UTOPIAN DREAM

As the season of good will approached, Tuesday the ninth of December saw Johnny receive a musical Christmas card. It was his first Christmas card of the year. A screw brought it into the cell and showed him it.

"You are not allowed to keep it, but I don't know why. It will go into your private locker," said the prison officer.

Johnny looked at it for no more than a minute, as its barely audible tune tinkled away. Finally the screw departed with it. I wondered how many years would pass before he would be able to see and hear it again. Why wasn't he allowed to keep it? It was certainly nowhere near as loud as a radio, what did the authorities think we would do with the microprocessor? Build a thermonuclear bomb out of it? One inmate had told me that he was not allowed to have Duracell batteries that had been sent in for him, because they could be used to make a bomb. So could compressed air, I thought.

On the tenth of December I went out into the exercise yard as usual. It was very cold, and I think it was on this occasion that I caught the flu. That afternoon I was called for a visit. A screw escorted me out to the visiting block, passing through at least three locked gates. Prior to entering the visiting room I was searched, during which the guard took away my plastic comb and tissues, for collection upon my return. In the visiting room I was told which table to sit at. The room was about ten metres square. There was a large aquarium against one wall, whilst against the opposite wall stood the screws, making observations. Behind me was a small servery at which visitors could buy coffee and sweets for themselves and the inmate. Visitors were not allowed to give anything to an inmate which had not been bought at that servery. Compared to the visiting hall at Risley, the room was much smaller and more humane. From behind me approached a woman.

"Are you Nigel Allen?" she asked.

"Yes, are you Sheila?" I enquired.

"Yes," she smiled, "My father could not get here today as he's sorting out his financial affairs."

She sat down before me. She was very beautiful. Twenty-one years of age I think Toff said. She was gorgeous in fact, with long wavy auburn hair, and a complexion of perfection highlighted with lipstick and eye make up. Her teeth looked stained, whilst one of her front teeth appeared to have been repaired badly, but I was not that fussy. She spoke about rock music in a pleasant Australian accent. She removed a rather grotty looking long and heavy herringbone tweed overcoat, to expose a decorative voluminous body clothed in a jacket, blouse and tight fitting denim jeans. She showed me the jewellery her father had bought her. As she spoke I simply could not take my eyes off her succulent lips. They looked so tempting. She sounded so happy and vivacious. She was definitely the sort of woman I needed. Without a doubt she was the prettiest woman I had seen in years. The sort of woman a man could fall in love with, perhaps too much. I did not want to get hurt again, I kept thinking.

Her nails were short and not enamelled. She confessed to biting them, caused by the anxiety created by her father's problems. She spoke about Meatloaf and other groups she had seen, and how she wanted to go to West Germany to see a concert, if her father would give her the money. During her visit I sensed that she was very much an extrovert and charitable, the sort of woman I needed to look after me when I got out of prison, but she was due to return to Australia on January the fifth. She told me that she intended to return to the UK about six months later, but somehow I found it hard to believe that she would give up such a high standard of living, plus the excellent weather, just as soon as she had obtained her Australian citizenship.

I felt that Toff was a very lucky man. I could well understand why he was so eager to plead guilty, and thereby get out of prison before his daughter was required to return home. Evidently she was only allowed so many weeks in the UK, otherwise it would affect her Australian citizenship entitlement. I told Sheila that I had been very upset at not being able to have told them not to come to Risley on December the fourth, but as I did not have her father's telephone number, there was nothing that I could have done. Evidently they had all turned up on that date, whereupon Toff had then pointed out to Maxine and Sheila, which of the screws going in through the main gate were good, and which were the bad guys. Evidently Toff was at that moment, sorting out his legal and financial problems with his solicitor, whilst his wife Maxine, was working at an old folk's home in Southsea. Evidently Sheila was living with her father and Maxine, in a very small flat which put them all under a great deal of stress. Maxine was very jealous of all the attention Sheila was getting from her father, and because of this, tempers became frayed. Sheila told me that in an argument with Maxine, Sheila was hit on the forehead with the edge of a plate, which was then smashed across Sheila's head. Sheila pointed to the small mark on her forehead where the plate had hit her. I wanted so much to kiss it better.

