Oh damn, still in this dream.

Every Thursday I take an old school chum out for lunch. Unlike most of my other schoolchums, he's not successful, established, or even fulfilled in personal relationships. Sometimes he doesn't pay too much attention to personal hygiene. This is because, since eighteen, he has been a sufferer of a schizophrenic illness. He's now 47, though he looks older; the years of institutionalisation having taken their toll. He is a weekly out-patient at a local hospital, but lives in sheltered accommodation in a purpose-built apartment, from which I pick him up in my car to drive to a pub in the North Surrey countryside. The pub we go to, Botley Hill Farmhouse is a C15th pub, and because we have been regulars over the last year or so, we are well known. The staff are both kind and courteous, and know about my chum's eccentricities.

Over lunch I try to divert him from talk of the trillions of pounds various people owe him (record companies, publishers, governments etc), the number of times he has been killed and resurrected, the demons that beset him and plague him, or other less pleasant reveries which occupy his waking thoughts. Sometimes we talk of music. He was a brilliant guitarist as a young man; and on the occasions we play together one can still discern the remnants of a fine technique and musical understanding. But then he is liable to claim he wrote all of the Beatles' songs and travelled in time to adopt the identity of John Lennon. That is of course when he's not being Jimmy Page or David Gilmour.

Let us call him 'Poor Mad Felix' though Felix isn't his name: but then again Johnny isn't my name either, so that's all right.

Felix and I were in a band at school. From what was the third form we had a strong friendship. I knew his girlfriends and his family; his friends were also my friends; his enthusiasms were shared between us all, as I suppose were mine, and Juan's, and Kenton's. The four of us became the school bridge team, brewed homemade cider with apples from Juan's father's orchard, worked on Kenton's Triumph Spitfire, and dreamt of girls.
Juan is now at the Rutherford Lab. He married a childhood sweetheart, Janet (whom we all knew, and were all enamoured of to various degrees) and has four children. Janet is a Don at St Hilda's Oxford, though has been off for some years: four kids can do that.
Kenton also married a teenage sweetheart, who co-incidentally had been at the same convent school as Janet. He has been a director of a few firms in his career thus far.
I've bumbled about doing this and that, being a musician.
And Felix....well Felix's testimony is a trifle erratic, but that doesn't mean I'd swap experiences with him for all the money and fame in the world. He has been in and out of hospital for almost thirty years.

Buying him lunch on Thursdays ain't a hardship: I wish I could do more. Well I may have found a way.
Felix had an idea for a book. He thinks he's already written it, mainly because if he thinks of something, as far as he is concerned it has happened. It is a children's book that will need illustrations. Two hours ago I spoke to my chum Cressy, who apart from being a brilliant singer, and a toff, and a working mother, and married to my present Bridge partner, is also an illustrator of great talent. Putting the case to her I suggested a three-way split: I'd do the writing, she'd do the drawing, and Felix would take a third for the idea.

Bingo.

We may just be able to find a way to get Felix a bit of money for his old age.

I fucking hate locked wards.
I fucking hate waiting for ten minutes for someone to let you in...then the sounds of the keys and locks being fastened against any escape. It's a real 'Norman Stanley Fletcher' moment. And what's sad is he's not a danger to anyone but himself, so why lock him up?
Most of the others on the ward seemed okay, but I fear there were one or two predatory types, and a couple of crazies attracted to violent forms of self expression.
Jeremy is mad, however. He now thinks he's the 'real' Jimmy Page and is wondering where his royalties have got to....excepting, he also thinks he's a consultant psychiatrist employed by the hospital. If there are any violent chaps in with him I hope he doesn't antagonise them with his delusions.
The time travel delusional stuff has become more acute as well. He thinks one of the chaps on the ward with him is Juan (an old schoolchum). I tried telling him Juan was still in Oxford...but to no avail alas.
Fuckitfuckitfuckit.
Thank the Gods that he is at least not miserable.

Poor Mad Jeremy came to visit today. He's rather up in arms about the new anti-smoking bill which comes into effect on the 1st July. Institutionalised since the age of twenty, Jeremy has smoked (like many folk with mental illness) all of his adult life. Fags are important to him. As is a ciggie with his pint of beer.
Alas, in his illness he has found that a subjective denial taken to the extremes of his ability to believe suits him better than reality, and has constructed a scenario wherein the law didn't get passed by parliament, and therefore is not valid.
There may be trouble ahead.
He's a one man protest/pressure group, mainly because most people don't want to stand next to him, even if he has washed (which is not always, it must be said). I shudder when I think of the embarrassment he's going to cause over the next few months, but I retain a sneaking admiration for his unique ability to disrupt and cause gentle chaos.
He played a bit of guitar, but informed me he could no longer be bothered to practise. Oh well.
He's still hugely dislocated from reality, but good company, if madder than a box of frogs: well, good company if one can bear cleaning up after he has inadvertently used the carpet as an ashtray; co-ordination being one of those things that anti-schizophrenic drugs can sometimes affect.
He's not quite the same lad I was at school with all those years ago, but there are still recognisable flashes of the mathematician or the logician. New front teeth would help too.