UTOPIAN DREAM

On December the twenty-eighth Mr.Flight got us cleaning the ward for the second time that day. We had to clean all the windows, on the inside only I might add. For some people the Christmas spirit obviously did not last long. I think he was possibly upset at his wife not giving him his Christmas annual.

For three days over the new year a Liverpudlian heroin victim lay in the bed next to mine, coughing up blood which he then spat into a bowl. When he was finally transported away, he left the damn bowl full of blood by my bed. Needles to say, the staff did not want to know, leaving it to me to clean up the mess.

The last day of 1985 brought another air disaster. It was a DC3 Dakota, which crashed in flames near Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Seven passengers including the veteran pop star Ricky Nelson were killed. By coincidence that month was the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of the first DC3, an occasion marked by the December issue of my Flight International magazine. At least two thousand one hundred and thirty people were killed in air crashes that year. I could not decide who was better off, them or me.

We celebrated new years day with another decent lunch, being of the same standard as those on Christmas day and boxing day. For me it was another year off my sentence and another begun.

Spain and Portugal joined the EEC that day, raising its population to three hundred and twenty million. Originally known as the Common Market, becoming the European Economic Community and later the European Union. On the legal side the British Government's Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 came into force, pertaining to the searching and interrogation of suspected persons. Under it a person could be detained for one and a half days plus two and a half days with court approval, without anyone else knowing. In 1986 the government intended to introduce into parliament a bill recommending the recording of police interviews, fixed penalties for motoring offences, and a new public order act to control pickets and disturbances at sports grounds. The government wanted to reduce remand periods to one hundred and eighty days, but why it could not be one hundred and ten days as in Scotland, I simply could not understand. Since most inmates went for trial within six months at that time, the bill would make very little impact. Would the bill also prevent convicted inmates from being detained in remand centres? Knowing my luck, I thought not. There were also government plans to restrict smoking in public places. Would that include prisons? Oh, I hoped so.

In the never ending battle against drugs, HM Customs & Excise announced that during 1985 one hundred kilograms of cocaine, three hundred kilograms of heroin, and twenty tonnes of cannabis worth a total of one hundred and seven million pounds were seized by them. They feared that this was only one sixth of what actually arrived in the UK, the remainder being sold on the streets. That week another person fell victim to the dragon's curse. The Irishman Phil Lynott of the pop group Thin Lizzy was admitted to hospital in a coma, with liver and kidney failure. He died a few days later, his body infested with ulcers, with bacteria in the blood, so the newspapers said. No, the government's puny methods designed to stop illicit drugs flowing into the UK, would not succeed in eradicating the problem. Only the abolition of money would do that.

The new years honour's list received a stormy reception, by the inclusion of a knighthood for Gordon Reece, apparently not for services to the nation as is supposed to be the case, but for services to the Tory Party in the form of political advice and image building. It underlined the importance the party now placed on propaganda over truth. One notable absence from the list was the Irishman Bob Geldoff, who in organizing the Band Aid concerts raised fifty-million pounds for the starving in the Sahel region of Africa, including war torn Ethiopia and Sudan. It was without doubt the greatest act of charitable service seen in 1985, and helped to further world peace more than any politician did that year. His hard headed approach to government attitudes, especially his confrontation with Mrs. GG, did not earn him friends where it mattered most. For once Mrs. GG found a person who was not prepared to sit back and listen to droopy rhetoric.

On January the second AD went to make his usual court appearance, only he never returned. We were told by the staff that he had been given a walk out. I was upset, as intelligent inmates to talk to were few and far between. I was further upset when I received a letter from my mother, telling me that she had received a visit from a female social worker. Apparently the woman wanted to know whether it was all right for me to go and live there upon my release. As I did not wish to live there on parole, I asked the welfare officer to find out what was going on. When she returned she told me that someone in the hospital wanted me to live with my parents whilst being an outpatient at a local hospital. I was not amused, as I had said ages before that I wanted to go back to Birmingham, where my friends were. I could only assume that Dr.Shrunk was behind this plan. I also regarded it as a bit late in the day, as far as my parole was concerned.

At seven o'clock that evening a rather glum looking AD arrived back in C ward. I was very pleased to see him.

"So what happened?" I asked with a smile.

Evidently AD had gone to the magistrates court in Shrewsbury to learn the outcome of his bill of indictment. He had taken out this indictment, thereby admitting that there was a case to answer, in the hope of getting his case put on the trials list with hopefully an early trial date to match. He had already been on remand ten and a half months. The two escorting prison officers evidently thought that he was going to the court to make another remand appearance, as when the magistrate stated that he agreed with the indictment and that there was no case to answer, the prison officers having read the document, thought that all charges had been dropped. One of the officers was evidently suffering from a hangover, whilst the other was only intent on working a half day, according to AD the screws then rushed back to Risley, leaving AD in the courtroom dock.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your views, AD could not do a runner as he was in the top security courtroom, the only entrance being guarded. The police tried to get the screws back, but in the end they were obliged to take AD back to Risley themselves. Evidently the prison authorities had even told er-indoors that he was free. Although no date had been set, AD's trial was likely to be in mid May. The gnomes of Zurich would apparently be hanging onto his money a little bit longer. A few days later AD moved to bed thirteen, as he did not like my enthusiasm for fresh air. From AD's window one could see the number thirteen painted on the perimeter wall. The perimeter wall was numbered in sectors for security reasons. They did not want the screws getting lost. As for AD's double thirteen. I thought he was courting superstition a bit too closely.

To the British public, January the ninth was the date the defence minister Michael Heseltine walked out of a cabinet meeting and resigned over the Westland helicopter affair. It was also Brian Llewellyn's day of reckoning. Evidently Brian's QC had realised that he was not as intelligent as the doctors had maintained. Brian's school reports, the ones he had hid from his parents, were to become his saving grace. Since the prosecutions medical reports were inaccurate as regards the accused mental abilities, it raised doubts as to the accuracy of them as a whole. They were therefore declared inadmissible. Brian's own damning statement concerning his affair with Mr.Black, which had been recorded in a police officer's own hand writing, was also declared inadmissible. Although Brian had printed his name at the bottom of each page, since he could only read some printed words, the signature had no legal standing. On a point of law therefore, Brian was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four years imprisonment. Upon his return to Risley he was naturally cock-a-hoop. His sentence surprised us all, not least the senior medical officer. I liked Brian, although I was never that way inclined. I realised that he would have been better off in Park Lane. He would probably only serve another couple of years at most. Prison would do nothing for him. Just what made him tick? British society would probably not know, until perhaps it was too late. Meanwhile I was hoping that Dr.Shrunk would never find out who Brian's legal advisor was, or I would probably never get out of Risley.

A couple of days previously, armed police went on regular duty at Heathrow Airport and other major airports around Great Britain, in an attempt to deter international terrorism. As a result of a question in the House of Commons a very startling and ominous statistic came to light. From a survey of one hundred and seventy-six thousand men and women born in 1953, carried out by the Central Statistical Office based on Home Office statistics, it was shown that a third of men had convictions for serious offences, not including drunkenness and motoring offences. It was also revealed that Great Britain now had at least three and a half thousand neighbourhood watch schemes. People had little confidence in the police, and were beginning to take the law into their own hands. The unemployment figure rose to 3,273,089, an ill omen for law and order, and for Industry Year.

January 1986 was a stormy month for the economy, as oil prices on the Rotterdam spot market fell from thirty-two to seventeen dollars a barrel in three months, as supply exceeded demand and the OPEC cartel failed to agree on production quotas. The run on the pound forced the treasury to state that North Sea oil production accounted for only five point six per cent of the national income. A fall of one dollar a barrel in oil prices represented a loss of five hundred million dollars per annum in government revenue.

On January 24th, 1986 the NASA space probe Voyager Two flew past the giant outer planet Uranus and its satellites. It was a clear example of what science could do when enough money and resources were devoted to specific aims.

