h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Still posting here for the Post Team.)

14.

Most people who have never set foot in a mental hospital have preconceived ideas about those who live in them.

TV shows and movies have given most a Jack Nicholson-biased idea of secure units.

Bertie was one such person, slightly apprehensive when she heard the beep and click of the doors, a bit more nervous when the raving sexist fascist security guy leapt up to guard the sporks, then slightly, strangely, a little disappointed as twenty perfectly normal looking guys filed in, perfectly normally, and sat down, again, perfectly normally.

Not a white suit, tin foil hat, or straight jacket in sight, nobody was screaming, nobody batting away swarms of invisible spiders, nobody trying to eat anybody else.

Bertie relaxed.

One of the perfectly normal-looking guys sat at her table, smiled at them, and cheerily whispered, 'Don't drink the tea, the Queen's ordered the guards to poison us all!'

The guy then sidled over towards the sporks, but was thankfully shooed away by Mallory.

The Jack Nicholson imagery promptly made a comeback in Bertie's head as the doors clicked and beeped again, and two patients were ushered in by four staff members.

These guys certainly didn't look normal, and definitely not perfect. Bertie hated herself as she unconsciously shuffled her chair closer to the cop.

The tall, long-haired bearded guy looked a little like Christ - if Christ was a bit trampy looking, hadn't slept for a few weeks and was running on fear and antipsychotics.

He was guided to a seat,(thankfully across the room from the sporks, Bertie found herself thinking) and sat, hugging himself, eyes screwed tight shut, rocking himself and murmuring loudly.

The second guy looked like some bad 1990s Eastern European pop star. Wildly spiked hair sat atop wildly spiked open eyes.

The look of one who'd spent his life totally off his head. Twitching and laughing uncontrollably, drug psychosis battling with severe schizophrenia, gold tracksuit and leather biker jacket doing nothing to lessen the weirdness of the guy.

Bertie glanced over, pleased the tray of sporks had been removed, and were now locked away in the small kitchen area. The tables and chairs were rather noisily scraped across the room, forming a rounded horseshoe.

Cheers, claps and a few whistles as Gwen stepped up on the small raised platform that served as a stage for the bingo callers and karaoke evenings.

'Thank you, boys, thank you! Jake, that's not nice, love, put it away or it's back to the ward and you'll miss the show!'

All eyes shifted to Jake, who shrugged and sat down quickly.

'We've got something special this afternoon, I'm sure you'll welcome our visitors today (they'll come and meet you all later for a good chat), but first, give a warm Lake House welcome to ….Merlin…. The.... Magnificent!'

Count me in with the preconceivers. I read "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" for English in secondary school...

so did we. We had an assistant teacher fresh from uni that year who managed to talk an hour about the symbols on just 1-2 pages of the book... (in the end our actual teacher did a 'secret lesson' in which he made a short summary of what the book is actually about )

Well... anyway... I'm excited to see how this will go on

If my kids ever have to read it (probably not, seeing what they read now), at least they will have an annotated version available.

Oh, lord. I wouldn't take Ken Kesey's word for whether it was raining outside, seriously. You realise that you're assuming that that acid-riddled egotist had a clue about anything?

Go read 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'.

When I read "One flew over the cuckoo's nest, I gradually realized that Nurse Ratched seemed to be making more and more sense.