UTOPIAN DREAM

During the week of August 27th we were allowed no exercise periods, owing to staff shortages. I distinctly remember slopping out just once in five days. We were simply not getting enough food.

On August the thirtieth, I learned that the prison was now full. There were even ten inmates in the hospital who should have been on the wings. There were twenty inmates on each ward. The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), reported that Great Britain jailed more offenders than any other country in Western Europe. In 1984 the British Government jailed 344 out of every 100,000 people. Total number imprisoned came to 193,976 (92,810 convicted). Average cost of keeping someone behind bars came to two hundred and fifty-six pounds per week. I would not mind staying here if it was worth that amount to me.

That same day saw Fletcher transferred to a stripped cell. Now Fletcher was a big man who had a drink problem. Outside it was too much, inside it was too little. He was definitely the kind of man you did not want as an enemy. Somehow I always remained in his good books, mainly by keeping my mouth shut. Fletcher's main problem was his inability to keep his mouth shut, for he did not speak so much as bellow. He had a booming voice which echoed down the landing. He would talk, sorry bellow, at all hours of the day to whomever was there, and if need be, not there. After a week it was wearing everyone down, especially the inmates. On this particular day, he was bellowing out at four o'clock in the morning. The staff's patience finally ran out, and in went the snatch squad. After his involuntary transfer, Fletcher banged violently on the stripped cell door, like bullets from a machine gun. He kept it up for a few hours. As long as those fists only landed on the door, I do not think anyone minded. Eventually Mr.Island went up to the stripped cell door to try and placate him.

"I'll write to my MP! I'll write to my MP!" Fletcher kept shouting.

"If you act like a child, you'll be treated like one," Mr.Island said firmly.

"You Nazi fucking bastard!" Yelled Fletcher.

At that moment Fletcher banged his fists repeatedly against the stripped cell door, causing the metal viewing slit cover to fall shut with a tinkle. I could not help thinking that somewhere in Great Britain there was a job waiting for him as a town crier.

The month of September began with a mid air collision over Cerritos, near Los Angeles, California, between an Aero Mexico DC9 and a Piper Tomahawk. For seventy-two people, labour day bank holiday was to be the last day of their lives. It was also the last day of their lives for five people found in a smouldering mansion on the edge of the New Forest, Hampshire. The owners, a couple in their eighties, one of whom was confined to a wheelchair owing to the effects of a stroke, their daughter, son-in-law and Irish nurse, were all murdered, the forty year old daughter having been raped, It was an ignominious end for the founder of the Cleaver-Hume Publishing empire, which provided correspondence courses for people seeking training for employment, including myself. I completed a course in work study. It was another low in British criminal history. The only good news that day was that my radiator finally came alive. It warmed me up no end, both physically and mentally.

On September the third I enquired about my tinnitus from a temporary doctor who was doing the morning rounds. According to an article I showed him, an extract from the Ginkgo tree may cure the symptoms.

"This is a herbal remedy," the doctor replied, sounding unimpressed.

He obviously did not realise that most drugs had come from trees and plants before their synthetic manufacture became possible. The doctor wrote down a note, and that was the last I saw of him. That same day the headless torso of a woman was found in an English wood stripped of its skin. I wondered whether she had been giving someone earache.

Crime came home to me that day. Upon returning to my cell after exercise period, I discovered that my locker had been disturbed. Some sweets plus a Bic pen were missing. I was furious. It represented a third of a weeks pay, and caused me to have a number of fits. As I sat there thinking of what I was going to do with the offender, my entire body would get up and enact exactly what I was thinking at that moment. Fortunately it never seemed to last more than three seconds. I had a feeling that the culprit was Mike Squawker. He would rabbit on, often to himself, talking a load of gibberish all day. Sometimes I would shut the flap on his cell door, whilst out cleaning, just to get a bit of peace. I presumed that this was his way of getting back at me. He left the ward a few days later. My numerous fits showed that there had been no improvement in my condition. I was certain that it was worse than when I first arrived at Risley. In that environment I could certainly kill again. I had no doubt. The thought troubled me greatly. Surely I could have been transferred to Grendon Underwood or Albany Prison, or somewhere else more suitable?

On September the fifth an ambulance and fire engine arrived. I was told that an inmate had set his cell and himself on fire. It was obviously not Fletcher, who spent most of the day calling out for a light. Ninety per cent of everything spoken between the inmates on the ward, had to do with smoking.

"Have yea got some papers?" An inmate would call out.

"Have yea got some papers Fletcher? The inmate would ask again.

"Have I got what?" Fletcher asked.

"Have yea got some cigarette papers?" The voice would ask again.

"No, I haven't got any papers!" Fletcher replied, "I need some myself!"

One of the inmates use to beg, beg, beg, beg, beg for cigarettes all day long, whilst on a Sunday morning at the canteen, would spend all of his money on sweets instead of tobacco. By now the ward had become relatively quiet, since Fletcher had done a deal with the staff. In exchange for having his backside spiked every so often, the staff would give him packets of cigarettes. He cursed the fact that when his mother visited him, she never brought any.

That day I filled in my parole application form, just as I had done a year previously. Question from Home Office: Why do you think you should get parole?

I had learned since my previous application that one should keep the reasons positive all the way through. Strictly no negative thoughts. AD told me that it was also best to do plenty of name dropping, by saying that the padre, welfare worker, assistant governor, chief officer, probation officer and even the prison cat had all helped, and how you have had numerous helpful conversations, or engaged in lengthy correspondence with them. With me, I could have burnt them all at the stake, along with my solicitor, for fucking up my last parole application. I would never forget, nor forgive those responsible for making me serve an extra year in that hell hole. No way was I prepared to grovel by mentioning their names.

On September 6th I received a letter from my MP, who enclosed a letter from the Home Office. This was a reply to the letter I had written to him four months previously, The Home Office letter read as follows:

The letter was dated August 11th, 1986, but it was not signed. As for the term supportive psychotherapy, I could not help thinking that some British politicians should have received the same, for making the penal system what it was, an institution that killed inmates' brains, filling them with resentment and a strong feeling for revenge. As for the four months it had taken to reply to the letter, what private concern would tolerate such inefficiency? The letter of course did not answer the question of why the DHSS had turned me down, neither did it mention the first interview I had with doctors from Denbigh which I believe took place on Wednesday, June 12th, 1985. The second interview which had been carried out by a coloured doctor, had been so brief that I had not even mentioned it in my diary. It was the day after that second interview that I had my mini stroke. The letter did not state either, on what basis I was turned down for Denbigh. Surely a mental illness cannot be assessed during a couple of half hour interviews?

September the tenth was a day of mixed feelings. To begin with the senior medical officer had ordered the heating to be turned off as his office was too hot. I felt like telling him to stick his head out of the window, or better still, find someone who was capable of turning his radiator off. Since the valve knobs had been removed from all the radiators, assuming they were fitted in the first place, the hospital officers use to turn them on and off by using the rectangular hole in their cell keys. Needless to say, they had not been prepared to let me have a key in order to turn on my cell radiator. It took weeks of pleading to get them to turn it on, they of course insisting that it was already open.

That day we learned that Jake Strong, the noisy Connect Four player, had been given three years probation for strangling his father to death. The story went like this; For sometime Jake had been trying to get his mother and father back together, ever since the father had returned from Australia. His mother had a heart condition, and from her death bed told Jake that the reason they could not get back together was because his father had seduced one of the daughters and sexually assaulted another, taking one of them to Australia where he made her pregnant. Jake was deeply troubled by this revelation of scandal in the family, made even more so by his mother's impending death. He later got tanked up in a pub, told his mate he was going to extract revenge, then went around to his father's place and did him in.

There was obviously a gut feeling that the father deserved to die. Had it been otherwise then a long prison sentence would have been highly probable. I felt that what Jake had been through had been a lot less than what I had endured. The case reinforced my belief that I had been imprisoned because of my mental illness, and because my case was too complicated for most members of the legal profession to understand. No matter how I looked at my case, I felt that my in-laws had won even in death. They had destroyed everything that I held dear to me.

The day after the trial Jake returned to Risley with his girlfriend. The staff quickly grabbed hold of him, and carted him off to a stripped cell. Of course they were only joking, but I could not help thinking that you had to be mental to return to Risley voluntarily.