Life in C ward was far easier going than in the other two open wards. We had no searches of the ward, as in the previous Christmas and new year. In fact there was to be no search of the ward until early March. Even the food appeared to improve slightly, though it was still worse than even the worst days I had spent on the dole. In those days my wife and I had lived off beans on toast, two beef burgers and a fried egg washed down with lashings of hot coffee. Judging by the amount of food being wasted and the inability to keep it hot, I could not help thinking that the government would have done better if it had contracted out the supply of pre-cooked frozen meals for prisons, schools, the armed services, etc. Such frozen meals could then have been heated up in ten minutes whilst stacked in microwave ovens in the servery. Since kitchens and their expensive equipment would no longer be needed, it would be easier to keep prisons clean and free of vermin. It was doubtful whether anything like that would be achieved for two reasons. Firstly it cost the Home Office to feed a prison inmate, about a third of what it cost me to feed myself on the dole. Secondly, with no kitchen staff required, what work would the inmates be given to do?

That morning I woke up to find mouse droppings all over my bed. During the cold nights it was usual for me to drape an extra blanket over it. This blanket would hang down to the floor, up which the mouse had evidently climbed. That was the first time I had slept with another living being for twenty-two months.

Thankfully the exercise periods appeared to be shorter than those during the previous winter. I had found an answer to the penetrating cold. I kept an extra pullover and pair of trousers for such occasions. Together with my jacket they kept out the cold, though I found that my nose and ears were not protected, as I never wore a towel as a scarf.

Frank Bates was moved from C ward to A ward at this time. As he usually cleaned the wash room whilst I cleaned the bathrooms. It was now left for me to clean both. Frank had recently been sentenced to thirty months imprisonment for sexually assaulting two children, one of whom was the daughter of his solicitor. He had had problems, so he said, which he found too much to bear. Firstly his girlfriend whom he had been living with for six years, left him. He mistakenly changed his job for that of running a special school for delinquents. Shortly after losing that job his mother died. All of his relatives lived in Scotland, which made it impossible for him to talk over his problems and obtain solace.

Finally, having rejected the idea of killing someone, Frank assaulted two children, thereby deliberately losing his self respect and the last remnants of his will to live. He drank a bottle of Bacardi and swallowed about thirty-pills. He then connected a hose to the exhaust pipe of his car and passed it through the window, but he was too far gone to switch on the engine. He had parked the car in a quarry where it was discovered the next day by a youth riding a scrambler bike. Frank was found to be in a coma. He spent several days in hospital connected to a saline drip designed to flush out the liver. He also had a catheter inserted up the penis to the bowels, for automatic relief. When he finally came around he found two policemen sitting at the foot of the bed. He was the only sex offender who was prepared to talk to me about his crime. He naturally felt an awful lot of guilt and shame.

To say I was pissed off with my continued incarceration in the hospital at Risley would be putting it mildly. I had long ago lost interest in playing games such as bridge, not that there was enough inmates in the ward intelligent enough to play it with. The eternal cycle of Dallas and Dynasty, which I often referred to as Malice and Dysentery, was nauseating to the ears. I tried talking to other inmates, but there was no one on my level of intellect available. AD meanwhile worked all day on the staff servery. The television ground on for nine to thirteen hours per day, every day. My tinnitus also wore me down. It was impossible to study, and almost impossible to read. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the filthiest environment I had ever been in, that being a reference to both the dirt and the foul language. Outside the office Mr.Bark was having one of his typical conversations with Mr.Barraclough.

"See in this fucking magazine, a prison in the United States where the guards are being replaced by fucking robots," said Mr.Bark, obviously annoyed.

"mmmmm ," replied Mr.Barraclough.

"Of all the stupid fucking ideas. How do they expect a fucking robot to do our fucking job," remarked Mr.Bark, his temperature definitely rising.

"mmmmm," acknowledged Mr.Barraclough, never one to waste words.

"It takes fucking brains to do our fucking job," said Mr.Bark in all honesty.

"mmmmm ," replied Mr.Barraclough in agreement.

At that moment 'Doris the cat,' an animated children's programme on television said ,"Meow," as if in agreement.

Meanwhile, the lad who occupied the bed next to mine, started telling me about his life. Apparently his wife and two kids had left him. He blamed them for his present demise. He mentioned a young woman called Marion whom he had met in a pub, whilst playing darts with his mates. He chatted her up, then took her back to his place, and bang, bang, bang, as he put it. He went into great detail about his sex exploits with this young lass, bunny hops and everything. I could not find the inclination to ask him what a bunny hop was. All I wanted was an intelligent conversation.

Further along the ward a row developed between a scoucer and a manchunian.

"I got the pox off a scouce girl once," said the manchunian.

"Well she must have been as blind as a bat to go with a syphilitic cunt like you," retaliated the scoucer," and anyway, I got VD including crabs off a manchunian whore, She said at the time she was a virgin."

"You deserve VD off a whore, because you never pay for anything," said the manchunian defiantly.

At that moment there was a loud crash from the servery, where AD was working.

"What's that?" Asked an inmate.

"Oh, that's just AD's bowing and scraping medal falling off his chest," said I.

January 28th, 1986 was the day after I had put in a governor's application, to ascertain the present status of my parole application. That day for many, was likely to be remembered by millions of people, just as the day President John F, Kennedy was shot. On that previous occasion I had been at home watching television with my parents. On this occasion the television was on, displaying a quiet game of snooker, but I had long since lost my joy of television, and was lying on my bed at the far end of the ward when AD came in from the staff servery with urgent news for me. Evidently he had just heard a news flash on the radio.

"Hey," said AD disturbing me from my utopian dreams, " the space shuttle's fucked, ten miles up and they can't get down."

I pondered what he had just said. It did not make sense. As everyone in the aerospace business knew, the only thing that does not come down is the price. AD had the privilege of a large old fashioned radio in the staff servery, which he and his prostitute killing assistant had the habit of switching on full blast fifteen minutes before the rest of us got out of bed in the morning.

I got off my pit and walked over to the TV, along with AD.

"It'll be on in a minute, you'll see," AD said.

In impatience we changed channels to see a recording of the space shuttle Challenger being blasted to oblivion in a split second. The shuttle was meant to launch the NASA communications satellite TDRS-B, boosted by the highly volatile Centaur 6 upper stage, but had come to a premature spectacular end. The crew of seven including two women, one of whom was to be the first school teacher to go into space, were launched through the pearly gates, as in moments they were apparently killed, cremated and buried at sea.

For me it was hard to feel anything. Most, of the lads just joked about it. I think life in prison had hardened my feelings. The accident did not come as a surprise to me. There was so much that could go wrong, and often did, that I was surprised that it had gone on for so long without major mishap. Now there were only three operational space shuttles left, whilst the enquiry would probably hold up future flights for at least a year, I thought. (Actually 3 years) A new shuttle would cost at least two thousand million dollars to build, and a new tracking and data relay satellite to replace the one Challenger was carrying, would cost another two hundred million dollars. I could not see where the money was going to come from at a time of budgetary restrictions.

The next day I received a visit from my probation officer based in Bangor. He was at a loss to know what had happened to my parole application. He did however tell me that the North Wales Mental Hospital at Denbigh, had turned me down because they could offer me nothing better than what I had here. Evidently my voicing a dislike of nutters was a major factor in their decision. I could not understand why I had received a visit from this probation officer when I should already be registered with the Birmingham office. Also, why had this probation officer come around at this particular time whilst I was awaiting the outcome of my parole application? I could smell a rat.

I had not slept well the previous night. I awoke at about five o'clock with a slight twitch of dyspepsia, and a pain in the left side of my chest. Was it muscular or angina? The doctor whom I saw later that morning prescribed paracetamol, leaving me with the impression that he did not know what was wrong. Maybe it was psychosomatic, as a result of the awful news the previous day. I had taken the space shuttle news lightly, so I thought, but I had learned over the years that a person rarely senses stress in the human body. The twitch of dyspepsia was no doubt a forewarning of the heavy snow we received later that day.