Now they had only three plates left between the three of them, Sheila pointed out to me. We spoke to one another for about two hours, her passport saw to that. I could not take my eyes off her lips, and felt sickened by the thought that I was not allowed a conjugal visit. Finally the visiting room had to be shut down. We stood up, and she kissed me on the cheek. I was having none of it, and kissed her madly where it mattered most, gorging myself on those succulent luscious lips, with her voluptuous breasts against my heaving chest. I wanted to devour her entire body. I hoped she did not mind my boldness, but if she was a lady, then I knew she would. I felt that I had no choice, as time and circumstance were not on my side.

She was without doubt the best thing that had happened to me for many years. I had to fight hard not to fall in love with her at first sight. She told me that she would visit me again before she returned to Australia. I prayed that that visit would come soon, for it was not long before I realised that I had become love sick.

The next day, December the eleventh, I sent Sheila a visiting order, hoping that the three of them would visit me the following Wednesday. As a convicted person I was allowed one VO per month, but since few people had visited me at Risley, I had accumulated about twenty-six VO's to my credit. Visits usually lasted one hour, and could be on any day except Sunday, but not on bank holidays. It was possible to get to the prison by bus, taxi or even railway.

That evening, my half of the landing trooped off to the bath house, located outside across the exercise yard. We were not allowed a bath, only-showers. The showers lined two sides of the building. Once inside the building, there was a mad rush to get undressed and under one, as occasionally there were more inmates than showers available. The water was hot, with steam rising to the open windows in the roof, through which the occasional bird would enter. The room had creamy white tiles on the walls and floor, in the centre of which were two parallel benches with a two metre high dividing wall between, on which we had hung our clothes. The tiled floor was usually dirty, owing to the mud on inmates shoes, brought in from the exercise yard. The shower was refreshingly pleasant, but it did not last long. Even here there was no atmosphere for relaxation as inmates had to keep an eye on their soap and shampoo, as some inmates occasionally got theirs stolen. To avoid this problem I always took with me a small piece of soap, and poured just enough shampoo into an empty bottle. All that I would need.

After the shower we had to line up naked to exchange our dirty shirts, underwear and towel for clean ones. We were allowed two shirts, two briefs, two pairs of socks, two vests and one towel. After getting dressed we lined up by the locked exit, ready to be escorted back to the wings. When all of us were ready, a screw would appear carrying a huge pile of folded tissues. As we stepped out of the bath house our weekly supply of wankie hankies would be handed to us. Apart from flu and the obvious, they also came in handy whilst cleaning the cell. I would pop them into my spare pillow, and off I would trot, across the mud in the exercise yard, through the doorway, up the stairs and along the landings, back to my locked cell, which the 'doorman' would dutifully open for me. I always said thank-you to him.

That evening as every evening, Johnny did his exercises. He followed a set routine that went on for half an hour or more. He was a spindly person, who looked ten years older than his real age owing to excessive drug taking. Celibacy and no bad habits had resulted in me retaining my good looks. Just who was better off, I did not know. Johnny looked like George, the henpecked husband in the television series George & Mildred. His exercises, which he did in his underwear, consisted of running on the spot, press ups. trunk curls, running up and down the cell, all four metres of it, and raising and lowering a chair. During his exercises I would lie on my bunk and face the wall, whilst pretending to be reading a magazine. In reality I was on the verge of splitting at the seems with laughter. Every inmate had his own idiosyncrasies, which in such close surroundings one had to tolerate. The only trouble was that it was hard not to crack up each time Johnny's knee started clicking.

Earlier that afternoon whilst Johnny was on a visit, I cleaned the cell floor and cell door, which was covered in grime and graffiti. Later during slop out, I started cleaning the outer part of the cell door, which obviously had not been cleaned for years.

"Hey man, what are yea doing? yea don't do that!" An inmate said to me firmly,

"For fuck sake stop it, or you'll give me a bad name. I mean it or else," said my cell mate Johnny.

It was a typical example of the scouse negative mentality, which in the Hornby Hotel I found suffocating. It also reflected the negative value of the prison system. I stopped cleaning the door. It was not worth having a war over. With any luck I would only have to live in shit for a few more months.

Later Johnny told me about his drug smuggling. It certainly did not sound like a page from Miami Vice. He told me that he lived for half the year in Spain, where he apparently owned a farmhouse complete with orchard. His real money spinner was in smuggling cannabis resin from Morocco to the UK. He said that smoking pot was legal in Spain, where he had evidently smoked plenty. He had recently spent eight months in Tangier's Prison, Morocco for drug offences, during which time he was required to share a six metre square cell with twenty inmates. The toilet, outside the cell, was an open trough riddled with maggots. There was no toilet paper, so you had to use your fingers. There were maggots in the food, as hardly any of it was fresh. He was once visited by an official from the British Embassy, who apparently brought with him a small bag of fruit that would have cost next to nothing from the bazaar. He felt very bitter that the British Embassy officials had done so little for him.

