LONDON DEC 2005 - NECROTIC CREVISES

The holiday centre for disabled kids closed after two weeks and my agency got me a job at an old age home. This was bad enough, but I was then assigned to a ward full of old timers with Alzheimers, or mental disorders like schizophrenia, or both. I got to know Bertie there. Bertie was an evil old Jamaican who had lost both legs to diabetes. He would fix me with these sunken-eyed, under the brow looks of incredible cunning and eroticism and ramble on at me in silky, unintelligible patois. The black carers would shriek and yell, 'O Bertie! You are a terrible, evil man!'

Once they'd explained a few words to me I realised that old Bertie was very keen to get his clutches into us. His wife, who looked like she'd poked a few voodoo dolls in her time, would come and sit grimly with him every night, until it was time for her to wheel him off for his bath and bedtucking - and very possibly for a bit of grim relief, because Bertie certainly looked like he was up for it.

The entire day, after I'd run their baths and lowered them into the water with a winch and poked at their necrotic crevises with a flannel - pink flannel for the face, blue flannel for the privates, very mature cheddar in hiding here - after this the day was spent in this one lounge-like room. It had a few chairs and sofas grouped around a tv on one side, and a few dining tables on the other side, with a tiny kitchen near the only door. Three times a day the stainless steel trollies rolled in from downstairs. Places were set and walkers rattled into life and vast quantities of food were drooled on and wasted. One old biddy kept nodding off, drooping forward like a wilting daisy until her head hung a few millimetres above her plate. A few wisps of hair usually dangled in her food. If I guided her hand with the spoon in it to her mouth a few times it got her going for a few creaking, trembly cycles until she conked out again.

Old Bertie was a virile bastard though, and he champed aggressively through whatever was put before him. When mealtime was over the crockery was clattered into the tiny kitchen and great gobs of food (about two thirds of it) were thrust down the food mincer thing in the sink. After this everyone settled down to wait for the next meal and, when all the meals were over, the grande finale: sponge down and bed by 9pm. Up until then I'd spent the entire day in this one room. I could feel the wallpaper, sort of a pureed apricot colour, closing in. The ceiling bulbs bled down a feeble yellow light and, combined with the apricot walls, the ochre carpet - a pea here, a blob of mash potato there - it all seemed soaked in a claustrophobic orange glow.

Most of the old timers had wandered off to their rooms by this stage, but a few die-hards still sat around, gumming placidly into the orange fog. I sat at the table, bleerily trying to read. Bertie's wife sat opposite me, holding old Bertie's hand while she peered stonily at a spot on the wall. Bertie slumped down in his wheelchair, his head was just above the level of the table. I was catching a glitter every now and then, so I knew the old bastard was eyeballing me, but being a professional I ignored him. Then I began to hear this menacing glottal crooning, and I knew it was directed at me, so I looked up. Bertie had me nailed with this ... lasciviously malignant, dewy look while he crooned away. I couldn't understand any of it, but I somehow knew it involved my arse. Every time I responded to a fresh sally of his with an indignant look he went into paroxysms of glee, so eventually I turned to Bertie's wife and said, 'What's this all about?' But she wouldn't even look at me. Her back stiffened a little, she peered through the orange fog at the wall, and I felt the roof coming down a few feet, and the apricot walls closing in. Bertie's gaze was suddenly transfixed by a fly buzzing around a blob of hardened custard on the table, and I went back to my book.

A few days later I was trudging along the corridor with the ochre (brownish-yellow, poo diluted with wee) carpet unravelling before me in grim dream tunnel sequence - no hope of escape, no real proof even of an outside world. The frantic reeek-reeeek of Bertie's wheelchair started up behind me, closing in. I made it through a pair of swing doors and waited there, holding one side of the doors open, while Bertie came panting towards me. He was whispering with hoarse lust, 'C'mon, c'mon, me know you, me know you! You want make jig-jig my backside!' The old bastard could make himself understood when he wanted to. I waited until he was about a third of the way through the door and then let it swing shut on him. As I made my escape down the corridor there was a frantic clattering and a low frustrated moaning, and then Bertie clubbed his way through and he was after me again with a relentless reeeeeek-reeeeek ...