That same day Mrs. GG visited Rolls Royce at Derby. Rolls Royce were in the process of carrying out proof of concept tests, at their Ansty Works near Coventry, on the propulsion system for the British Aerospace space shuttle known as HOTOL, standing for horizontal take off and landing. The engines designated RB545, and named Swallow after the swing wing supersonic airliner proposed by Barnes Wallace, were at the cutting edge of world technology. After the space shuttle disaster Mrs. GG praised American technology and sacrifice. It was a pity I thought, that she could not praise British manufacturing industry equally.

This British Tory government had cut student grants by a fifth since coming to power, and now intended to carry out massive cuts in higher education places, at a time when young people desperate for a job were urgently applying for such vocations. Without higher education there could be no high technology, unless a foreign government was prepared to sell it to us, but why should they when the UK would have so little to offer in exchange? British politicians were quick to criticise the slow rate of high technology development in Great Britain, along with the high costs involved, but other countries were no different. They had all had there own equivalent of the Nimrod airborne early warning fiasco.

British society had progressed through nomadic, agricultural, industrial and service based societies, to a point where a science based society was now needed. The Japanese government had recognized this problem by ordering the construction of numerous science cities. The economic drain caused by millions of people on the dole would become ever more apparent as North Sea oil revenue diminished and the sale of nationalised industries was finalized. There was a danger that by the time British politicians saw the light, there would not be the billions of pounds available to build such a new society, a society employing scientists, engineers and technicians on projects only limited by man's imagination. Apart from the Channel Tunnel agreement, which would be financed by private enterprise, the government was doing virtually nothing, leaving the economy to sort itself out after monetarist mistakes during previous years.

The British Government was always quick to extol the virtues of information technology. It would create jobs, they said. It was at this time that the wind of change blew down Fleet Street, that bastion of information technology in London, albeit a little outdated. From the sale of Reuters News agency, newspaper owners could at long last afford to throw off the extortionate practices of the trade union chapels, by setting up new plant with new technology. Rupert Murdoch with new plant in Wapping and Glasgow sacked five thousand redundant employees, and with loyal journalists and electricians at the Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times, reluctantly set off to confront Dickensian trade unions from behind coils of razor wire.

The wind of change had come about through the threat of competition from Eddie Shar's national newspaper called Today, due out in a months time. As with newspapers, other industries would have to change in order to fend off competition. Changes would be felt in banking, with the introduction of the cashless society, introduced into the UK by Barclay's Bank in 1987, and in retailing with video shopping, Who was next to loose their job? Unemployment, even using the government's own fiddled system, had now reached three point four million people, and was rising at the rate of fifteen hundred people per week.

That night Mr.Dog was playing his transistor radio in the office as usual, whilst everyone else was trying to get some sleep. Suddenly an eruption developed on the YP's wing. The animals were at it again, screaming and howling in the night. Someone was screaming some unintelligible garbage, whilst doing his best to demolish the entire wing, by the sound of it.

"Shut up yea dirty stinking foul mouthed bastards!" Screamed a voice.

For a moment I thought that Liverpool's militant, Derek Hatton, had finally arrived.

"We'll get yea when we're good and ready," shouted another inmate.

"I'll get yea now," shouted another.

Bang, bang, bang, bang! As fists and furniture repeatedly struck the cell doors.

"Meow, meow," coming from a headbanger imitating a cat.

"Woof, woof, woof," said an inmate, obviously in the dog house.

"Greer, greer," from another inmate who was definitely not dog tired.

"Howl, howl, howl!" By now the menagerie was growing fast.

"Order, order," from someone wanting to be judge.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Every cell door appeared to come alive,

"Beast! Beast! Beast! Beast!"

By the sound of it the inmates were baiting a beast, a sex offender. On and on it went. The boys from the violent playground had finally come of age. On the young person's wing they were all under eighteen years of age.

Listening to them sent the shivers through me. If we in the hospital were insane, then what the hell were they, I thought.

"Hey boss," said Honey Monster, "I hope them doors are locked. The last thing I want is that lot in here."

Just why Honey Monster was still in the hospital puzzled me. A couple of days before, Dr.Shrink had come into the ward and gone over to Honey Monster.

"I've had letters about you from people all over the country, saying that there is nothing wrong with your heart," said Dr.Shrink to Honey Monster.

Well the con man had tried to con them, but failed. A certain hospital officer had read his deps, during one of Honey Monster's remand appearances. Although he would not tell me what the deps contained, he did imply that Honey-Monster was a sex offender of sorts. I also wondered why he had a bed which was away from other inmates whilst in clear view of the office, and what did those statements say that he was so ashamed of? Since I felt that his case had something to do with dead bodies and that sex was probably involved, I came to a one word conclusion, Necrophilia!

I was very tempted to raid Honey Monster's locker and find out the truth, but he had so much junk in there that it would have taken me ages to sort out, whilst running the risk of being caught. In any case I liked him, or maybe I did not want sleepless nights, knowing the truth. Once during an interview with Dr.Shrink he mentioned to me some medical term to describe Honey Monster, something to do with fantasies and delusions, but I cannot remember the exact word. Maybe that was why he was kept in the hospital, but then as I was to discover later, there were plenty of inmates like him in prison, who were not receiving medical attention. I concluded therefore that he was kept in the hospital so that he could not pull the wool over the eyes of prison staff again.

All kinds of cases involving sex passed through the hospital. There was the case of one lad who had been tried recently for stealing a woman's handbag, and her undies, whilst she was still wearing them!

Perhaps the most macabre case of its type was that of Clive Carter who stood trial for the murder of his girlfriend, whose body was found in a shallow grave. Her body was decomposed too much for cause of death to be ascertained. It was stated at his trial, that whilst engaged in oral intercourse in his car, he got cramp resulting in his girlfriend choking to death. He then panicked and buried the body. He told her girlfriend that she had gone off with someone else. She felt sorry for him, becoming his lover. Amazingly the jury found him not guilty, even though a neighbour stated that an argument had taken place in his flat about the time she disappeared. I am not very knowledgeable about deviant Welsh sexual practices. All I know is that every time I have had cramp it has always been in my legs, and has certainly not stopped my hips or any other part of my body from moving. Prior to my trial my solicitor told me that the jury would have to believe what I told them, unless witnesses or forensic evidence implied differently. Such an insult to a juries deductive powers I found hard to believe.

February the third brought on another sleepless night. Two of the ward's inmates, Walrus Witherspoon and Plonk Parsons, were snoring in unison. If their was a sound barrier for snoring, then Walrus could easily achieve mach two. The two of them would not start snoring until everyone was asleep, then their snoring would slowly increase in volume, until when at Earth shattering dimensions, it would suddenly go quiet. Quiet that is except for a slight indiscernible noise which would go on for ages. At first I thought it was someone tommy tanking, but the evidence in the morning suggested otherwise. On my bed I found small black pieces which Plonk said was evidence of AD picking his nose. In fact it was mouse droppings. We had no idea how many mice there were. It was thought that they got in through a hole in the wall behind the sluice in the wash room. At night there were plenty of crumbs scattered here and there on the floor for an entire army of mice to live off quite comfortably. We had no mouse trap, so it was just a matter of live and let live.

The next evening a new inmate arrived in the ward, called Sleep Walker. He was an out and out loon. Shortly after Mr.Godfather came on duty, Sleep tipped his own mug of tea into one of the large fruit tins which the lads used as ash trays, then commenced drinking from it. The fruit tins were never washed out, so needless to say many stomachs were turned over in an instant. The night watchman was far from pleased, to put it mildly. After everyone else had gone to bed that night, Sleep would pace up and down the ward, or stand at the grill gate, where he would wait to be released. After some time Mr.Godfather managed to get him into bed, but not for long. After cadging a light for a cigarette, he started pacing up and down again.