That same day saw rioting on a Plymouth housing estate which required the attention of thirty police. Frankly I was surprised, as I regarded Plymouth as a very attractive city. At the same time six hundred police stormed the St Paul's area of Bristol, in an attempt to smash illicit drug dealing. Their were seventy arrests during which thirty police were hurt. Also that day, more massive falls took place in the value of shares on the New York, Tokyo and London stock exchanges, whilst at the same time the British government announced that it would sell off the Trustee Savings Bank, British Gas, British Airways and Rolls Royce by mid 1987, presumably before they became worthless. Share prices were to pick up during the next few months, often ignoring the heavy borrowing by industry caused by high interest rates since 1979. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean the US trade deficit stood at one hundred and sixty billion dollars, whilst, the accumulated debt of developing countries stood at eight hundred and twelve billion dollars. I could see nothing but doom and gloom ahead. I was to be proved right.

A year later, and three days after Hurricane Floyd struck the south east of England, occurred Black Monday on October nineteenth, 1987. On that date the FT100 Index fell 246 points wiping fifty billion pounds off the value of shares on the London Stock Exchange, amounting to twelve per cent of their value. This affected the sale of shares in the Channel Tunnel and the sale of the remaining government owned shares in British Petroleum. During that week in the City of London, one hundred billion pounds was wiped off the value of shares, cancelling out all gains made during the first twelve months since the 'big Bang' on October 26th, 1986 when the London Stock Exchange changed to electronic trading. The share value collapse was brought about by lack of confidence world wide, in the way western politicians were managing the global economy, particularly in the USA where the US trade deficit was running at around sixteen billion dollars per month, at a time when the US budget deficit was one hundred and fifty billion dollars, and the US national debt stood at two thousand four hundred billion dollars. The collapse of share values on the world's stock exchanges was to mark the beginning of the end of the monetarist era, in Great Britain at least, where people lost faith in Mrs. GG's doctrine, putting their money into building society accounts instead.

By far the most obnoxious inmate on the ward at this time was Cockney Craper. CC was kept in a stripped cell. He spent most of the day sleeping, whilst at night he made as much noise as he could, by singing and shouting for food and water. Amongst the temporary doctors assigned to Risley, was a woman. She looked Indian in appearance, though some inmates told me later that she was in fact Spanish. Owing to the filthy state of his cell, the female doctor directed that CC be transferred to the adjacent stripped cell. He was moved from cell thirteen to cell eleven. It then befell unlucky me to clean cell thirteen. It was not a pleasant task.

On the walls of the stripped cell in excrement, were various words such as saviour, food and water. The shit had been on the walls at least a week, and proved very difficult to get off. Some inmates used a high pressure fire hose, but I preferred to use half a dozen mop buckets full of hot water applied with a mop. The cell was hot, stuffy and of course it stank. I wore a face mask impregnated with disinfectant in order to neutralise the stench. It was very tiring, and the sweat simply rolled off me. It took at least two hours to clean the cell satisfactorily. Even after cleaning, the words could still be seen clearly, as the shit had discoloured the paintwork.

CC celebrated the move to his new cell by promptly soiling it, and singing 'God Save the Queen' at midnight. By now some of the other inmates were coming near to the end of their sanity. Fortunately for them, CC was to make a prime error. Two days later, during her morning rounds, CC started making the kind of racket he normally reserved for the evening. At last the doctor could see and hear what he was really like, but why she had apparently ignored the reports in the occurrence book, I could not understand.

"This is what he's like all night long," said Mr.Willie to the female doctor.

I was cleaning the landing at the time, so I could clearly hear what was being said. To my amazement the doctor ordered the stripped cell door to be opened. Mr.Willie looked into the cell.

"Cover yourself up," said Mr.Willie to Cockney Craper.

Mr.Willie said this a number of times, though whether it was to save the hospital officers or the doctor embarrassment, I simply do not know. Finally the hospital officers entered the cell, followed by the female doctor.

"Why have you smeared your cell?" The doctor asked.

For once there was silence.

"It smells awful in here," stated the doctor.

That's an understatement, I thought. I could imagine all the officers in the cell holding their breath whilst slowly changing colour. I toyed with the idea of accidentally locking them in. Eventually the staff came out into the fresh air, and stood by his cell door, slowly recovering. At this point CC came to life. He started singing, then suddenly changed tune. Shouting at the top of his voice for all to hear.

CC screamed, "What you need woman, is a good shagging! Why don't you go back to the Bengal with the tigers!"

Surely she can't ignore that, I thought. I was right. It only took her a few seconds to order in the spike, loaded with plenty of jungle juice. In fact she went even further, and ordered CC to be moved to the other closed ward, and sedated there.

It was my job of course, to clean cell eleven. On the walls the murals were different. This time there was a full size crucifix on the left wall, with numerous smaller crosses on all the other walls. It proved equally as difficult to cleanse these rough textured walls. Why they did not keep him on a liquid diet, I simply could not understand. For my hard work I was paid an extra fifty pence per cell. Normally cleaners were not paid at all.

September sixteenth was the date of the inquest into the suicide of the strawberry farmer and television personality Ted Moult, who shot himself in his study whilst suffering from chronic depression, for which he was receiving treatment. It was a sad example of how swiftly mental illness could strike someone apparently healthy. The next day the body of an inmate was found hanging in her cell on the women's wing at Risley. Staff failed to revive her. This was the third death that I was aware of, that had taken place at Risley during my stay. Two days later Princess Anne, no doubt concerned by the contents of petitions to the Queen, visited Winson Green Prison, Birmingham.

I was long overdue for a haircut, but I was told that I would have to wait a little longer, as the hairdresser, another inmate, had been confined to his cell, after being caught passing drugs from one wing to another.

The state of patient's medical records was in the news at this time, when Dr.Brian Mansfield, a trainee GP, stated in the Journal of the Royal College of Practitioners, that seventy per cent omitted marital status, eighty-five per cent omitted occupation, sixty-one per cent omitted immunisation details, whilst thirteen per cent were illegible. There was obviously not much point in me asking to see my records. A few days later the Samaritans disclosed that there were approximately 4120 suicides in 1984 and 4988 in 1985. The reasons for suicide in young people were human relationships, unemployment, exams and family rows. Most common methods of suicide were hanging, car exhaust and firearms. Evidently you could not bore yourself to death by watching soap operas.

On September 26th I was interviewed by a member of the parole tribunal. The meeting lasted half an hour. He was impressed by the form I had filled in on September the fifth. I came away thinking that I stood a good chance of parole this time, but then I thought that the last time.

The following day the spare ground floor cells were stripped in preparation for eighteen inmates who had just started a rooftop demonstration on B wing, the second such protest I had seen whilst at Risley. Fletcher was transferred to the stripped cells for a second time, as he was still unable to keep his mouth shut. I wished I was with him, as I along with most of the other ground floor inmates, were moved upstairs. I was put back into C ward, and as the rooftop protest dragged on day after day, my condition became strained.

On October the first, the actress Pat Phoenix, from the soap opera Coronation Street, died from lung cancer. Amen!

The rooftop protest continued. There were obviously hard men up there, as they had so far endured five days without the joys of television. Finally the governor decided that negotiations should take place.

"What are your demands!" Came the call.

"Release Nelson Mandela by midday, or else!" Came the reply.

Or else what, everyone thought.

Even the news media which had assembled across a nearby field, had given up on them, and returned home. Their long range lenses and microphones were soon to come in handy at other prison establishments.

By the morning of October the second the staff were getting worried, as some of the inmates on the roof were not moving. As many inmates as possible were moved from B wing, to prevent food and water being passed up to the roof. I am not certain how the inmates escaped onto the roof. I think they did it by first battering down the steel grill covering the end window, then climbed up a drain pipe. There was however a feeling that the staff had simply let it happen, so that they could earn more overtime, and further their cause for a pay rise. Certainly at the start of the protest, staff were brought in in large numbers, to prevent the trouble from spreading to other sectors of the prison. To go out to the servery at mealtimes, and find five prison officers standing there handing out the food, was not unusual.