Johnny told me that when he was arrested in the UK, the police found only a few grammes of heroin and cannabis in a carrier bag. He felt, that it should have been more, to justify drug smuggling. He had written to his solicitor saying that he wanted to appeal against conviction.

"I will either become a millionaire, or spend the rest of my life in prison," said Johnny.

And that remark was from a man who had been in one of the worst prisons in the world. Imprisonment does not deter.

Looking at and studying many of the inmates in the Hornby Hotel, I came to the conclusion that many suffered from a mental or social illness of one kind or another. They needed positive treatment, not banged up in a cell and forgotten. I felt that only the creation of a truly caring society was going to solve the problem. There were many causes of crime, and tackling just a few was not the answer. As for my own medical condition, I was primarily concerned with my flu at this time. It raged out of control, making me feel lethargic. I also had a slight pain in my right temple, where my haemorrhage had originated some eighteen months before. I was to be troubled by this pain, on and off for the next few years.

The Hornby Hotel was an allocation prison, supposedly without the amenities found at long term prisons. Inmates stayed here from a couple of weeks to six months, depending on their length of sentence, before being sent to a long term prison. As far as I knew, I would be kept here to serve the remainder of my sentence, although no one had actually told me as such. I had thought that I would be put in the prison hospital, and I mentioned this upon my arrival, when I was interviewed by the chief officer. He looked at my file with bewilderment. There was obviously nothing in it about my mental state.

As for work therapy, there was the tailor's shop and other workshops where reflectors were put onto road signs, and batteries put into flashing road lights. It did not sound very appealing. There were classes for languages, chess, guitar playing and I think needlework, but evidently an inmate had to be there three months for assessment, for security reasons, before he could be considered. Proper job training courses were carried out in long term prisons, but the scope was very limited, so limited in fact that it left me with the feeling that the Home Office did not give a shit about rehabilitation. Mind you, looking at it from the Home Office's point of view, most inmates were only fit enough to be used as cannon fodder in a war.

On the twelfth of December we greeted our third cell mate, Gordon Harper. He had just been sentenced to six years imprisonment for aggravated burglary. Apparently it was the first time he had served a sentence in prison, although he had once served a sentence in police cells. He had been in trouble half a dozen times before, mainly as a result, of drink. Gordon was a young alcoholic. He told me that he had served in the British Army and the French Foreign Legion, but more importantly, he was a smoker. There were now two cigarette smokers in the cell, ventilation being provided by the small window high up on the wall, which you had to stand on a table to look out of. The stale air would usually go out through the window, whilst fresh air would come in through the spy hole in the door, there being no forced draught heating. Heating was a mystery to me. There were large hot water pipes on the ones, which appeared to transmit heat by convection and conduction through the brickwork. It was not an efficient system, as on cold days the windows had to be kept firmly shut, making the cell very stuffy. That day I received a Christmas card from my mum, via Risley.

On the morning of Saturday the thirteenth of December, we trooped off as usual to the cinema, to see the movie The Emerald Forest, a story concerning the disappearing tropical rain forests of South America, and its effect upon the native population. By chance Toff had read the book at Risley, and constantly urged me to read it. The movie was apparently the next best thing. It turned out to be the best movie I was to see at the Hornby Hotel. The movies serious message was not lost upon me, despite the poor focus and appalling sound. The sight of all those naked breasts however, made me think constantly of Sheila. My flu was still raging, resulting in headaches, making me even more sick. Gordon later told me that parliament would decide in January whether to make remission half instead of a third of sentence. I lived in hope that it would go through, but it did not.

By the fifteenth I had headaches constantly, whilst my tinnitus raged for five days solid. I felt really warn down, and stayed in my cell during exercise periods. That day I was taken to the prison hospital with a dozen other lads, for an eyesight test. The hospital looked clean and quiet compared to the one at Risley. I only saw the reception area, where female staff were working. From what I saw of it, I was impressed.

