February 2008
I was sitting in the back of a London taxi when an uneasy feeling came over me. I grabbed my companion's newspaper to check the date. There it was, clearly set out in black and white: "The comsh of 19206".
It was a dream, of course. I guess the date 19206 came to my mind because of the change from one century to another. My subconscious has not yet revealed to me what it was trying to convey by the use of the apparently nonsensical word "comsh".
I have similar problems trying to work out what some of the CHESS service users mean. One keeps using a word which comes to my ears as "sabre", as in "I sabre thought it was sabre funny but then I sabre saw he wasn't joking." Another's favourite word is "wotsit", as in "I left the wotsit and was walking past the wotsit when I saw this geezer coming towards me carrying a wotsit."
As near as I can work it out, I think that in the first case I must be mishearing the expression "sort of", but its continual use still suggests some underlying communication problem. In the second case presumably the effect of mental problems means the person concerned has difficulty recalling the words he wants, so "wotsit" becomes the catch-all alternative. It is usually possible to work out what he means from the context.
It's proof, as if any is needed, that many of our service users need sympathetic hearers who will bear with their sometimes idiosyncratic conversations.
As for me, I'm still trying to work out what "comsh" means - and why my subconscious painted the London buses pale yellow.