Outside, it was a long waiting game. Prison officers sat at strategic locations for hours on end. Dog handlers were also visible. The rooftop demo had set out to achieve what? As I understood it the inmates concerned had been sacked from their jobs, and told that they were being transferred to Strangeways, a Victorian prison worse than Risley. No demo was going to get their jobs back. It was just a symptom of their frustration. At midnight the remaining six inmates finally came down from the roof, after being offered fish and chips. What I could not understand, was why they did not hold out for steak.

The next day I had tinnitus all day long, after Mr.Barraclough had insisted on having the television on loud the previous evening. I asked my mother to send me some ear plugs. Unfortunately she did not take the request seriously.

The Militant leader Derek Hatton, lost the appeal for his job on Knowsley Council following allegations of bad time keeping, and his membership of the Labour Party. The Bamber trial started. Thirty marchers set off for London on the fiftieth anniversary of the Jarrow Crusade. The former aid to Prince Charles died from AIDS, and British Coal announced that the loss during the next financial year would be around three hundred million pounds, mainly due to imported coal. By November the thirteenth, thirty-six coal mines will have closed since the miner's strike ended twenty months earlier. It led me to conclude that the social impact of these monetarist policies would be felt for decades. It was clear that the government was not interested in the nation being self supporting. If the global economy collapsed, where would we be then?

On October the fifth a disturbance broke out at Wymott Jail, Leyland, Lancashire, in which two hundred inmates rioted for three hours. Five prisoners were hurt, Wymott was the place the inmates laundry was sent to from Risley. For the next few weeks, this service was erratic at best.

Three days later I woke up at about four o'clock feeling very hot. The ward was like a furnace, even with the windows open. I got out of bed and walked to the wash room, the only cool part of the ward. I sat on the toilet seat for hours. Eventually the night watchman peered in.

"I want to go downstairs," was all I said.

That evening, thankfully, Mr.Flight took me downstairs to cell number seven.

October saw my thirty-eighth birthday. It was my third birthday in prison. It was nice to get some cards, if only to show that I had not been forgotten by friends. That morning I nearly got into a fight over a mop bucket I had just filled. Fortunately the other inmate concerned was moved on, to the wings of all places. I thought he was mental. Probably was.

After cleaning the ward the next day, I was directed to clean the dispensary floor. It was the first time I had been in there, and the last. We could no doubt, have had quite a party on all the drugs kept in there.

On October 14th, whilst out in the exercise yard. I met an old man who began telling me about his life in Australia. His name was Toff Maxwell. He had grey hair and a moustache which unusually he kept turned up, not just at the ends but all the way along. He had a slight tremor in both of his hands. He said he was seventy-two years of age, so I was surprised when he said that he had a thirty-one year old wife called Maxine, who came from the Philippines. He explained to me the virtues of having a young wife from such a distant land.

Evidently she would massage him all over, smooth the soles of his feet with pumice, manicure his nails, and remove hair from intimate parts of his body. Yes, I thought, I could just see a Brummie woman doing that to me when I get out. The exercise period ended all too briefly. Little did I realise however, how this first meeting was to blossom.

Whilst in my cell that morning, Dr.Shrank did the rounds. He evidently did not recognise me with my long hair, as I had not had it cut for at least five months. He was surprised to find me still in the hospital. He said he would look into my case, then walked off. I did not hold out any hope for a change however.

The following day Dr.Shrink had words with me, whilst I was cleaning the landing.

"I've spoken on the telephone to the Home Office's chief medical officer in London, regarding your case. I've now gone as high as I possibly can," Dr.Shrink said.

Fate must now take its course, I thought.

That same day the last ship to be built on the River Tees was launched, so ending a period of ship building lasting seventy-eight years. The ship was for Cuba. Just how far was the British government prepared to let society decline? The British government had given no support to Birmingham's application to host the 1992 Olympic Games. Two days later I was disappointed to learn that Barcelona would host them instead. Dennis Howell MP had done his best, but the Commonwealth Games at Edinburgh had sunk all hope. The British Government's stand against the South African sanctions boycott, and finally the bad weather in Scotland, not to mention political boycotts in Moscow and Los Angeles, made Barcelona a hot favourite.

I had not had dyspepsia now since last winter, so it looked as if my treatment had finally worked. My tinnitus still came and went, usually occurring two or three days each week. The floaters in my eyes and my short sightedness worried me. I felt that the prison was slowly draining all life from me.

The Home Office announced that owing to the shortage of female staff, senior male officers would work at Holloway, a women's prison, from next March. In Scandinavia, such enlightened attitudes work, since their prisons are considerably better. Someone told me that they had female screws guarding the male inmates in Norway, and if you wanted a call girl to visit you it was OK, whilst in some Swedish prisons the male and female inmates mixed it together. In British human dustbins, I could see the Holloway proposal becoming a sore point. On October 19th the inquest was held on a baby which died thirty minutes after being born to a female inmate at Holloway. Evidently the thirty year old woman had been kept in labour for seven hours before being taken to a hospital for a caesarian operation. Another example of prison indifference was exposed when a judge adjourned proceedings after learning that the accused had just had his leg amputated after contracting septicaemia and gangrene whilst, detained in prison. On October 20th tear gas was used for the first time in a British prison, after a prisoner hung a fellow inmate upside down in his cell at Grendon Underwood.

My stay in the cells did not last very long. That evening, activity could be heard further along the landing. Inmates were being moved out, and beds dismantled for a second time in a month.

"What's this for?" I asked a screw, but he refused to answer.

Eventually my turn came.

"Pack your gear, you're going upstairs," said a hospital officer.

I was of course not looking forward to it, but when I got up there I liked it even less. There were no beds for three of us. We had to sleep on mattresses on the floor. Just like a bloody big stripped cell, I thought. There were now twenty-five on the ward.

Supper was late that evening. It was not long before we found out why.

"There are female inmates in the ground floor cells," said the lad with the tea.

I could hardly believe my ears. So near, yet so far. So much for Scandinavian prisons, I thought. There had evidently been a disturbance on the women's wing following a television programme. Nineteen inmates and six prison officers were injured, mainly with broken wrists. Most people thought it was caused by overcrowding. The remand centre was designed to contain 556 men and 34 women. In reality it contained 738 men and 125 women.

The following morning we returned to the ground floor from B ward. The furniture all needed returning to its rightful 'owners'. All the cabinets had been stored in the bathroom.

"Take charge!" Mr.Ansells said to me.

For once I felt really important. It took quite a while to sort everything out, but I loved it. Finally, by lunchtime the operation was complete.

"Can yea smell the cunt?" One of the inmates asked me.

"Your imagining it," I replied.

In truth I had already had a good sniff.

On that same night there had also been trouble on the YP's wing. Two of the ring leaders were in the stripped cells. As for Fletcher, who had been kept in one of the stripped cells, he had seen nothing. The double overlapping doors had been kept shut. Printed on the door were the words, 'ladies one male, don't open'. Mr.Flight had been on duty that night in the ground floor main office. He had shared the office with a gorgeous female screw, whom he later gleefully described to me, no doubt in an attempt to frustrate me further. He succeeded.

The days past by, but not fast enough for my liking. In stripped cell number thirteen we now had an inmate called Piddle Pee. Each time I cleaned the landing, there was a large lake of urine outside his door. No sooner did I mop it up than he would empty his piss pot under the door again. I often toyed with the idea of squirting the phenol under the door of those cells occupied by such obnoxious specimens of mankind. With that stuff burning their hands and feet, they would soon be howling and pressing the alarm button. In reality the staff rarely answered the buzzer and red light outside each stripped cell, since the inmates usually abused the privilege. With phenol on their hands and feet, the chances of getting it off before mealtime looked very slim.

On October 24th the Arab terrorist Nezar Hindawi got forty-five years imprisonment for attempting to blow up the El Al Jumbo at Heathrow Airport by using his unsuspecting pregnant Irish girlfriend to carry the bomb on board. I felt very sorry for her, and wondered how long it would be before she trusted another man. Three days later scandal rocked the government when it was alleged that Mrs. GG's propaganda minister (I think that's what you call a fiction writer by the name of Jeffrey Archer MP) had recently been involved in cold unloving sex with a prostitute. He denied everything. Also denying everything at this time, was another little conner by the name of Harvey Proctor MP, whose case was before the DPP accused of spanking rent boys and engaging in sex games with young male prostitutes. He quit politics at the next general election. It was also the day of the 'Big Bang' in the City of London, where the betting shop economy adopted new rules, new companies and new technology. The computer at the stock exchange became over loaded, and had to be shut down. I never had that trouble with my Sinclair Spectrum.