My eyesight test however, was certainly not impressive. The optician looked into my right eye only, then I looked at an illuminated wall chart through two identical lenses. He did not check my left eye, which I knew was weaker. The entire test took no more than two minutes. I was outside in the reception area again before I had time to think, let alone speak. I was told I would get my glasses in four days, which I was advised, were not to be used for reading. Nobody asked me what frames I wanted, as I never saw any. I felt that I was being ripped off, even though the spectacles were free on the National Health Service (NHS).

Gordon 'Action Man' Harper was tommy tanking that night, keeping me awake. Corrugated sheeting, bolted to the scaffolding around I wing, was also banging in the wind. I wing was to be opened shortly after extensive modernisation, so I was told. The cells had apparently been doubled in size to accommodate four inmates, each cell having a hand basin and flush toilet. The windows had been greatly enlarged, and presumably the heating would be substantially improved to compensate for the greater rate of heat loss. The idea of there being four to a cell, did not appeal to me. Some end cells on each wing already held more than that, and were not popular with the lads. That week I received all of my missing magazines. Despite not being allowed to go to the library, I had plenty to read, to take my mind off my influenza.

On December sixteenth I heard on the local radio news that the moors' murderess Myra Hindley, had left Cookham Wood Prison, to visit Saddleworth Moor near Manchester, in the hope of finding the locations of two bodies buried there in 1963. Months later the body of Pauline Reade aged 16 was found, with her throat cut, preserved in peat. The other victim, Keith Bennett, remained undiscovered. There were no stage papers in the prison. Some inmates ordered theirs from the local newsagent, but in the time I was there I saw none.

Wednesday, December the seventeenth finally arrived, and I waited, waited, waited for the visit which never came. Neither Toff, Maxine nor Sheila arrived. I was very upset, but I kept my feelings to myself. I had not told my cell mates about Sheila's visit, so they were unaware of how I was feeling. I wrote a letter to Sheila, and applied for another VO, even though the VO already sent could be used any time. After that I settled down to reading my Flight International, in a desperate attempt to stop wondering what had gone wrong.

The next day we went to the bath house as usual, but I obviously did not move fast enough, and had a long wait before I could get to an unoccupied shower unit. That day Johnny decided to move out and join one of his mates in another cell further along the landing. He was evidently sick of Gordon tommy tanking and sniggering at him whilst he was doing his exercises. I must admit that I was glad to see Johnny go. He had a home made cigarette lighter which consumed numerous flints and wicks, the latter he made himself out of cleaning cloths. The wicks stank awfully as they smouldered, at which times I could hardly breath. He also went on a lot about his appeal. His solicitor had apparently turned down the idea flat, but he could not understand why.

"I'm not appealing against sentence. I'm appealing against conviction," he kept saying over and over and over again, at least ten times. It was like listening to a warn out record. He was definitely stuck in a groove. I felt like telling Gordon to take out Johnny's Duracell batteries. A few weeks later I met an inmate who had shared a cell with Johnny in Risley. According to him, Johnny had pleaded guilty at his trial. This made Johnny's remarks of an appeal based on conviction sound crazy. It reinforced my belief that it was impossible to know what was truth inside prison. Without a doubt, prison shatters a person's belief in trust.

With Johnny gone the cell was much quieter, as he use to have the local radio blaring away twelve hours each day, playing the same set of records over and over again. Gordon on the other hand, use to listen to plays on BBC radio. His radio had a VHF facility. He had removed the aerial and covered up the VHF markings by putting his name tab over them. At nights we used to listen to the screws operating their personal radios in the prison grounds, and of course the local bizzies. You have probably realised by now that inmates were not allowed radios with VHF/FM capability.

Radio news announced at this time that the British government was cancelling the British Aerospace / GEC project for eleven Nimrod airborne early warning aircraft, and buying six American Boeing AWACS instead. It would cost the British taxpayer billions of pounds.

On Friday the nineteenth of December I received a letter from Toff. The message was very worrying. It took me a while to decipher his spidery writing, created by his constantly shaking hand. Evidently his wife had left him, having sneaked her belongings out of the flat in stages. She had evidently had enough of Sheila. Apparently both women were highly jealous of one another. A highly charged atmosphere had been created in the small flat, divided in two by a partition which created little privacy for love making. No sooner had Maxine left than Sheila started staying out late at night. Her father started rowing with her, and eventually told her to get the hell out of the place. She responded by stealing some of Toff's cash from his money belt and part of Maxine's coin collection. She then pissed off and shacked up with some fella.

