New life
On the loose
Zenga Longmore
After the heady pleasures of St Malo, gloomy England seems hard to bear. I said as much to one of the hippies from next door as Omalara, the said hippy and myself clanked downwards in the lift one day.
`Look at the weather! Look at the crazed politicians! Look at the. . . . ' But words failed. Englanditis has a habit of numbing the brain and dumbing the tongue.
`Everything gets worse and worse,' I con- tinued a moment later. 'What kind of world will Omalara grow up in?'
`Yeah, man,' remarked the ageing hippy, heavily, tut like, er, one thing gets better. One thing, oh hey. At least they've closed down the mental hospitals and let all the patients out. That's one of the great causes we've fought for ever since that groovy book came out by R.D. Laing. What was it called again? May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose. Something like that, anyway. This guy Laing proved that madness doesn't exist because we're all mad. So why should one mad guy lock up another? Cos- mic guy, Laing. Ah woh woh woh.'
`Woh woh woh woh!' repeated Omalara, evidently delighting in the hippy's musical turn of phrase.
`But most of the suicides and homeless people are former mental patients who have been turned out of mental hospitals to fend for themselves,' I protested.
`Cool it, mommy-o, don't lay a guilt trip on me! That don't cut no mustard, baby. You're mad if you believe that . . . Aaargh!' he expostulated as we jolted to
'Hey, what say we run after the farmer's wife?'
terra firma with the graceful impact of a wounded rhinoceros collapsing in the savannah. Away shambled the hippy, pick- ing his way through the bursting bin liners which cluttered the doorway.
`Bye bye, Mithter Woh Woh!' piped Omalara, but the hippy had become cam- ouflaged by the rubbish.
As I wheeled Omalara towards Brixton market, I could not help thinking of a council estate nearby, which houses `returned to the community' patients in communal flats. Amanda, the toothy social worker, once told me that it was her job to check up on the mentally ill tenants now and then. On her first visit, she found no one in, but peering through the letter box, she saw that the filth and stench within ren- dered the place all but unusable. On her second visit, she brought a policeman who reluctantly broke the door down and revealed an empty flat full of foetid refuse. All the dwellers had flown their nest. They had disappeared like ghosts 'into the com- munity'.
Lest this column be thought too melan- choly, I must report a remarkable piece of good luck which befell a French chamber- maid last week. Those of you who have been chambermaids will understand the mixed feelings I had when I found I had given my femme de chambre £25 in francs, mistakenly believing that I was tipping her the generous amount of £2.50.
As a tourist I mourned, but as an ex- chambermaid I rejoiced that one of my comrades in bed-making should have such an unexpected stroke of good luck. No such glittering fortune ever came my way when I was changing sheets and taking sneaky naps in the beds of the Chatsworth Hotel in Worthing. My limit, in those grim, grey days, was 50 pence; although, if I remember right, I was once given a parting gift of a pink, fluffy gonk. But the donor, an 81-year-old lady on her way to Rustington-on-Sea, may have left it behind by mistake.
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