On the evening of the twenty-eighth there was quite a commotion outside my cell. Staff were hurrying from left to right, to attend to a fire in one of the cells on the YP's wing. No sooner had that been attended to than their services were required elsewhere.

"Fire! Fire!" Someone shouted.

The staff now rushed from right to left. It was like watching one of those old silent movies depicting the Keystone Cops.

"Bloody hell! There's a fire in here now," said a screw.

A fire extinguisher was quickly brought into action. A fire engine later arrived, but by then the fire was out. In the stripped cell at this time was Alan. He had set fire to his ordinary cell twice, and after four weeks in a punishment cell, was brought out to make room for a new arsonist, a Pakistani.

That day Jeremy Bamber aged twenty-five was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment for shooting to death his adoptive parents, sister and her two young sons, in an attempt to seize the family fortune estimated at four hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds, consisting of a farm estate at Tolleshunt D 'Arcy in Essex.

I was more interested in smaller amounts at this time. I had not been allowed to use my private money since my conviction, so out of curiosity I asked the staff in the ground floor office, how much I had. He apparently had to telephone the administration block, to find out. Later that day I was told that I had forty-eight pounds remaining, out of fifty-five pounds sent to me by my solicitor. This seemed strange because I knew of no money sent to me by him. The sum of fifty-five pounds appeared an odd figure to send anyway. There was no mention of the thirty pounds sent in by my mother just one month after my arrival at Risley. Later, in March 1987, I was to learn in a letter from my solicitor, that he had actually sent me fifty pounds. I asked him to sort the matter out, but he refused. Someone had obviously cooked the books and pocketed part of the thirty pounds sent to me by my mother. It was easy for a bent screw to do this, since inmates were not given receipts, neither were they required to sign a receipt book. I did not pursue the matter further, but it did leave me wondering how many more inmates of prisons, mental hospitals and old folk's homes, were being ripped off besides me and AD.

On November 2nd, 1986 we received steak for Sunday lunch, much to my surprise. What with chicken and Brussels sprouts last week, someone was evidently digging really deep into the piggy bank. The change of diet perhaps came about following Dan Sullivan's discovery from his brother Don, who had been moved to the wing's, that on Sundays they had been getting chicken whilst we in the hospital had been getting the usual famine relief diet. Needless to say, Dan quickly protested to the staff.

One of the funniest scenes that day occurred during slopping out, as Mr.Parrot unlocked cell number thirteen, containing Piddle Pee.

"Hello my boy. Time to have a wash," Mr.Parrot said politely.

"Why don't yea fuck off yea masturbating turd, and take that load of shite with yea," shouted Piddle Pee.

The inmate was obviously referring to the hospital officer standing next to Mr.Parrot. Piddle Pee's obscenities went on and on, whilst Mr.Parrot stood in the doorway bolt upright, head back like an Easter Island statue. Eventually even Piddle Pee needed to take a breath, and as he did so Mr.Parrot spoke calmly, "I take it then that you don't want a wash. All right then." Mr.Parrot then shut the cell door.

No sooner had the cell door closed than more urine appeared from under it.

On November the third I was sent back to C ward, where I was awarded bed number ten, located in the far corner away from the TV. In the adjacent bed was Toff Maxwell, with whom I continued the friendship begun in the exercise yard a few days earlier. I learned that he was not in prison under the name with which he was born with. He had been in a British prison some twenty-five years previously for fraud, and found it very tough going apparently. He told me that in those days the stage paper had to be signed for, and handed back by nine o'clock in the evening. On one occasion the staff said that he had not handed the newspaper back, and was immediately put in a cold damp punishment cell which did not even contain a mattress. A few minutes later the staff unlocked the cell door after having found the newspaper. In those days suicides were common. The staff would destroy any suicide notes found. They probably still did, I thought. Toff came from a small coastal village north of Liverpool, where until recently he lived. One of his daughters still lived in the area, whilst he had two daughters and a son living in Australia. He never mentioned his son, as he appeared to have an obsessive dislike for him.

Toff had taken his son and two daughters out to Australia soon after his first wife died, around 1981. Being comparatively old, and having lived a shady lifestyle, he commanded neither fear nor respect from his children. Upon arriving in Australia his daughters promptly left him, and went off with men. He took court proceedings against them in order to make them wards of court. The Australian authorities looked into his background. Because of his criminal record he was classed as an illegal immigrant, and was promptly deported when the case was finalised. His daughters remained in Australia, one of them marrying, and now living in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The other was Sheila, aged twenty-one who lived in Melbourne, Victoria. Toff wanted her to visit him in prison. He was therefore arranging for her to come to the United Kingdom. He loved her very much apparently, but found her a bit of a handful. His work often took him to Australia, and he felt grieved when he told me that there were occasions when he had not even called on her, owing to her foul moods.

Eventually he told me about his work. He was a man of many jobs. During World War II he used to be a seaman, along with his brother, with whom he jumped ship in Australia. Later both he and his brother returned to the UK, where Toff got involved in various schemes, including the selling of used cars. He told me that he was now involved in smuggling diamonds and opals from Australia to Great Britain. I knew that Western Australia was the world's largest diamond producer, larger even than South Africa, and that substantial quantities of opals originated from South Australia. Toff had travelled all over the world, especially New Zealand and the USA. He knew that the world's diamond finishing centres were New York, Tel Aviv, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, but he only took his business to London for some reason. He even avoided Hong Kong, a growing diamond centre, because they had the discouraging habit of searching his luggage by hand apparently. He told me that he carried his diamonds in an ordinary plastic carrier bag. Whether it was really precious and semi-precious stones, and not illicit drugs, I honestly could not say. He was certainly very secretive when giving me details, constantly-telling me to keep my voice down. I thought his trembling hands were a symptom of Parkinson's Disease, but Toff said that it was caused by nerves. A guilty conscience more like.

After returning to the UK, he bought a house back in his home village. He wanted to sell one of his two colour television sets, so he put an advertisement in the newspaper. A woman by the name of Glenda McDonald called around one day to see the TV, and later bought it. She was a woman of about forty years of age, and he seventy-two. A few months later he saw the same woman whilst he was out shopping, He invited her to come around to his place, for a chat and a meal the next day. Now there are two types of men that women feel safe with, doctors and helpless old fools. She of course turned up, on her bicycle. Toff opened the door expectantly, and once in his lair, he served up the meal. Well the meal did not last forever, and they soon retired to the settee, where Toff of course was only interested in one thing, a kiss. Well, for starters anyway. The kiss developed into a fondle, but he could not figure out, how to make it go further. At his age I was surprised that he even thought of it.

From then on the meetings took place at his home on a regular basis, but Toff had a nagging problem. How to get her into bed? He obviously did not, believe in doing it anywhere else. Eventually he thought of a plan. The next day she arrived as usual. After the meal he put his idea into action.

"I wonder, could you help me move a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms, please," Toff asked expectantly.

"Of course, I don't mind," replied Glenda, innocently.

Up the stairs they went, Toff eyeing up what was soon to be his. As they entered the bedroom he closed the door behind him. Glenda looked around the bedroom.

"Where would you like the wardrobe moving to?" She asked.

"I don't," Toff blurted out,"I want you!"

She put her left wrist up to her forehead, and saying. "0h Toff," fell gently backwards onto the bed.

At this point Toff turned to his bed on the ward, and with his trembling hands, described how he undressed her. It was so real that I hoped he did not notice the bulge forming in my loins.

His mistress was Scottish by decent, to whom he made crazy porno love regularly, whilst her husband worked away in Saudi Arabia. Eventually the relationship got to be known throughout the village, and inevitably it also became strained. As with his daughter, Toff's mistress was moody. One day he could stand it no longer, and told her that he was going to Australia on business, and that when he came back he would have a young Filipino wife, who would keep him warm at nights. His mistress did not take him seriously.

