Glazed tiles, a barred window: it must be another morning in a police cell

In my late twenties, it was not unusual for me to wake up in a police cell wearing a paper suit. Waking to glazed tiles and a high barred window, and not knowing how one got there, is a bad way to start the day. On this particular occasion, I opened my eyes and pieced together that the party in the nurses’ home had gone on all night, that I had continued to drink, and that I had then gone to a football match. The last thing I remembered clearly was standing on the terrace drinking cider and vodka out of a vodka bottle. (My pals told me later that two St John Ambulance guys had carried me out of the ground on a stretcher.) At that time I was a trainee psychiatric nurse. Booze at the social club in the hospital grounds was cheap, and the nurses were a hard-drinking crowd. There were drinking parties in the nurses’ home and we used to throw barbiturates and anti-depressants in the fruit punch.

The cell was light, airy and clean. It was an altogether pleasanter place to wake up in than my closet in the nurses’ home. The other cell occupant was a chirpy young East End lad. ‘Alright?’ he said, when he saw that my eyes were open. He had been arrested for non-payment of fine, but didn’t seem in the least put out. These things happened, was his attitude. And today was his wedding day. He was to be married at noon. ‘Gary,’ he said, offering his hand.

I told him how sorry I was. He was confident of making it to the register office in time, however. Shortly we would be taken to court, he said, and he doubted very much whether a magistrate would remand him in custody for non-payment of fine on his wedding day.