"I want a taxi," Sleep said. Naturally the request could not go ignored.

"Press the doorbell and they'll let you out," said Honey Monster.

The doorbell that Honey Monster was referring to was next to my bed, adjacent to the fire exit. All eyes fell on the doorbell as Sleep approached it. He peered through the windows in the door.

"There's no one there," said an observant Sleep.

"The're soon will be if you press the doorbell," remarked Walrus truthfully.

The doorbell was in fact the alarm button. Sleep Walker hovered around the doorbell. Much to the disappointment of everyone, he turned and walked back up the ward. Mr.Godfather was in the office, trying to get some kip. The headlights of a car flashed past the hospital, as someone from the wings shouted something.

"There you are," said Honey Monster, "the taxi has arrived. He's outside. You'll have to press the doorbell if you want him."

Slowly Sleep shuffled through the ward, as all eyes fixed themselves on the doorbell again. Sleep stood at the fire exit door, peering through the small window.

"Go on, press the doorbell. The taxi driver's waiting," said Walrus impatiently.

Sleep's hand reached out.

Immediately, as the alarm bell went off, all hell let loose. Staff in the ground floor office were awaken from their slumber, as inmates in C ward buried themselves under the sheets, chuckling to themselves. The thudding of numerous heavy feet got louder and louder, as Mr.Godfather emerged from the office far from pleased. The squawk from a screw's portable radio could be clearly heard.

"It's all right, it's all right, it's only this nutter," explained Mr.Godfather.

Mr.Island was the first to arrive on the scene, always keen for action.

"Come 'er yea cunt," Mr.Island cursed as he grabbed Sleep's arm, swung him around, and marched him off to the cells.

We had no polite taxi drivers here. Somehow we all managed to keep our glee from the staff. Gradually quiet descended upon the ward, only for Walrus' snoring to begin half an hour later.

How the hell do you get rid of him, I thought. There was no doubt about it as far as I was concerned, snoring was definitely adequate grounds for divorce, in cases where a separate bedroom is impractical or unavailable. Although we slept in the same bedroom, I could not divorce him nor walk out.

Life in Risley was a sickening bore much of the time, with only headbangers, dickheads, beasts, winos and smackheads to talk to. In prison there was only mental decay. There was nothing positive to experience or look forward to in the short term. I was always desperate for things to read. Our education officer had moved on to Styal Prison for women, a promotion he said. His replacement visited the ward infrequently, no doubt sick of the damage some of the hospital loons did to the library books. My tiger pacing was a daily event. It helped to pass the time, and kept me reasonably fit, physically if not mentally. I was bored stiff. The toilets and bathrooms only took about half an hour to clean each day. I was not allowed outside the ward except to post a letter, usually once per week to my mother. I still refused to go to chapel on a Sunday morning, partly because I did not believe in God, but mainly because I regarded the services as an affront to Christianity. There was also no one on the wings whom I wanted to see in there anyway. There was nothing to do but day dream. I had day dreamed a lot since childhood, probably as an escape from all the rowing at home.

As a child I helped build castles out of bales of straw in the nearby wheat fields, put pennies on the railway lines for the thundering steam trains to flatten, dammed streams and climbed trees in the local park, their heights sending a shiver down my spine today when I see how tall they are. We would go fishing for newts and tadpoles in local ponds, and camp out down the ballast hole, adjacent to the Bedford to Kettering railway line, or cycle to RAF Podington, a WWII American bomber base, now Santa Pod drag strip. Now that is all gone. The ponds are filled in. The wheat no longer towers over the heads of children, the green revolution has seen to that, whilst most straw is now burnt. The pennies on the railway lines have given way to concrete sleepers placed there by delinquents, whilst it is apparently not safe to go camping anywhere with all these child molesters around. My life as a child was an adventure. The countryside was to be explored. Now it was a featureless monoculture, or replaced by a concrete jungle.

When I left school, life became a hell of a disappointment, whilst in prison it becomes one heck of a bore. If boredom could kill, then I would have been killed many times over. Reports from hospital officers indicated that I would not get parole, because occurrence book reports stated that I had withdrawn into my shell. It was not so much a shell as a straight jacket, as any member of staff who did not shut himself up in the ward's office, would have discovered if they had cared to. None ever did, I was sick of living in shit, eating shit, breathing shit and listening to shit. I was filled with loathing for the shit arse society that perpetuated the political status-quo responsible for such conditions. I was determined that one day the sickening truth would be exposed, in such a way that it could not be ignored.

As for me, all I wanted was to get the hell out of this country, legally or illegally it did not matter. Society's values had changed. They were no longer the ones I was brought up to admire and respect. It was like living in a third rate country. From now on I would look after number one and to hell with everyone else. This manuscript, which I hoped to get published, was to be my passport to sanity. Imprisonment had turned me into a bitter man.

It was now two weeks since my application to the governor concerning my parole, and I still had not heard anything. It was obvious that something had to be done. I thought about writing to my solicitor, but he had brought me no luck in the past. Writing to Amnesty International and the Ombudsman appeared inappropriate. AD had recently written to the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in London complaining about the excessive length of time he had been held on remand. It appeared that the authorities wanted him to serve his sentence before the trial. So a letter to the MCCL it was.

The letter was dated the eight of February and detailed the circumstances of my crime, mental condition, and the fact that I had been turned down for Park Lane and Denbigh. It listed eight disturbing facts, and also mentioned that meditation, work therapy and exercise were not made available to me. It also mentioned my mini stroke, the floaters in my eyes and my tinnitus. It concluded:

'I can see no reason why I should not have been transferred over a year ago to a proper hospital or long term prison, where facilities would have been much better. I find the conditions here brutalizing and far from being a place of reform. My feelings are now numb. I feel that my sentence is being prolonged due to the effect these conditions have on me. I hope you can assist me either with parole or transfer. I do not like the idea of having to stay here another eighteen and a half months, before my earliest date of release. I look forward to hearing from you.'

In addition to this letter, I put in an application to see a visiting magistrate from the board of visitors. The following morning I was called down to the main office on the ground floor. A member of staff informed me that for some reason no one had passed onto me the answer to my previous application regarding parole. The answer simply stated that no decision had been made by the parole board. I still insisted upon seeing a member of the board of visitors, however. By now I distrusted everyone.

Meanwhile the trials of my luckless compatriots continued unabated. Rolf from A ward was sent down for five years, for assaulting and attempting to kidnap his wife. Evidently he had a drugs fetish. He would put his wife to sleep by drugging her food, then have sex with her. One day he put drugs into the cakes. At tea time however, his wife turned up with his mother-in-law. What a treat! Needless to say, his wife left him, but his obsessive nature and the overpowering urge to live out his sexual fantasies finally led him into the dock. After his trial he was returned to Risley, where he was left moping in a ground floor cell, whilst waiting to be transferred to Grendon Underwood, a psychiatric prison. As far as I know, no one had ever considered sending me there. I could not understand why, as it could not be worse than Risley.

I did not have any fantasies sexual or otherwise. As for dreams, I rarely if ever had them. Most of my dreams appeared to be about prison life, probably because it was difficult to recall what life on the outside had been like. I do remember a particular dream where I returned to Risley, only to be apprehended whilst passing food through the prison bars to inmates. Evidently my good nature extended to nocturnal periods also.

In C ward at this time was Richard 'naughty nonce' Eastwood. He was the headmaster of a private school, and had been caught in his study, playing with a half naked schoolboy's willy, whilst pretending to give him the slipper. He also gave his pupils bogus medical examinations. Some of the lads got his depositions out of his locker one day, in order to ascertain the full truth. They later cross examined Richard, who continued to maintain that he was not a sex offender. I watched the interrogation. You could not tell he was lying, though everyone by now knew for certain that he was. He said that he was in the hospital for cancer of the tongue, and not for protection. He showed me his tongue which had obviously been operated on, as part of it was missing.