He flew to Manila via Hong Kong, using his brother's passport. His brother was apparently an alcoholic, totally incapable of getting a passport. Toff had signed the back of the passport application photographs, saying that he was a teacher by profession. He told me that he considered himself a teacher of the organ, which he played at home. This was later to prove his undoing. Meanwhile Toff stayed at a hotel near Manila Airport, where he asked around for a wife. Eventually he found one, married her using his brother's passport, then took her on honeymoon to Bali, Australia and New Zealand. Upon returning to the UK he married her again under his real name. In reality it does not matter what name you get married under, as it is the person you marry, and not the name, that matters from a legal point of view. If I marry again, I think I will call myself GFP, glutton for punishment!

Toff's former mistress, Glenda, was far from pleased when she heard the news, and kept phoning him in the evenings, unable to accept the new situation. Eventually Toff realised that he would have to put an end to these calls.

"There's someone at the door, I'll have to hang up now, bye," was how Toff would inevitably end the agony.

One evening his wife asked him who it was that kept phoning,

"Oh, its just a woman whose feeling lonely," Toff replied.

In truth Glenda was at her wits end, and had to see her GP eventually. I know how she must have felt. Human emotions are part of growing up. The trouble is that it does not matter how old you get, it can still hurt just as much as when you are young.

By now Toff must have had a rather large nest egg, though he never told me how much nor where. He decided to return to Australia, after selling his house in the UK. He wanted to live near his daughter, Sheila Maxwell. He sold his house for twenty-eight thousand pounds, for which he asked the bank to issue a bank draft. What happened next is described in a letter I wrote on his behalf to his solicitor.

I thought it was rather a good letter. Naturally Toff had not told me everything. He had also been charged with about three credit card offences. As for his solicitor, he did not believe for one minute that Toff had written it. For one thing all of Toff's letters looked as if they had been written by a spider, as his hands shook so much. For another, it was too honest in parts. I never asked him what really happened to the bank draft. I presume he posted it off to Australasia, just as he had intended to do with his passports before leaving the UK. From what I could gather he had been making four trips to Australia per annum for the last five years, and made fifteen thousand pounds on each trip. The lads on the ward dismissed him just as easily as customs officers had done.

Toff's sex life with his new wife was dramatic. On their honeymoon in the Far East it was sex, sex, sex every night, and him seventy-two years of age! Upon their return to the UK it was still sex every night, but by now Toff was beginning to lose weight. Unfortunately, just talking to his wife about it did not do the trick.

"I would lie in bed, and she would snuggle up next to me, and rub her leg up and down my thigh. An erection was inevitable, and once that happened she wanted to go all the way," Toff said.

Being catholic they used the withdrawal method of contraception, plus anal intercourse during her period. It should have clicked then what that meant, but it was not until March 1987 that the penny finally dropped. Until then I thought that his friendship with me was honest and above board.

Toff's answer to the weight loss problem was to move to separate beds. His wife did not like this one bit.

"But I'm cold," Maxine would say in a slow sexy voice.

Toff's answer to this was swift. In came the paraffin heater.

Problem solved!

November the sixth was budget day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson announced that government spending would increase by seven and a half billion pounds to one hundred and forty billion pounds for the financial year 1987/88. The biggest slice amounting to forty-four and a half billion pounds would go on social security, whilst law and order would get five and a half billion pounds for the 124,363 police and 46,434 civilians in the police force. Two new prisons were also announced, Only two million pounds was to be spent on crime prevention.

Also that day, forty-five people were killed when a Chinook helicopter crashed into the sea near Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands. It was returning Shell oil rig workers to the mainland. It was the worst civilian helicopter disaster in the UK's aviation history to date.

On November tenth I was told by one of the officers in the main ground floor office that my mother had telephoned to complain that three of her letters had been returned to her. It turned out that someone had put the word 'live' against my name and number in the roll book, since my number was so old that some officers thought that I was no longer there. Apparently another officer had interpreted this as meaning that I had been moved to Liverpool Prison, to which my mail had been sent. I was a number of magazines short, New Scientist, Flight International, and a New Scientist publication called Man in Space, plus Spaceflight News. It took one and a half months to sort everything out, during which time my mother bought me another copy of Man in Space, since the first appeared to be permanently in orbit. She also got SFN sent to me again, again, and again. I got three copies of it eventually, by which time my mum was doing her nut, as each one went to her address first.

"Don't ask me to do anything like that again," she said in one of her weekly letters. I asked Shirlie to find out where my magazines had gone, but she refused to go over to the mail sorting room.

"I've been obstructed over there in the past," said Shirlie.

The weeks it took to sort out my mail proved a frustrating time. Apart from newspapers, they were the only thing that I liked reading. Letters from friends were also returned without my knowledge. It was bad enough getting friends to write without having letters returned without explanation.

November the thirteenth saw the rooftop demo at Peterhead Prison in Scotland, in which a prison officer was held hostage. The demonstration ended with the officer being released and the roof destroyed by fire. This demonstration in cold November, followed the demo two weeks earlier at Slaughton Prison, Edinburgh over prison staff brutality. There were to be many similar demonstrations in Scotland during the following year.

The next day the British government announced that it would issue leaflets about AIDS to all twenty-three million homes in the UK. The leaflet would to titled 'AIDS Don't Die of Ignorance'. Predictions were that in fifteen years time approximately twenty-five million people would be dead world wide from AIDS. Great Britain now had five hundred and forty-eight confirmed cases, of which two hundred and seventy-eight had so far proved fatal. Symptoms of AIDS are: swollen glands in neck or arms, fatigue lasting weeks, weight loss of more than (10 Ibs) 4kg in two months, fever and night sweats lasting weeks, diarrhoea lasting more than a week, shortness of breath and dry cough, and finally pink or purple blotches on skin similar to blood blisters. People were advised to curb promiscuity, use a condom, refrain from oral and anal sex, whilst refusing to share sex toys. I was glad that I had left Karen's pink elephant at home.

One of the benefits of having no magazines to read, was an improved eyesight. Normally everything over three metres away was very blurred. Five magazines were so far unaccounted for, so I looked around for someone intelligent to talk to. On the ward at this time was a distinguished American guest. Henry Waters was a Mormon from Pennsylvania. He read his bible constantly, whilst at mealtimes he took the other inmates aback by saying grace. He was no doubt praying that he would not die from food poisoning. He had evidently come to Merseyside to set up a genealogy centre. The multi-million pound project would include a hotel at the garden festival site, and a reproduction of the statue of liberty. The idea was that American tourists would be flown to the UK where they would be able to look up their descendants in the records at the genealogy centre. Liverpool was chosen as it was the main departure point from Europe to North America in the nineteenth century. Someone however smelt a rat. The local authority asked immigration control to investigate Henry. It turned out that he was over here without a work permit. Since he had committed this offence before, the authorities decided that this time he would be held on remand for deportation.

During his stay at Risley he was visited by an official from the US Embassy, whilst his colleagues visited him weekly with progress reports. He was not pleased about being in Risley, though he took it calmly.

He said repeatedly about the local authority "Those guys went, to an awful lot of trouble to put me in here."

He told me about his life. He had evidently had his fingernails torn out by Japanese troops during the Batan campaign in the Philippines during World war II. His first wife and children lived in the United States, but he had not been there for many years. He evidently became a Moslem, and married an Arab woman, living in the mountains of Lebanon, from where on a fine day he could see Cyprus. He left the Middle East after his wife was killed in a terrorist incident. Henry then became a Mormon, though his present scheme was strictly private enterprise. He was later awarded six months imprisonment for his efforts.

On November 20th, Mack the Knife went for trial, charged with the murder of his wife. I knew him quite well and considered him a great guy. He was intelligent, though his English was a bit halting. He originally came from Istanbul. He met his wife when she went to Turkey for a holiday, as at that time he worked in the hotel where she was staying. Eventually they married, and lived in the UK where Mack ran his own café. Maybe he devoted too much time to the business, causing his wife to become bored. Anyway, she took a lesbian lover. That was bad enough, but the ultimate insult occurred when she decided to leave her husband as she preferred the woman. Mack the Knife, having been brought up to respect traditional values, found all this too much. Even in Risley he felt deeply ashamed of his wife's behaviour, and only told me about it in a subdued voice. His shame turned into hatred as he felt that he had to do what a man has to do under such circumstances. He went around to see her, carrying a knife. He intended to kill her, and did just that. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment for manslaughter, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

"Women in this country have too much freedom," Mack once told me.