She would row with a saint, Toff told me in his letter. As for his bank draft, there was still no news of it, whilst the bank was refusing to compensate him for its loss. He stated that he could not manage on his own, being so close to Christmas, and having lost so much. I got the strong impression that he was about to commit suicide. I was without a doubt shattered by the news. Maybe beauty really is only skin deep. I had no more blank letter sheets, so I decided that I would buy a letter sheet and a Christmas card on the Sunday, there being just enough time to get it delivered before Christmas. In the meantime, I thought that something had to be done about the delay. I decided to put in an application to see the Roman Catholic padre, in the hope that he could arrange for the local priest to see Toff. I knew that both Toff and Maxine knew the local priest, but unfortunately I did not. I only knew that the local church name was spelt oddly. That was not much to go on.

That day a third cell mate arrived to replace Johnny. He was a coloured guy called Herman Gwaunagazuka. The screws could not pronounce his surname. Occasionally a screw would come to the cell looking for him.

"Right! Who's Allen?" The screw would ask.

"I am," I would reply.

"And who's Harper?" The screw would then say.

"That's me boss," Gordon would say.

"Then it's you I want," said the screw pointing at Herman.

Herman had applied for transfer to the Hornby Hotel, where he was to have all of his outstanding VO's used up during the next few weeks. All of his relatives and friends lived locally, so it was now much easier for them to see him, as many long term prisons were in the middle of nowhere, and were difficult to find on a map, let alone get to. Although he smoked, he was better to get on with than Johnny.

On Saturday, December 20th, we watched the latest version of the movie King Solomon's Mines. It was an ideal film, for children that is. I did not see the picture very well. There was light coming in from behind a curtain, whilst the screen was divided in two by a pillar directly in front of me. Later that day Herman moved to another cell containing a couple of blacks. They obviously spoke his language.

That Sunday I went to the chapel for the first time. Although the service was much better than at Risley, I still did not think much of it. The hymns were sung at too high a note and too fast, as if everyone wanted to get the chore over and done with as soon as possible. The organist was not much cop either. I could not hear the priest most of the time. For some reason he did not use the public address system. Maybe he felt that nobody wanted to listen anyway. I tried to sing, but soon realised that no one around me was singing. It was very unnerving. Had they been so equipped, I felt that I would have got a knife between the ribs for singing out. Only the fifteen lads in the choir sang, as I looked around to see all the negative minded faces. It was a frightening scene, for here stood the youth of Britain, displaying their rejection of the values of previous generations. Perhaps if the vicar had played some choir music loudly over the PA system, some would have felt less inhibited and more inclined to join in. During prayers there was too much deliberate coughing, and whistling. I eventually decided that I would not go again. Gordon told me later that the small service for the rat catchers the previous Sunday had been much better. As for Johnny, he use to go to the Methodist service, as it consisted of a small dedicated congregation, the minister standing for no nonsense.

That day I performed my Christian duty by writing a letter to Toff and another to Maxine. I also sent a Christmas card, the largest I could get, written out to both of them. It proved to be a long hard day, as I slowly wrote out those letters. Being divorced, I hardly felt qualified in marriage guidance, but I persevered. I had to word my letters carefully since Toff had told me that I must never tell them what my real crime was, since women would never understand. Toff had told Maxine and Sheila that I was in prison for fraud. I did not take any notice of his advice however. During Sheila's visit I had dropped a clanger by telling her that I had been unemployed.

"How could he be inside for fraud if he was unemployed?" Sheila had later asked her father.

"Oh, he became unemployed after he was discovered committing fraud," Toff replied off the cuff.

Somehow I doubted whether Sheila was taken in. The two letters, parts of which I find rather soppy, because I had nothing else better to do at the time, were as follows;

Finally, later that day after numerous requests to the landing officer, the RC priest came to visit. I read Toff's letter out to him. He did not seem to want to get involved, particularly as I did not know the name and address of Toff's priest. He wrote down the details however, then walked off. I heard no more on the matter, either from him nor from Toff. As for me I had done all that I could. I just hoped that things would work themselves out, particularly as Toff had been sent the only Christmas card I could afford to buy out of my prison pay, which was no more than that at Risley.