By now my interest had shifted from naughty nonce to Smelly Loo, a tramp in the bed upwind from me. He stank so much that when he lay on his bed, I got the feeling that he had died days before. The truth was that he simply did not believe in changing his clothes. We normally got kit change once per week, so I could not understand why he stank so much. I noticed that he had a clean set of gear in his locker, so I went into the ward's office and told Mr.Stick that Smelly obviously had not changed his clothes for at least a month. I then went to have words with Smelly, then put out all of his clean clothes on his bed. Smelly immediately picked them up and threw them onto the floor by the fire exit, which was where we normally dumped our dirty clothes and soiled sheets, from where they were collected and sent off to the laundry. Smelly told me, and later Mr.Stick, that he had already changed his clothes. Mr.Stick believed him, obviously wanting a quiet life. Something would have to be done I thought. The next time we had kit change, I was determined that Smelly would not only put on clean clothes, but have a bath as well. Meanwhile the smell that wafted over me whilst I read my magazines and newspapers, was appalling.

Also in the ward at this time was Rocky Too, a senile geriatric, who judging by the skid stains on his pyjamas, did not believe in using toilet paper. I likened him to a hippo wallowing in mud. The other inmates took it far less philosophically. Given a rope. I am certain they would have lynched him. On the night of February the eighteenth, Mr.Godfather created a right stink. Someone had taken his kettle from the office. The staff from the ground floor brought up another one, but as they had no key with which to unlock the grill gate, they were obliged to plug it into the wall just outside the gate. This meant that the night watchman had to get on his bended knees each time he put his hands through the grill gate to use it. It had taken the staff a long time to find a kettle, and an even longer one to find a fuse, once Mr.Godfather realised that it was not getting hot. I got the impression that he had upset a member of staff, who was now getting his own back. Needless to say the inmates were at the bottom of the abuse ladder, the night watchman spending the rest of the evening cooking onions.

Also on the ward at this time was a senile alcoholic. That morning he had come into the wash room wearing just his shirt and jacket. He rolled up his sleeves, but unfortunately all the hand basins were occupied by inmates having a wash before breakfast. Eventually he became confused, and walked off without getting himself wet. One day it will happen to us all, I thought with a shudder.

For God sake someone get me out of here!

At long last I saw a member of the board of visitors, who in a five minute chat in the recess, told me that my application for parole was in London, at the bottom of the 'in' tray, and that he had asked for it to be brought forward. He said that the Home Office was inundated with parole applications. It sounded to me as if I was right when he told me that the staff had forgotten my parole date.

On the twenty-fourth of January, the former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, resigned as head of the Department of Trade and Industry over the Westland helicopter affair. It did not take much time for the staff at Risley to make up a joke about their former boss. It was left to Mr.Flight to tell me it.

"There was a fire at Leon's home, which burned down the library. The two books in it were both destroyed. The sad fact was that he hadn't, finished colouring in one of them," said Mr.Flight gleefully.

So that was what they really thought of him. His successor was Douglas Hurd, was to get even worse treatment.

We were only getting about one exercise period each week at this time. The prison grapevine said that the infrequency was due to staff shortages. I got the feeling that both discipline and morale were low, sometimes leading to half the staff being off sick, or on holiday. They obviously could not stomach putting up with the head bangers any more than I could. At one time there use to be two beds where the ward office now stood. The office was no doubt built because the staff could not tolerate the loons breathing down their necks, any more than I could. Unfortunately I had no office to crawl into. I could not help wish at times that I was back downstairs in my own cell.

On the day it was announced that the Soviet Union had launched a new space station module called MIR, which incorporated a multiple docking facility, I was called down to the main office on the ground floor. There were three identical forms on the desk marked 'parole decision.' I was handed one to read. It was dated 13-2-86. It read:

'Your case for early release on licence under the parole scheme has been sympathetically considered, but the secretary of state regrets to have to inform you that parole has not been authorized.'

Well that was that. There was no mention of the reasons for its refusal, no mention of when it would be reviewed again, and no mention of me being transferred. I spoke to Dr.Shrink later that day in the ward's office. I informed him of my parole refusal, which he had been unaware of, and then asked him about my transfer. He simply stated that transfers take a long time, owing to Home Office and DHSS bureaucracy. I did not believe him. I had not expected my parole to be refused. If they were not going to parole me then what was the point of keeping me here, I thought. I felt that I was being told a pack of lies by my probation officer, welfare officer, doctors, etc. Other inmates had no difficulty in getting transferred within three months of their trial. Why was I the exception?

I was in the worst part of the prison system, and I knew it. I felt very bitter about being kept in the hospital at a remand centre for so long, and equally bitter that a bunch of wankers had cocked up my parole application. Even Pepsi my welfare officer, could not tell me when my next parole date would be. She said that it would be in two months time, whereas in truth it was to be a year. From the advice that AD gave me, I asked my beloved welfare officer to get me a copy of the booklet 'Parole Your Questions Answered.' I had plenty of questions that needed answering, not least of which was, who is my probation officer in Birmingham?

The next weekend saw the ward accommodating a pair of fifteen year old's whom Honey Monster called the baby bandits! They had held up a petrol station with a sawn off air rifle.

"They thought it was a shotgun," joked AD.

For their troubles they were each awarded three years imprisonment. What a way to start off your working life, I thought.

On the news front, as the price of oil fell to fifteen dollars per barrel, the prospect of more job losses in the National Coal Board, later to be called British Coal, were feared as its competitive edge vanished, not only to oil, but also imported coal. The oil price would have to drop to ten dollars a barrel before North Sea oil production platforms started closing down. It was doubtful whether the third world would benefit, since most of those countries were already heavily in debt to western banks. It was to be a year or more before these banks, led by Citibank in the USA and the Midland Bank in the UK, set aside contingency funds for third world debts, that would obviously never be repaid. Just down the road from where I had once lived, the giant Lucas factory would close over the next three years with the loss of twelve hundred jobs. The number of families in tower blocks that that figure represented, I found frightening. The British Government meanwhile decided to raise unemployment benefit and supplementary benefit by only fifty-five pence per week. The only good news was that the widow Corizon Aquino had with the help of the Roman Catholic church, succeeded in becoming president of the Philippines by democratic means.

Nineteen years previously I had sailed to Manila whilst serving in the merchant navy, I stayed there for about three weeks. President Marcos had just started his twenty years of dictatorship. Of all the places I went to in the world, Manila was the only one that still haunted me. To describe it as a wild west town in those days would be no exaggeration. In those three weeks I had my watch snatched off my wrist by a young boy as I stepped out of a taxi, a taxi driver tried to short change me, and but for my persistence would have succeeded, whilst the finale occurred one night on the jetty whilst waiting for a launch to take me back to my ship at anchor in the outer harbour. A couple of elderly and inebriated American seamen were having a friendly fight at my feet when a couple of agitated Philippino customs guards drew their revolvers and started shooting in all directions. Needless to say, my mate and I almost leapt out of our skins as we dived behind a building.

I thought I had seen the worst scenes mankind could conjure up at our previous port, Saigon during the Vietnam War. I was on the oil tanker Hemifusus, loaded with lubricating oils. Our ship was detected at night at least one hundred miles off shore, by an aircraft directed onto us by a huge fixed radar array located on a hill at the river mouth. There were about twenty ships at anchor, waiting to go up river, including a flat top loaded with WWII propeller driven ground attack aircraft. Everywhere, the huge expense of war could be seen. Hundreds of millions of dollars. As we approached the petroleum harbour at Nha Be, about five miles down river from Saigon, I saw at first hand how technology can destroy a country. The delta consisted of low scrub, probably laid waste by agent orange defoliant, whilst tall plumes of smoke could be seen on the horizon created by exploding bombs or shells. At night helicopters flew overhead dropping flares around the harbour in search of infiltrating Viet-Cong. At first light the American helicopters would hover a half a metre off the ground, whilst being refueled for that day's mission. Only about five members of the South Vietnamese army defended the place. There was no one in the watchtower, as I waited for a taxi to take me into Saigon. We never saw the enemy, although there were probably few Vietnamese at that time who considered the war to be anything less than a colonialist struggle against the USA. A day or two after we departed for Manila, the petroleum installation was attacked by VC. Some oil tanks were set ablaze, a reconnaissance aircraft shot down, and a coaster sunk at the jetty. We were lucky not to have been involved.