He was of course, right!

Mack told me that he could not serve his prison sentence in Turkey, as his crime was not recognised there.

"I would have got a pat on the back to cries of, well done," Mack said.

No doubt he would then have gone back to his other three wives. He had however, forsaken that opportunity for a monogamous marriage in the 'freedom loving' UK.

That day Toff's Filipino wife, Maxine Maxwell, appeared at the local magistrates court charged with attempting to send contraband to her husband. The story went like this. Outside prison Toff use to take vitamin E tablets regularly, which he said worked wonders for his skin, which no doubt included his foreskin. One day I saw him go into the ward office to ask Dr.Shrink if he could continue his vitamin E treatment. Dr.Shrink promptly told him to fuck off. Toff came out of the office feeling most unimpressed with the doctor's bedside manner.

"Whatever he says I'll agree to, just to get him out of my hair," Toff said to me, referring to Dr.Shrink.

As a result of this refusal, his loving wife Maxine decided to put his bottle of pills in with the other goodies during one of her regular visits, but had them handed back to her. She was a devoted wife, and not easily discouraged. On her next visit she hid the vitamin E tablets inside sweet wrappers. It did not take much effort for the screws to find them. Being hidden, they naturally thought that they had a bigger kick than vitamin E. She was taken away by the police and charged, whilst the pills went off for analysis. There was then an agonising few weeks wait for the outcome, during which time she was banned from visiting him.

Our female Spanish doctor appeared again today, for another weeks tour of duty in the hospital. Evidently the Home Office were having difficulty in finding another doctor to work with Dr.Shrink now that Dr.Shrunk had retired. As a result Dr.Shrank would come in to do a weeks duty at a time, to be relieved by another doctor the following week. There were about four temporary doctors working at Risley during this period. Considering the working conditions, I thought that no competent doctor in his right mind would ever set foot in the place on a permanent basis.

Whilst collecting items from the cleaning stores that day, I was amazed to find Cockney Craper in A ward. He appeared perfectly normal. There is evidently hope for Mrs. GG yet, I thought. Not wishing to look like a stripped cell occupant the excessive length of my hair was now beginning to irritate me. At one time, fifteen years previously, I was blessed with shoulder length hair, which in my advancing years I now hoped had gone forever.

On the news front the police spent their second day on Saddleworth Moor looking for the bodies of two victims of the moors' murderers Myra Hindley and lan Brady, who twenty-one years previously had carried out their infamous crimes. Myra had decided to co-operate with the police after learning that there was no chance of parole whilst details remained outstanding. She had also received a letter from the mother of one of her victims, pleading for the body to be given a Christian burial. Rumour had it that Myra would be brought to the moors from Cookham Wood Prison in Kent, to assist the search. Meanwhile, lan Brady in Park Lane Hospital, was interviewed by his solicitor and the police. Snow on the moors hampered the search. A few days later an RAF Canberra photo reconnaissance aircraft flew over the moors in an attempt to locate likely burial spots.

On November twenty-second tanks surrounded the presidential palace in Manila as Cory Aquino sacked her Defence Minister Enrile, following political killings and rumours of coups. It was another painful step on the road to full democracy.

A few days later another Filipino was to experience her trial of strength. Maxine was finally brought before the court. During the short hearing it was stated that analysis had shown that the smuggled pills really were vitamin E. Much to Maxine's relief, the case was dropped. As for Toff, he went off on November 25th to make his plea, the day after his judge in chambers meeting was postponed. Rather than face the possibility of further remand, he decided to plead guilty. He was given four weeks imprisonment, and since he had already served that, he was freed. His daughter had evidently turned up for the hearing from Australia, and said a few kind words on his behalf.

On the technology front, the Doomsday Record for Great Britain 1986, was published on two video discs. The project, supported by the Department of Trade & Industry, had repercussions for libraries and education. Interactive discs would change the face of education and job training. How long it would take to make teachers superfluous to requirements remained to be seen.

That same day also saw the start of President Reagan's Irangate scandal. Contrary to the rules laid down by congress, at least two people in the White House decided to send firearms to CIA backed Contra rebels fighting along the northern border of communist Nicaragua. To achieve this, modern weapons were shipped from American bases in Sicily to Israel, to replace old weapons which were then sold to Iran, possibly to effect the release of American hostages in the Lebanon. The money from the sale of these weapons was used to purchase modern weapons for the Contras. Somewhere amongst all this, a well known Arab arms dealer/financier became involved, at which point my brain simply crashed. It had become overloaded with data!

On November 22nd I received my first love letter in prison. Well it was not really a love letter, but it was from a very attractive young woman, Toff's daughter Sheila Maxwell. She asked me to write back to her, which I did, asking them to come and visit me on December 4th.

That day the Minster of State at the Home Office revealed that twenty-seven men and one woman had hanged themselves in prison in 1985. At long last the police announced that a man was being held in custody for the railway murders and rapes in the Greater London area, in particular the murders of Alison Day 19, Anne Lock 29, Maartje Tamboezer, plus fifteen rapes. Also at this time, an open verdict was recorded at the inquest into the death of PC Olds, who killed himself with a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, finally ending his heroic battle to walk again. He had been confined to a wheelchair after being shot and paralysed whilst trying to prevent a hold up.

The days seemed to drag without AD, Mack the Knife, Honey Monster and of course Toff, although the latter did write to me regularly. Looking back on it, perhaps too regularly. What happened next however was unexpected, since I had been waiting for it so long. No, not a sex surrogate, but a visit to Dr.Shrink 's office.

It was December 3rd, 1986 when I was called down to the SMO's office. Seated before him, he explained to me that I was to be transferred to the Hornby Hotel.

"There was no way," Dr.Shrink informed me, "that the Home Office is going to grant you parole if you stay here. They need a second opinion, and that can only be obtained elsewhere."

Being polite, I then asked him how his koi-karp were.

"Oh, I've swapped them for some fancy canaries," the doctor said.

At long length he described to me his garden, and of course his canaries. Evidently he also grew bonzi plants. At that point in time I wished he would take up that other Japanese pastime called harakiri, as I was not looking forward to going to that Victorian splendour. At long last the interview came to an end, and I returned to the ward.

I interpreted the move as meaning that my parole was a non-starter, since my parole date was only four weeks away. I therefore concluded that since I was not to get parole, I should try and get into a hospital instead, where my mental illness could finally be sorted out. The thought of having to stay in prison until August 1987, possibly in a location worse than Risley, weighed heavily on my mind. I felt very bitter at this time. I felt that I had endured all the shit that I was going to take. I discussed the matter with Jeff Jordan, AD's former assistant, and the only really intelligent friend I had left on the ward. He advised me to carry out the NCCL's recommendation and write to my QC Lord Titch, mentioning my appeals and deteriorating physical condition. That night I wrote the letter out.

I never got the chance to post the letter. Unknown to me, that night was to be my last at Risley. I should have realised that I would only be given a days notice, just like any other inmate. That night I was kept awake by some loon smashing up his cell on the ground floor. I thought about the visit I was expecting that day from Toff, Maxine and Sheila, a visit which would never take place. There would be no time in which to warn them that I would not be here.

"I wanna go to the wings," the loon shouted out of his window,

Don't we all, I thought. Would the conditions in the top security observation wing ever change?

I was woken at seven o'clock, and told that I was to be sent to the Hornby Hotel. A screw was already standing by the ward's office, waiting impatiently to escort me to reception. I hurriedly packed my gear, much of which was already in my large cardboard box, which I dragged out from under my bed. As I walked past the servery carrying my box, Jeff Jordan gave me a slip of paper on it with his name and number on. He asked me to write to him, I never did. I never wrote to anyone at Risley, such was the feeling of disgust I had for the place. What happened to Jeff, I do not know. Life imprisonment I presume, like so many of my friends.

When I left Risley, I certainly had no regrets.