The next day Monday, I was escorted from my cell to the education department. There were nine of us inmates in the classroom. We were confronted by an attractive woman, who informed us that she was going to give us an IQ test. Some of the inmates objected strongly to their intelligence being assessed, but the instructor assured them that she was not a psychiatrist. I think there were few in the room who believed her. I must admit that I found the conversation between her and some of the misfits rather comical to listen to. I just sat there in silence, waiting for the test to begin. The IQ test consisted of sixty problems to solve in about twenty minutes, all of which were on the same theme. Namely, pick out the correct patterned shape to fit the puzzle. There were no problems involving words and numbers, so it was not strictly an IQ test. After listening to the objections from other inmates, I was not feeling in a competitive mood. Indeed, unlike most men I loathed competition and took no interest in active sport. I therefore plodded through the test in a passive kind of way, solving forty-six out of sixty problems, I think.

All of the inmates doing the test were long termers serving more than three years. Our female instructor said that the results of the tests could help us get a job at the Hornby Hotel. Frankly I was not interested. If she had said it would ensure a quick release, then I would have sped through it. In prison there was little incentive to do anything. After the IQ test came a tougher test, based on our understanding of english. In it you had to underline the word that finished off correctly each sentence.

"e.g. Cats like milk," said teacher.

Well that's bloody wrong for a start, I thought, because Fluff hated milk, and only liked birds, butterflies, lizards, shrews, mice and moles, but none of those words were available. There were about twenty questions which had to be completed in about five minutes. By now I was in the swing of things, and amazingly completed the lot just in time.

I later told Gordon about the IQ tests, whereupon he then told me about his IQ test for the French Foreign Legion. For the first question he put, 'haven't got a fucking clue' and they still let him into the parachute regiment. On another occasion he said he did an IQ test for a job on London Underground, and got zero.

"What's that got to do with pushing a button," Gordon asked.

"Well it was a nice day out for you wasn't it," said the official.

Well I suppose it was a nice hour out for me. At least I got the chance to lust after a woman's body, close up.

Tuesday the twenty-third was a quiet day, with just the two of us sharing the cell. We dreaded the thought of someone else moving in to disturb our lives. I use to listen to Gordon's plays, and he used to read my magazines, though I doubted whether he was really interested in them. My tinnitus was present, but it was not too loud. In fact, just barely noticeable. Gordon told me stories about his five years in the Green Jackets, half of which was as a senior rifleman, whilst the other half was apparently spent in the glass house. He told me that at one time he was part of a United Nations peace keeping force in Cyprus, and also served in Hong Kong. At both locations drinking and brawls came naturally. Action Man had also done jungle training with SAS instructors in Brunei, and combat patrols in Northern Ireland. After buying himself out he eventually joined the Foreign Legion, where he served for one and a half years, before deserting, by marching over the French Alps to Italy.

After his basic training in the Legion, he was kitted out one day with live ammunition and a parachute. It was only when they were in the air that he was told that it was no exercise.

"But I haven't done any training jumps yet!" Gordon exclaimed.

"No money for training," explained the sergeant.

Using quick reaction parachutes they jumped from four hundred feet, so he said, into Chad to counter a Libyan invasion. Unfortunately he landed in a tree and broke his leg. (Actually he did not know the countries involved as he was hopeless at geography, All he knew was that it was somewhere in North Africa.)

His career in both armed forces turned him into an alcoholic. On one occasion whilst he was still in the British Army, he collapsed on Lime Street Station in Liverpool, with diagnosed hepatitis and kidney failure, caused by excessive drinking. At the hospital the doctor gave him some Guinness. A few minutes later it came out of the other end, with a head still on it.

"That proves your kidneys aren't working," explained the doctor.

"Well if I had known that before, I would have bought only one pint to last the evening," Gordon replied.

His excessive drinking habit did not stop there. He said that he got through sixty pints of lager in a day by the end. For me to have done that in a day, a day would have had to have been at least thirty hours long. His mum realised things were really getting bad when she caught him in his bedroom, talking to one of the pot plants. Finally, his demand for money to finance his craving got the better of him, as he stormed into a friend's flat whilst carrying a knife. Evidently he was too pissed to do too much harm, whilst afterwards he could not remember anything about it. On the day of Gordon's trial, the judge was apparently handing out bird like nobody's business. The judge had no doubt looked through Gordon's record, and noted that at one time the courts had been obliged to release him for none payment of a fine, as he was still in the Legion. Now, he was not, and as such he received little sympathy.