Whilst war showed how technology could destroy a nation. Manila showed how political corruption could achieve similar results. Here crates of war reparations from Japan stood apparently disowned on the dockside. Factories, what few there were, were closing. The main industry seemed to be prostitution, as it existed in every bar, whilst for the male there was only thieving in order to survive. There was the occasional shoe shine boy, one of the few honest jobs available. There was no welfare state. The people rummaged over the rubbish tips or starved. Their dream was to work abroad or marry a foreigner. The glossy banks in the city centre were in stark contrast to the rest of the city.

The Philippines at this time was a classic example of what happens to a country and its people when the government refuses to invest in its future. No society is immune from such treatment. During my years on the dole and in prison, I was haunted by the faces of those people I had met, and wondered how they could possibly still be alive. I developed a strong belief that everyone, not just politicians, should visit the third world as part of their education, and hopefully ensure upon their return that it is never allowed to happen here. Philippine society under President Marcos, was decimated by corruption and incompetence. Those two factors could destroy any country. Automation and greed could achieve similar results.

Mrs. GG's regime was creating the share owning democracy, but in reality it was nothing less than the selling off of state assets to buy votes through reduced taxation. No government had the right to sell off state assets created by earlier socialist minded governments, unless those funds were reinvested in other state concerns. She had succeeded in giving corruption an air of respectability, which the DPP and opposition parties apparently felt impotent to stop. The police, military and intelligence services also did nothing. The government had in fact created nothing more spectacular than a greed snatching society, in which jobs and the welfare state would be decimated, leaving the nation's youth with nothing to look forward to but prostitution and thieving. The road to eventual wealth and dignity is long and painful. I did not envy President Aquino's new role, but I certainly admired her guts, I could not help thinking that she was now managing the wrong country.

It was now two and a half months since I had stopped taking Prothiaden. The withdrawal symptoms still persisted. No sooner would I think they had gone than they would return, usually in a different form but less severe. Initially I had depressing headaches, then it changed to pains around the eyes. My tinnitus would return, usually after a midday nap, though gradually it reduced in intensity after an hour or so. I would get tinnitus for two or three full days each week. As the withdrawal symptoms wore off I found life in prison more tolerable. The thought occurred to me that perhaps my drug induced intolerance, or the fact that I had refused to take any more drug therapy, had cost me my parole. I was without doubt glad that I was off it, though the occasional pain in the head served as a constant reminder of the haemorrhage I had endured eight months before. It was easy for me to see why it took at least two months for a drug addict to dry out. I had read how acupuncture in the legs, and electrical stimulation behind the ears, could relieve withdrawal symptoms. Such facilities were of course not available at Risley.

My attempts to sort out my parole proved long and arduous. Neither the hospital officers nor the welfare department had a copy of the booklet describing parole procedures. Clearly it existed, as it was mentioned in the red information booklet I had been given upon my initial arrival at Risley. Pepsi my welfare officer was on holiday. In Beirut, I hoped. Her associate Shirlie, did however manage to find me the address of the probation office in Birmingham. I tried to apply for a special letter, which ultimately had to be approved by the assistant governor. As it was Friday afternoon, Mr.Island was only too keen to remind me of the rules.

"You will have to put your application in on Sunday evening," remarked Mr.Island.

AD told me during one of our numerous conversations that Mr.Island considered himself to be part of the landed gentry, with his quarter of an acre farm, on which he had half a dozen chickens, which had apparently decided not to lay eggs because of the cold weather.

On Sunday evening I put in my application. I was first in the queue followed by Honey Monster. The applications were both phoned down to the main office at the same time. The next day my special letter failed to arrive, so I was advised to go downstairs and enquire. Honey Monster's application was in the book, but not mine. Bloody typical, I thought, they're all a bunch of morons. After making a second application, I got the envelope and writing paper midday Tuesday.

The letter was short and to the point, asking them to visit me or at least write back. AD who advised me to write the letter (he knew more about prison than he was letting on) told me to add a postscript stating that I would require their help whether I got parole next time around or not, as I would be returning to Birmingham anyway. Now they could not ignore that, could they?

February was the coldest month since 1947. Even with the new heating system, it was not warm in the ward, the plastic single glazed windows which extended along both sides of the ward saw to that. The DHSS was grudgingly deciding which areas of Great Britain qualified for extra heating allowance, for the pensioners and unemployed. Hundreds of elderly were dying from hypothermia, too afraid to turn up the heating owing to the high cost of fuel. The government obviously cared little about providing a decent state pension for those who had dedicated the best years of their lives in putting the great into Great Britain. The government even taxed private pensions. It was no wonder therefore that the elderly did not want to retire. They would be warmer at work for one thing. They would not be forgotten, for another, as they would still feel part of the system, and still be able to make friends at work. The European Court ruled that the difference in retirement age between men and women, sixty-five and sixty respectively, was illegal. I could not help thinking that the retirement age and pensions should be the same for all EEC countries. With so much unemployment the qualifying age should definitely be reduced, and conditions for senior citizens improved.

On one of the rare occasions that I was watching television Honey Monster was obviously looking elsewhere.

"There's a mouse!" Honey Monster exclaimed, pointing towards the grill gate.

I walked over to the gate and poked my head through it. There was no mouse in sight. I then moved to the right, pulling back the wooden ward door slightly, from its open position. There behind the door, in the corner, was a large black mouse, its thin black tail clearly visible. Motionless, its two beady eyes stared at me. Finding a mouse is one thing, catching it another. In the recess between the wash room and the bathroom was a dustbin, located by the drinking fountain. I picked up the dustbin lid whilst another inmate flung open the door behind which the mouse was hiding, with the intention of catching it with his bare hands. The mouse had other ideas.

It dashed past him and made for the wash room door. I had anticipated its move, waiting with the dustbin lid in my hand. As it tried to dash past me I dropped the lid over it, well the mouse was now trapped, but what to do next, whilst debating this little problem within my mind, Mr.Godfather came out of the office to see what all the fuss was about.

"Leave this to me," he said confidently.

With his massive bulk now standing on the dustbin lid, he proceeded to stomp up and down on it like a child playing in puddles. He was obviously enjoying it as black pieces shot off in all directions. They turned out to be parts of the dustbin lid, and not the mouse. It slowly occurred to me that it would be muggins here, who would have to clean up the blood and guts afterwards. Bang, bang, bang went Mr.Godfather's boots. It was enough to wake the dead, and it did. By now I was feeling quite sorry for the underdog. Talk about overkill. Finally Mr.Godfather, short of breath, got off what remained of the dustbin lid. Nothing could have survived that, I thought. Low and behold, as he raised the lid, a waggling black tail stuck out. Our mascot was still alive! By now Mr.Godfather was feeling quite peeved, and in no mood to admit defeat.

Raising the lid quickly, he gave the shocked mouse a swift sideways kick. The exterminated mouse was sent spinning into touch, at the foot of the grill gate. Mr.Godfather returned to the office shattered, as I put the remains of the lid on top of the dustbin.

"What's going on here?" Asked a concerned Mr.Pluto, who had come up from the main office to investigate the cause of the noise.

As I was the only one in the recess at this time, it looked as if I was to carry the can. I pointed to the corpse at his feet. With the flick of his right foot he kicked the offending vermin to one side. Finally the night watchman plucked up enough courage, and came out of the office to own up.

"Have a nice day," said Mr.Pluto, his curiosity now sated.

Naturally the incident would be recorded in the occurrence book by Mr.Pluto. It probably read something like, 'Mr.Godfather throws a tantrum over a mouse,,,, .should be committed!'