Getting to the Hornby Hotel was to be no straight forward task. I was taken down to the reception area, where I had to change into my civilian clothes, which consisted of the blue suit that I had worn at my trial. It had been kept folded in a cardboard box since then, and was now heavily creased. I put on the itchy pair of woollen socks my late grandfather had given me years before, then my black leather boots. I then waited with my box of belongings, to be escorted out to the coach. The escorting screws took one look at my box, and decided that there was too much in it for a search to be conducted with minimal effort. I was handcuffed to another inmate, a spacer being inserted into my heavy handcuffs as my wrist was too small. Somehow I managed to carry my box outside to the square, where we eventually found the right coach. It was an ordinary coach containing about twenty inmates and a few screws. Eventually the coach moved off, and I departed Risley Remand Centre for hopefully the last time.

Our first stop was at Riverside Magistrates Court, I think it was called, on the Birkenhead side of the River Mersey. We then passed through the Mersey Tunnel for the second time, ending up at the QE2 law courts, where for some reason I was dropped off. I sat in the waiting room for what seemed like ages. The law court was a modern structure built of reinforced concrete. Ideal as a nuclear fallout shelter, I thought. I was in no hurry to leave. Eventually, having studied all four walls, floor and ceiling, the next part of my magical mystery tour began. By mini bus we travelled through Liverpool to Ormskirk Magistrates Court where we dropped off an offender. Finally we headed back towards Liverpool. Just when I thought we would end up where we started from, the grim walls of the Hornby Hotel came into view.

At reception I had my fingerprints taken, which was the first time since the police had taken them in Holyhead. Whilst in the waiting room, my box was taken from me and searched in the office, out of view, during which time I waited nervously for what seemed like ages. Finally my name was called, and into the office I went.

"There are a few things here that you are not allowed to have," said the screw as my heart pounded faster.

"You are not allowed to have these calendars because of the wire joining the pages together, and you are not allowed to have your own letter writing materials, only those provided by the prison," the screw informed me. "These items will be put in your private locker, and will be returned to you when you are transferred or released."

The writing pad he took off me was a blank one. If I needed writing materials for my diary, I could always get an exercise book I thought, but there was no urgency since I already had a blank one. Taking a blank writing pad and not a blank exercise book, did not make sense to me. As for my calendars, three months of my diary had been written on the back of them, and had not been duplicated, I just hoped that I would get them back eventually. As for my other writings. I was allowed to keep them. I felt most satisfied that they had not taken more, but then I did not realise just how much carrying I was about to do.

The reception area at the Hornby Hotel was far quieter than that at Risley. It was also far cleaner. I was already beginning to think that I was better off here. I did not have a meal at reception, as I was suffering from travel lag. Back in prison uniform, which was identical to that at Risley, I was escorted along with some other inmates, through to the reception block, A wing. Each wing was apparently identical, having a long and narrow open hall on either side of which all five landings could be clearly seen, with an open staircase leading to each. A wire mesh stretched between the lower landings, in the event of someone falling. I must admit that I found the halls very impressive, but the cells were deplorable. Each cell would hold two or three inmates, usually accommodated by a bunk bed and a single bed, of steel construction. Two or three wooden tables with hard tops, plus two or three tubular chairs, together with a couple of triangular corner tables, filled up the remaining space. Each inmate would have his own plastic wash bowl, water jug, cutlery and drinking mug.

If bodily needs extended beyond that, then an inmate could relieve himself by urinating in a plastic bucket kept in the corner of the cell. For anything more extreme, room service was available during the day by pressing a button adjacent to the cell door. This sounded a buzzer outside the principal officer's office on number two landing, usually referred to as the twos, whilst at the same time a light would illuminate on the indicator board, to show which landing the buzzer referred to. A steel indicator would also fall to the horizontal position immediately outside the cell requiring attention. The landing screw would then amble up from the twos, looking for the steel indicator. There were two wash rooms on each landing, each one having a urinal, two flush toilets, a large sink with flush capability, into which the urinal bucket was emptied and then washed, and a grating in the floor down which wash bowls were emptied then washed. There was also another sink for washing purposes, making a total of four taps in each wash room, only one of which was hot. There were about forty cells to each landing. Since this meant eighty to one hundred and twenty inmates using two wash rooms, slopping out was done in stages, as was getting served at mealtimes.

Each wing had its servery on the ground floor, otherwise known as the ones. Corrugated perspex was suspended under the wire mesh to stop extraneous matter polluting the food on the trays and in the urns. At mealtimes an inmate would go down the main open stairway to the servery, collect his meal in a metal tray, then up the narrow end winding staircase back to his cell, hopefully getting off on the right landing, as each landing looked much the same. Needless to say, my degenerated brain let me down a couple of times on this point. Against the end staircase would be the end window stretching from floor to roof, usually containing a number of broken glass panes. Opposite the PO's office was the mail box, whilst adjacent to his office was a medical interview room and dispensary, all of which became crowded first thing in the morning, along with the chief officer's desk outside the PO's office, where certain applications were taken. Applications for letters and visits were made with the landing officer in the afternoon.

On A wing, where I was to spend my first night, I shared a cell with two other inmates on the third landing. One of these inmates was Jack Day, whilst the other was a Geordie who only took his hand off his prick at mealtimes. Jack was on his way to Sudbury Prison via Winson Green, in order to complete the final part of his sentence. He looked like Jesus Christ as he had long hair. He was serving life for the murder of a man in a public house. He told me that in 1979 he had been at Risley, where he had assisted Mr.Flight with the EEG machine, at a time when the equipment was based on A wing. He had a remarkable memory for the names of the hospital officers at that time, the majority of whom still worked there. He then recounted to me a serious incident which took place between two members of staff. Evidently he had witnessed a heated argument between Mr.Pluto and Mr.Bark, in which Mr.Bark was head butted by Mr.Pluto. Jack was told firmly not to mention the incident to anyone. It left me wondering that if this was how far they were prepared to go amongst themselves. God knows how they must have treated some inmates.

The next day, December the fifth, I was moved to H wing. This was no easy task as my box was already very heavy, in addition to which I had to carry all my bedding, which consisted of two sheets, one pillow case, three blankets and a bedspread. With these stacked on top of my box, I could not see forwards and therefore had to look sideways. Going down the open stairs to the twos was no easy matter. I was apprehensive about falling head first. Needless to say, no one volunteered to carry any of my gear. The walk along the interconnecting wings was long and painful. My hands and arms soon started aching.

When we reached the canteen I received a well earned rest, as I queued up to spend my weekly pay. I bought the lightest articles I could find, two canteen letters and a Christmas letter. In my possession I already had an ordinary letter from Risley, plus a letter I had been given at reception upon my arrival. Every Sunday I would receive a free ordinary letter. This made a total of six letters I would write, letting friends and relatives know where I was. Outside the canteen, which unlike at Risley was a proper shop, I met Mack the Knife. He was very pleased to see me, and I him. Apparently he also lived on H wing, on the threes. He told me that Honey Monster was also on H wing, on the twos, and was likely to stay there because of his heart. The place sounded more like home every minute.

After everyone had collected their goodies from the tuck shop, we proceeded further along the interconnecting wings with our belongings. These wings were in a straight line with A wing, whilst branching off to left and right were other wings. Whilst walking along the landings the place gave me the impression of being on a huge ocean liner. It seemed to go on forever, with steel landings on either side and stairways reaching to the heavens. The lino floors were kept constantly clean, whilst the speckled paintwork on the walls was bright and cheerful, in stark contrast to the cream walls in the hospital at Risley. Each wing was roughly forty metres long, and to get to H wing I was required to pass along three of them. I think the prison contained a total of ten wings. I felt glad to be there despite the long walk with my heavy load.

Eventually we reached H wing. Outside the PO's office was a large board on which against each cell number were the names of the occupants. I was told to go to H4-10, that is H wing, landing four, cell ten. More flights of stairs I thought, as my eyes looked up from the twos. Outside H4-10 I was confronted with an argument between the cell's single occupant and a screw. Evidently he did not want to share his cell with anyone. The screw told him bluntly that if he did not accept me, then he would be put down the block. The block consisted of punishment cells on the ground floor of H wing. Evidently the cells down there were very cold. I was later told by other inmates that down there your bedding was removed during the day, and that all furniture was made out of cardboard. All visits for people on the block were 'closed', that is they took place with a screen between visitor and inmate, making intimate contact impossible. My new cell mate did not like that idea, so he reluctantly agreed to take me in.