He told me that he wanted to write a book about his exploits, including how he escaped from the glass house at Dover Castle to watch the blues play at Goodeston Park. He said he had phoned up his colonel from the grounds to let him know that he was all right. Fact or fiction, it made good listening to. There was no doubt in my mind that he showed promise. He certainly now had plenty of time for writing. Just one problem. What should the title be? 'Where Seagulls Dare?'

On that day occurred the world's first non stop circumnavigation of the Earth by an aircraft, achieved by the American's Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan in a tandem engined plane named Voyager. The trip covered a distance of twenty-five thousand miles at an average speed of one hundred and fifteen miles per hour. The voyage ended, with very little fuel remaining, at Edward's Air Force Base in California, after a flight lasting nine days. It was a momentous achievement, both in high technology and human endurance. A reflection of the American dream. It reminded me as nothing else could, that out there somewhere sanity prevailed, albeit in small amounts.

On Christmas eve I received a second Christmas card from Toff, along with a letter. Evidently Sheila would go back to Australia by Malaysian Airlines on January the second. He still did not know where she lived, but would see her off nevertheless. Maxine was evidently taking out divorce proceedings, according to her recent telephone conversation with him. That day we all had a shower, in preparation for the Christmas festivities.

On Christmas Day I deliberately decided not to go to chapel, as it simply was not my scene. I did not go for exercise that day either, as my flu deterred me from any further outside adventures whilst the cold weather persisted. Slowly I began to realise that I was spending more of my time in my cell, only coming out for meals, the occasional visit and the weekly shower. I had developed a cell mentality. I did not want to know the other inmates, who hung around on the landing waiting for an opportunity during slopping out to nip into my cell and steal whatever they could find. I was perfectly satisfied to stay in my cell all day, for there, peace and quiet reigned. I was desperately in need of it, and hoped that the calmer I became, the quicker my tinnitus and manic fits would subside.

For breakfast we had poached egg, tomato puree and bacon. Lunch consisted of tomato soup, a slice of roast turkey, large Brussels sprouts, carrots, roast potatoes, croquette potatoes, sausage and bacon roll with gravy. This was followed by Christmas pudding with white custard. Evening dinner consisted of pork pie, lettuce, beetroot, pickled onion, mince pie, trifle and a chocolate ball which promptly rolled off my tray and onto the floor. We also received a large wedge of Christmas cake, which was too dry. I did not like traditional Christmas cake very much anyway. I also managed to eat my packet of cheese and crackers left over from lunchtime. There was too much to eat, but it had to be eaten because the lads in the kitchens had obviously worked hard at preparing it.

On Boxing Day we all trooped off along the landings to the cinema, to see the film Invasion USA, which was full of violence and little else. Its violent anti communist stance was likely to turn most sane people into proto-neurotics. God knows what effect it had on the misfits.

For breakfast we had two Weetabix, fried bread, scrambled egg and sausage. For lunch I had mushroom soup, sweet corn, mushy peas, roast potatoes and a cold slice of beef. It should have been beef steak, but they ran out of it just as I was about to get served. Many of the prison inmates still in the queue, were not pleased at this, resulting in arguments with the staff. For evening dinner I had a slice of smoked ham, pilchard in tomato sauce, tomato, iced cake, ice cream and a penguin bar. There was an abundance of bread and butter for all meals.

It was normal practice for our cell light to be switched on by a screw at a quarter to seven in the morning. On this particular morning it was put on an hour later. Even so I still felt tired, and spent most of the day sleeping off all the food I had eaten. There was nothing to do all day except read my magazines over and over again. Unlike being on the wings at Risley, there were no association periods since there were no games and television rooms. I thought that this was probably a deliberate policy designed to put us in the mood for working, when the call came through in a couple of weeks time.

On the twenty-eighth of December my tinnitus subsided, probably because it was so quiet in the cell. I was never a good conversationalist, something which I now regretted, as the batteries in the radio had gone flat, and there was still only the two of us in the cell. I seemed to spend much of the day and night dreaming. It was as if I was determined to catch up on all the sleep I had lost during my two and a half years at Risley. With no stage papers and library books to read, there was little alternative to dreaming. My sedentary lifestyle caused me to put on weight. I could not even sit upright on my bed as the top bunk was too low.

Gordon went to the Church of England service that morning. Evidently the priest was given a hard time. From what Gordon told me it would appear that the vicar was talking about the virgin birth in a modern context.

