assortment of sandwiches and some sort of cake which tasted dry and too sweet. I sat in the lounge most of the evening next to Alun who showed me some drawings he had done. They weren’t bad. The TV programmes were the usual bread and circus kind, the sort to pacify the mind.