Roger Turvey my cell mate, seemed reasonably intelligent, but more importantly a non-smoker. There was a wild look in his eyes that his spectacles could not camouflage. He did not like conforming to the prison system. I could not figure out what he was in for. A shoot out with the police I think he said. He had evidently appealed against sentence all the way up to the House of Lords, only to have the appeal turned away when it was not submitted in time. The stack of legal papers and letters he had on this was quite something. I got the impression that he was either a genius or a headbanger. The more I heard, the less secure I felt. He had at one time been to Grendon Underwood Psychiatric Prison where he said the screws were brainwashed along with the inmates. He was taken aback by what he saw on his arrival at Grendon. For his first sight was that of a screw eating a prisoner's meal, whilst an inmate was using the office telephone. Strange!

Roger had been held on remand in the hospital at Risley, a place which he obviously did not like.

"On one occasion I was in the visiting room opposite the main office on the ground floor when Mr.Bark and some other members of staff entered the hospital. They did not see me as Mr.Bark turned to the others and said something like, that's another fucker put down. It was not until the next day that I learned that an inmate had died. I'll kill Mr.Bark when I get out," said Roger, his eyes glaring.

I got a strong feeling that Roger was not likely to stay out of prison for long. As for his story, I did not know whether to believe him or not. I was to meet many inmates whom I was clearly not to believe. Studying the criminal mind in the Hornby Hotel was for me, an eye opener. I was to feel less safe here than at Risley, for here you never got to know inmates really well. I was to be constantly moved around, and only got to know two or three inmates on each landing. As for the staff, I was never to learn the name of any of them, and since they displayed no number they became anonymous beings. As for the inmates, most were young repetitive offenders, mainly immature scoucers of which many suffered from delusions.

On Saturday, December the sixth, we all trooped off to the cinema, which also served as the prison chapel. The film was set in Edinburgh, about two young lads going around on a motor bike, holding up tourist coaches full of rich Americans and Japanese. It proved to be nothing less than the glorification of crime, which the impressionable inmates loved. The mentality of those people that ran British prisons never ceased to amaze me. After watching it I was not surprised that American tourists did not want to come to Great Britain. As for the quality, the sound was not good as the speaker system was hopeless, and it was also out of focus, or was it my poor eyesight?

In the afternoon I went outside for one hours exercise in the circular courtyard. Unlike the open wards at Risley, exercise was not compulsory. It was also far more frequent. Sometimes you could even have more than one exercise per day. The gymnasium was available for weight training once per week, whilst ball games in or out of doors were also available. As for the circular courtyard, it consisted of three circular paths one inside the other, so that inmates could walk in either direction, and at varying paces. After exercise period, which lasted an hour, I spent the rest of the day writing letters.

On Sunday morning I went for exercise in another courtyard, walking in circles between two lamp posts. Unlike Risley there was no grass in these exercise yards. During this exercise period I spoke to Mack the Knife, who informed me that to go to chapel that morning I should have put my cell indicator down immediately after breakfast. God would have to wait another week, I thought. Normally canteen was on a Sunday, but evidently I could not go that day as I had already had mine two days before. I also learned that my private cash had not been sent with me, and that it would take about four to six weeks to arrive from Risley along with my wrist watch. According to the staff, of all the prison establishments, Risley held on to inmates belongings the longest. I wondered why. This news meant that again I would not be able to purchase Christmas cards from my private cash.

That evening my cell mate Roger, went on the war path.

"I've just heard that you're a nonce, and I wont have one in my cell. I'll get yea during the night. I've done it before," said Roger in a mean voice.

I was beginning to feel very disturbed. I felt even more so when Roger moved over to the jugs full of water. I thought he was going to throw one at me. I knew virtually nothing about Roger, and as each minute went by I could see my parole vanishing into the dust of a fist fight.

"I'm not a nonce," I said nervously, "Here take a look at these statements."

"Your a bit slow on the uptake," he replied.

"If yea don't want me, then just press the button and tell the guard," I blurted out.

"Oh no, that's your job," Roger stated.

Quite frankly, with a mentally unstable inmate in the cell threatening me, I could not get to that bell button fast enough. It never occurred to me to hit him, as I desperately wanted a quiet life and above all, parole. Eventually after what seemed like ages, the landing screw came and opened the door.

"He doesn't want me in here. I'm coming out," I shouted, as I picked up my box and bedding, and headed out of the cell.

"You'll have to wait five minutes whilst I put these lads away from exercise period," the screw said as he blocked my path of escape.

I could not believe it as he slammed the cell door shut. I waited five minutes in silence. It felt like five years. Finally the cell door opened, and I quickly shot out onto the landing with my box and bedding. I could hear Roger hooting with joy soon after his cell door was locked behind me. He got the cell to himself again which was the way it should have been for all inmates, not just for privacy, cleanliness and quiet, but also peace of mind, for many cell mates stole from one another, as I was later to find out. I got the feeling that it would be many years if ever, before inmates at the Hornby Hotel got their own key to their own cell.

I was moved across the landing to H4-21, occupied by Johnny Banks. He was a forty-two year old smoker doing ten years for drug offences. The cell window looked out over the circular exercise yard and shower house. It was not a pretty sight. The view from Roger's cell window was far more panoramic. In the distance could be seen the residential tower blocks in Liverpool central and the River Mersey, with the Bar light vessel flashing away in the distance. The scene reminded me of the time I was anchored out there immediately after the seaman's strike in 1966. There were at least fifty ships anchored there waiting for a berth. During the strike my first ship had avoided British ports, by sailing from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, to Rotterdam with cargoes of xylene, benzene and toluene. I certainly missed that sunshine, fresh air and sense of purpose. I never thought that I would come back to Liverpool under these circumstances. That evening I received a visiting order form for my friends Toff, Maxine and Sheila, which I posted off to them the next morning, hoping that they had forgiven me for being absent during their visit to Risley. Once posted, I cheered up no end.

The next day, a Monday, I woke up with tinnitus raging inside my head. I put in an application with the chief officer on the twos to have my eyesight tested. I also put in an application for a haircut, which Johnny said would take a couple of weeks to arrange. I also applied for a special letter to my probation officer, to let him know where I was.

The weekly procedure on H wing was as follows. On Monday we would go to the ones on G wing to exchange our trousers and pullover. On Tuesday we would put out on the landing handrail one bed sheet, and one pillow case. There was also badminton available in the gym that day, and weight training another day. On Thursday we would go to the bath house for a shower, where we exchanged our remaining clothes. Saturday morning saw us in the cinema, whilst Sunday morning was reserved for chapel and canteen. The library visits were about once per month, and I had apparently just missed the last exchange.

On that first Monday I did not change my pullover and trousers as I did not know the procedure. Actually, I did not know where to go, and I did not want to get into trouble by getting lost. It was only on certain occasions that prisoners were escorted around the prison, and usually only when they had to go outside to the bath house, gym, exercise yard, hospital or visiting room.

The meals at the Hornby Hotel were definitely better prepared than those for the hospital at Risley. The mashed potatoes had no lumps in them. I was told they were made from powder. Powder or not, they tasted great. The soup, all of it, was definitely drinkable, with bread rolls, salt and sugar provided each day. It was an eye opener to see the food handled with tongs and surgical gloves. Compared to my treatment in the hospital at Risley, I was in heaven. The prison had far fewer cockroaches, as cleaners seemed to be in abundance, but the laundry arrangements were worse than those at Risley. There I had had the run of the linen stores, and could change clothes and blankets when necessary. At the Hornby Hotel my first pullover stank terribly, as if someone had vomited over it. The next one I got stank the same, so in the end I washed it myself, in my bowl using hair shampoo. Other inmates scrubbed their jeans on the toilet floor. As for my pillow, it produced pimples in my scalp. I was so horrified of the thought of my remaining hair falling out that I stopped using it.

As the broadcast on Johnny's radio programmes reminded me, today was the sixth anniversary of the killing of the Beatles' composer and Liverpudlian, John Lennon, outside the Dakota Apartments in New York, USA.