The next day, March the fourth, as I was reading about antimatter reactor dynamics, Shirlie one of the welfare officers, came in to see me. Evidently she could not find the booklet about parole in any of the departments in the remand centre, so she had asked for one to be sent from the Hornby Hotel. It was only then that she informed me that my next parole date would be next boxing day, in almost ten months time, and not in two months time as Pepsi had told me. I felt decidedly sick. Since the welfare department had not had the booklet to work from, I developed a strong feeling that my parole application had not been handled with anything like acceptable efficiency.

On top of that I was sick of the never ending stream of crime flowing through the place. I felt that there was a tendency to accept even the most vile and beastly of crimes as being perfectly normal. To me the inside of Risley was the normal society, whilst from outside there was nothing, only the flow of irrelevant letters. I was deeply afraid that prison would change me for the worse.

The next day AD told me that whilst delivering tea to Dr.Shrink, he had noticed my bulging file on his desk. Something was in the air, or was it just a ploy to convey the impression that something was being done regarding my circumstances? As you can see, the prison environment had generated a very suspicious nature within me. I was not proud of it.

On March the sixth I finally received my booklet about parole, and also another booklet titled, 'Communications in Prison.' It reminded me of the DHSS, where information was annoyingly put into umpteen leaflets and booklets. Oh well, good training for the future, I thought. Now I was armed for attack, I had decided with the help of my penal advisor AD, to launch a petition in the Home Secretary's direction, regarding the way my parole had been handled.

That same day I received a letter from the probation service in Birmingham, in answer to my letter to them. Evidently they knew nothing about me. They wanted to know who my present probation officer was, and what my EDR and next parole date were. They also advised me to apply for a place on the council waiting list. This letter reaffirmed my view that my parole application had been cocked up.

I obtained a special letter that day for my solicitor, whom I felt needed to be informed about the outcome of my parole application. I also obtained a blank petition form. These forms began; 'To the right honourable her majesty's principal secretary of state for the home department; Sir,,' Now why couldn't it begin Dear Leon or Dear Duggie? Such a long winded introduction could only help the writer forget to whom he is writing to. Including a letter to my parents, I now had four letters to write. It was difficult to know where to begin, but at least, it helped relieve the boredom.

During our next exercise period I was unexpectedly blessed by the presence of AD. Normally he did not like exercise and so stayed indoors. On this occasion he felt that exercise was necessary in an attempt to cut down his excessive weight, caused by gorging himself on staff food. As we walked around the courtyard I noticed four wrapped newspapers on the grass.

"Shit parcels," explained AD.

Some loon had apparently thrown them out of a ground floor cell. The shit parcels stayed there for weeks, ignored by the staff.

The next day AD told me that Mr.Barraclough, whilst working on the ground floor, had got the contents of a piss pot thrown in his face. Evidently there was diarrhoea and shit all over his spectacles. The nauseating contents also went over an inmate walking past at the time. The stench on the ground floor landing was awful. Needless to say the remaining staff wore masks, which no doubt served a secondary purpose of hiding their identities as the offender was carried to a stripped cell, and no doubt given a good hiding. The incident was bound to happen one day given an irate inmate, a full chamber pot, and a nice face to aim it at. Mr.Barraclough was certainly not the type of hospital officer to deserve such treatment. No doubt he would pray for the offenders soul. My petition to the Home Secretary read as follows;

I wondered whether I would finally get an answer to all these questions. Little did I realise that my solicitor had also forgotten about me.

During March we had a chicken pox epidemic on the wings, resulting in rumours that inmates would have to vacate the hospital in order to make room for them. On March the sixth I went outside for exercise period as usual, to find three pox victims huddled together, their faces covered in white cream. Needless to say, the jokers in the cells overlooking the courtyard took advantage of their demise.

"Hey! Have yea seen a ghost?" Asked one.

"Abo! How many cannibals did yea eat for breakfast?" Asked another.

The day was surprisingly warm, Winter appeared to be over, but hospitals throughout the country were still on a high level of alert. For hundreds of elderly, hypothermia related illnesses would ensure that there would be no spring.

By now AD and his business partner, brought over from the wings, were meeting to discuss legal tactics. AD showed me his depositions, the lists of unsecured creditors, photostats of traveller's cheques and bank drafts, plus the occasional telex from someone asking for their money back. He was quite pleased with what he had achieved. He had personally designed the firms stationary, which in addition to the company heading, had a pedestrian crossing emblazoned across it, no doubt to signify that the 'punters' would be doing a lot of walking in the near future. As it was, it looked as if they were already suffering from hit and run tactics. AD felt absolutely no guilt, giving the occasional chuckle. I could not help thinking that he must have been mental in some way, but the fact is that like many other criminals he looked upon crime as simply an ordinary job.

Certainly his creditors would never understand him. They were all mugs who deserved to be ripped off, he thought. Some years previously I had been ripped off. I bought a pocket calculator for fifty pounds, which in those days was a weeks' wages. I never got it. The firm went bust, and I never did find out what happened to the directors of the mail order company. AD's customers had lost around a thousand pounds each, whilst AD had about three hundred and seventy thousand pounds tucked away in the Channel Islands and Zurich. Nothing less than a sodium pentathol injection was ever going to produce real justice, namely the return of the money.

"The serial numbers up here," said AD tapping his thick skull, after I had asked him about the accounts containing the loot.

No matter what the outcome of the trial, he knew he was onto a winner. His bible was 'Archibald' a very thick legal book available to prisoners. In it legal terms and precedents were explained. He was confident that with this knowledge he would get off. On the other financial front the tin and cocoa markets were about to go the same way as oil, which was continuing its decline in price. The British Government turned its head away from the financial chaos that would inevitably unfold, and looked instead at the ever rising crime rate. Proposals were put forward making it possible for judges to pass life sentences for the carrying of firearms during robberies. Baby bandits beware! The abolition of juries for light offences was also proposed. Meanwhile the country was sickened by the rape of a young woman in a vicarage, and the beating of her boyfriend and the vicar with a cricket bat. The three assailants described as heavy smokers and tattooed, bore a close resemblance to many inmates I had seen pass through Risley. Nowhere was safe any more apparently. Judging by the public outcry, I could not help thinking that these villains had chosen the wrong London address.

On the positive front the US Government was allocating two hundred million dollars to AIDS research. Scientists were now stating publicly that they could find a vaccine if not a cure within five years. Time would tell if they were right. Since AIDS existed in different strains, a vaccine or cure could turn out to be as illusive as that for the influenza virus. On the criminal front, James McBride's brother Alec, who had been a fugitive from justice for at least a year, had at last been caught after his photograph was portrayed on the television programme Crimewatch.

Conditions in the human dustbin seemed to be improving. The prison started baking its own bread, which turned out to be surprisingly good. We also had our first use of twin blade swivel headed disposable razors, which we considered a great luxury. Roy Godfrey continued to bash his razor against the side of the hand basin whilst shaving. This was something that Mark Jones had done. A symptom of a violent neurosis I thought. Both men were killers. Roy had killed a young woman who had been a witness in court against his sister, who had been sent to prison for killing a man. I think he strangled her and then with the help of his mate, rolled the body up in a carpet, placed it on a pram and wheeled it off to the local park at dead of night, where it was then buried. The young woman's disappearance was investigated by the police. By now the word had got around detailing who had done it. Roy and his accomplice were brought in for questioning, whereupon the full story finally emerged.

Roy appeared to have lived a rather menial existence. He told me that he claimed benefit from the DHSS under two names, not that it appeared to have done him much good. He looked rough. His arms and hands were covered with tattoos which he had applied himself, with Indian ink and a needle. One of these tattoos was the size and shape of a large black bottle.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at it.

"Oh, that's Dracula," Roy replied.

On his back was the shaky tattoo of a woman's name in large letters. His attempts at self mutilation made me wonder what his family life must have been like as a child. I got the strong feeling that his destiny all along had been towards imprisonment.

