I have been the head handyman at St Judas Asylum for seven years, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the wrong people are wearing the keys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My job description was simple enough when I signed up: fix leaky taps, unblock toilets and patch up the occasional drywall crater. Nobody warned me that the real maintenance hazard wouldn\u2019t come from the residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take last Tuesday, for instance. I was on the third floor patching up a radiator when Andrej, a patient who firmly believes he is a teapot, politely offered me a cuppa. We had a lovely, normal chat about the weather while he stood there with one arm folded into a handle and the other bent like a spout. Just as I turned back to my wrench, Dr Evans burst out of the staff room wearing a lab coat stained with permanent marker, brandishing a clipboard like a broadsword.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She sprinted down the corridor, grabbed Andrej by the shoulders and shouted, \u2018The wall clock is ticking in B-flat, Andrej. Do you hear the flat note?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poor Andrej looked at me, slowly raised his spout arm and whispered, \u2018She gets like this always when she skips lunch.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a daily occurrence. Last month, I was asked to replace a broken door handle on Ward Four. Dr Gregory, the chief psychiatrist, cornered me in the hallway and spent forty-five minutes explaining that the brass handle had developed an Oedipus complex and was actively refusing to be turned by male hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stood there holding a simple replacement latch, watching a man with three degrees argue with a piece of hardware. In the end, I waited for him to walk away, swapped the mechanism in two minutes and told him I had performed a successful psychoanalysis on the spindle. He gave me a tenner and published a peer-reviewed paper on the breakthrough a week later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The patients actually help me out. Old Brenda from Ward Two holds my ladder and hands me the correct screwdriver, whereas Dr Higgins once tried to treat my spirit level for emotional imbalance because the little green bubble was trapped in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I always double-check the padlock on the main front gate every evening before I head home. I am not trying to keep the patients in. I am trying to keep the doctors from escaping into the local village and attempting to treat the zebra crossings for anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a daily occurrence. Last month, I was asked to replace a broken door handle on Ward Four. Dr Gregory, the chief psychiatrist, cornered me in the hallway and spent forty-five minutes explaining that the brass handle had developed an Oedipus complex and was actively refusing to be turned by male hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[64,13],"tags":[363,364,365],"ppma_author":[579],"class_list":["post-4256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experimental-prose","category-trails","tag-asylum","tag-patients","tag-shrinkers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t