The mystery of Stonehenge has confounded

theorists, scholars and archaeologists;

New Age Travellers, Pagans and Druids

have squeezed out a narrative from granite.

A domain of the dead or place of worship,

the best angle to witness celestial orbits.

Who'd assemble a strictly symbolic edifice

just far enough away from the cities?

The Victorians is who, their asylums descend

from a heritage traceable back to Stonehenge.

 

It is only several millennia since

Mental Health Services Planners said

" There is so much unemployment,

the mad grow sick with sloth and boredom.

What shall we do for them?

We'll ask Occupational Therapists

to provide them all with programmes!"

 

The Occupational Therapists

were so pleased to be consulted

after aeons secreted in adjunctive Portakabins

that they strove for something striking,

tried too hard to impress.

Understand that this was many years

before computers, long even before knitting.

Many sighs and skyward gazing ensued,

finally the OT's reached a consensus

(in itself a momentous occasion for therapists).

Rock Climbing, they announced with fervour,

we shall teach the mentally ill to climb rocks!

 

Observing some anxiety on the faces

of The Planners, they quickly added

"There will be Risk Assessments

and Elective Pathways, Safety Nets

that are Robust and Fit For Purpose."

The smiles reappear on every surface

and the news handed down to the insane.

 

"Have you no work for us?" they complain,

"these rocks are many miles hence,

it is too far, too cold, too wet, too high."

The Planners and OT's are downcast

until one of their number suggests

that if Mohammed can't go to the mountain

then the mountain must come to Mohammed.

 

So began The Project, hewing and transporting

huge boulders vast distances

and providing, for the mentally ill,

the employment they desired.

Then at the completion of their labours

the mad returned exhausted,

spent their wages on cheap cider

and forgot all about Rock Climbing.

Thus has it always been

for The Occupational Therapist.