Roy was one of those inmates who did not like fresh air. He even complained about my fresh air policy. With a room full of smokers I continued to maintain my determination at having my window open, together with another one in the wash room. Although AD had moved across the ward to escape the draught from my window, it did not stop him complaining.

"I'm getting a draught through this window now," said AD pointing to the window by bed number thirteen "its because you've got your window open."

He was of course correct, but I was in no mood to shut it. At night AD would close all windows he found open, after which I would go around and open a couple. With any luck, if I had been seen, that person would get out of bed and only find one window to close. It was a never ending battle of wits. Given the opportunity and warm weather, I would have slept on the flat concrete roof. It was easy for me to see why so many council homes suffered from condensation. I shuddered to think what some inmate's lungs were like.

That Friday the Home Office's published crime statistics presented few surprises. One only had to read the newspapers to see the depths to which British society had sunk. Almost all sectors of crime had increased, especially rape. Rape in London, or rather the reporting of it, had increased by fifty per cent since Mrs. GG came to power in 1979. The money saved by the rate capping of local authorities was turning out to be a false economy. Social deprivation caused by unemployment was creating a breeding ground for stress, mental illness and ultimately crime. Most people in full time well paid employment do not have the time nor inclination to commit crimes of gain, but the government refused to see it that way. The money saved by the government was now having to be used to finance the police's attempts to contain the situation, and to pay ever more people dole money.

That same week a man was fined for blowing kisses to a woman on a train. We appeared to live in a miserable society, with its values all wrong. Newspaper publication of a never ending stream of criminal acts was creating a cell mentality, keeping people off the streets and into the relative safety of their own homes. Having got them there the newspapers then extolled revelations about soap operas and their stars, as if it was not fiction. A fifth of the nation's population would watch a soap opera like EastEnders in one night, rather than face the real world, of going for a boring walk to a boring pub and having a boring drink and a game of boring darts or snooker, only to return home having somehow failed to be mugged, raped or murdered. A sensationalistic news media can screen people's minds from reality. It can create anxiety and depression out of all proportion to the true size of the problem. To the criminal mind, easily influenced by truth and fiction, the feeling that society is ripe for the taking quickly emerges. An irresponsible media can therefore destroy a society, whilst police scratch their heads wondering how they can contain the situation in a country that has no censorship. Wouldn't it be nice to pick up a newspaper that published mainly good news? Do they know how?

Shortly before our penis fondling headmaster left the ward, AD told me about a conversation he had had with him. Eastwood was depressed at this time because few inmates would talk to him.

"Why didn't you ask for parole?" AD asked Eastwood.

"I couldn't get parole as I had been on parole before," replied the nonce.

"Why couldn't you get parole now, were you interfering with witnesses?" AD asked, tongue in cheek.

Our naughty nonce chuckled behind the newspaper he was reading, Eastwood had a lonely and sometimes hard time of it whilst in Risley. On one occasion when he went to chapel the lads chanted out 'Beast!' His crime was nothing in comparison to many sex offenders.

On budget day, March 18th,1986, I received a letter detailing my own financial circumstances:

The conveyancing fee was higher than I had anticipated, but some members of staff told me that it cost a lot more to sell a home than buy one. I knew nothing about the security firm that had put my belongings into storage. My solicitor had as usual ignored most of the letter I had sent to him last. There was no list of my belongings being kept in storage. I therefore wrote to my solicitor again.

The slow progress I made during my communications with my solicitor, wore me down. The seeming indifference in finalizing my affairs piled stress upon the already existing stress of being confined at Risley. Talking to AD about his problems was probably the only way I had of cancelling out this stress to some degree.

"Do you feel any guilt about what you've done?" I asked AD.

"Good heavens no, why should I?" AD replied, whilst laughing in amazement at the question.

"They deserved it!" AD interjected before I could say anything.

He then went on to justify what he had done.

"It's easy to con someone. All you have to do is set up a scheme whereby the mugs think they're going to make a lot of money on the deal. They then think only of the money they're going to make, and never think that they might be conned. They deserved to be ripped off because they were just as villainous as myself, and besides, they were mugs," AD said defiantly.

His lectures on car salesmanship I found highly interesting. He almost tempted me into a new career upon my eventual release.

AD continued, "The best way to avoid being conned by a car salesman, or someone selling homes in Spain for instance, is to borrow the money for a short term from the bank. That way if there is a chance of being taken for a ride, the bank accepts the risk. Incidentally, its cheaper to borrow money from a bank to buy a car, than to borrow through a car dealer, as their interest rates are worked out differently."

He also knew how to break into cars and get duplicate keys, etc.

"One of the tricks of the trade is to buy a scrapped car, and tell the DVLC at Swansea that you want a new log book, as you are doing it up. Then you steel a duplicate car and change the number plates, chassis and engine numbers, etc. Some villains even get the log book of a car already on the road, by telling the DVLC that they are the owner and have lost the vehicle registration book. They then go out, steal a similar car and buy new number plates to match their new log book. That's all right until the two identical cars meet, as happened to a police officer driving one. He naturally called the police, and after checking the chassis numbers, it turned out that it was the police officer's car that had been stolen. Some car thieves sell cars in newspaper advertisements, asking prospective buyers to telephone at certain times. After all, you don't want to be standing in a telephone kiosk all day, do yea? Other salesmen use the address of empty houses, and to make it look convincing put net curtains up at the windows, and are seen doing the front garden when the prospective buyer arrives," lectured AD, obviously talking from personal experience.

I remember telling him once a story that had been put out on the television programme 'Police Five,' about a couple of gypsies who had paid cash in full for a Mercedes, only to return later to find that the salesman had done a runner. AD's response was to put his hand across his mouth to hide his glee.

AD did not like Japanese cars, which he regarded as rubbish. He once had a Saab, as they were the most difficult to steel at that time. The ignition key apparently locked the gear box in reverse, making it impossible to tow away without raising the wheels. He became very irate when he was told that the official receiver had sold his excellent Vauxhall Cavalier at a car auction for next to nothing, er-indoors had her own car, whilst his semi-detached in mid Wales was in her name. The office for his car import business was in Bootle, I believe, above a fish and chip shop, where he employed a young man and two young women who were sisters. He paid them only fifty pounds per week, whilst he and his partner went off on holidays abroad, pretending to be making business deals. He made me envious one day by showing me photographs of Kennedy Space Centre, where he took his wife.

He was very proud of his companies car price list which he compiled. It took ages to draw up apparently.

"How many creditors were there," I asked.

"Oh, about a hundred," replied AD.

"There must have been more than that if you and your partner got away with at least half a million," I said.

"Oh, it was fifteen per cent deposit. That's fifteen per cent on a Mercedes costing fifteen thousand pounds," AD replied nervously.

I knew they all could not be Mercedes. Far from it. A friend of Plonk's had also been ripped off by this scheme. Looking through the list of creditors I noticed one that had the same surname as my mother's maiden name, and lived in the same area of Northamptonshire. I wondered whether my mother knew the person. AD eventually got a bit hot under the collar regarding my questioning, grabbed his newspaper and walked off to the television area.

I could not help thinking that people like him who steal the life savings of five hundred or more people, deserve special treatment. Needless to say, neither he nor his partner went to the creditors meeting. I do not think they should have been given the choice. I could not help thinking that punishment in the middle ages was better. Take being pilloried in the stocks for instance.

The creditors would be entitled to throw rotten eggs at them until the money was finally handed back, or at the very least they should have been left in a stinking cell until it had. Instead the state says that it is powerless, The creditors were no doubt at their wits end, whilst the stress was probably effecting them both physically and mentally. I wondered how many of them felt like getting their own back, against a government and society that had apparently forsaken them.

Government ineffectiveness creates crime. It was plainly obvious to me, and no doubt to most inmates and staff, that any government that cannot manage its own prison system professionally, plainly cannot manage the nation effectively either.