"He made her pregnant, then ran off and left her, but I know who he is," said the vicar.

"Yea shady bastard!" Shouted an inmate, who obviously thought the vicar had done it.

"Think you're an hard cunt do yea!" Exclaimed another.

"There was spontaneous laughter throughout the chapel. The priest had left himself wide open to abuse," explained Gordon.

After the laughter had died down the priest carried on with the service, glaring at his parishioners in defiance.

Until then, chapel as a source of entertainment had not occurred to me.

The next day Gordon put in an appeal against his sentence. He was worried that it might result in an even longer one. Evidently he was visited by his probation officer, who thought that he should have got three years at most, not six. At Gordon's trial the judge had apparently told him that he had to take the views of the public, meaning the local newspaper, into consideration. The professional views of the judiciary apparently did not count for much. Recently a man had been sentenced to eight years for driving a get away car in an armed robbery, whilst two brothers got six and ten years for rape, the latter visiting Gordon in our cell on a number of occasions. He had refused to be segregated, maintaining that he had not done it.

Meanwhile the screws continued their game of cat and mouse with the inmates, many of whom did not like being told which cell they should be in. During slopping out, or after coming in from exercise, some inmates would go and visit friends in other cells and hide there. Running around trying to find an inmate after a cell count, could take ages therefore. Another prank these misfits would get up to involved our cell cards. The identity cards with our name and sentence on them, should have been placed in slots in the cell door for the staff to see. Many inmates did not like their card being seen by anyone, whilst my card disappeared from the door twice. On one occasion an inmate had rolled it up and pushed it through the spy hole. Another childish prank they use to get up to, was to switch your cell light off, during the staggered meal breaks. This could be quite annoying if you were reading or writing a letter at the time.

On December the thirtieth I received a letter from Toff, informing me that he had managed to get back together with his wife. Apparently Sheila, visited him, and told him that Maxine lived in the flat next to her lover's apartment. Toff later met Maxine in the street outside her flat, and took her out for a meal as I suggested, after telling her landlady that Maxine would be vacating her flat the next morning, without first discussing it with his wife. He was a man who liked to make all her decisions for her. Evidently they liked my Christmas card very much. It was the only one that Toff received. Since it, cost me half of my weekly wage, I was pleased to know that they liked it.

That day I received a letter from my probation officer, Cyril G Bezant, pleading with me not to give up the idea of returning to Birmingham. I had written to him recently, stating that if I did not get parole, then it was unlikely that I would be returning to the city. I knew the establishment would not like this idea, as they would like to keep an eye on me after my release. I hoped that this would sway any doubters about giving me parole.

I learned that day that the Earl of Stockton, the former Tory Prime Minister Harold McMillan, had died from natural causes. I well remember rushing to the playground railings one day when I was about ten years of age, to see him being driven past. Those were the days when we were told, 'you have never had it so good'. With unemployment in Stockton now at 1930's levels, he obviously forgot to say, 'nor are you likely to have it so good ever again'. To live into your nineties, only to see the society you helped bring out of despair, become downtrodden by your own political party, must have produced a heavy heart. In those days I felt a sense of purpose. Society was going places, and as such people had respect for the establishment. In the 1980's, selling off the family silver to reduce taxation and hence buy votes, was hardly the recipe to command respect towards government.

I received seven Christmas cards that year, plus a postcard depicting a bare breasted Maori girl, whom Toff nicknamed Lola. That was the best of the lot.

New Years Eve was to be a day to remember. It was very hot in the cell, so I decided to make one of my rare appearances during exercise period. Outside I met three lads that I knew from Risley, one of whom was Arnold Bishop. He had been in C ward with me. He suffered from a degenerative hereditary disorder, which apparently attacked the limbs starting with the feet. I use to call him wonkie ankles, because that was precisely what he had, and could therefore only walk slowly. I spent the exercise period talking to him whilst walking backwards. On one occasion his brother had come to visit him at Risley. It was decided that his brother should see him in the hospital, so that Arnold did not have far to walk. When his brother arrived, it turned out that he also had the same condition. Because of his illness Arnold was an embittered man. In C ward he had taken a particular dislike to Toff and the Mormon, Henry Waters. Arnold had recently been transferred from the prison hospital at the Hornby Hotel, where he had been sent after his trial. He had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for trying to kill his wife, who according to Arnold, had cried in court when the sentence was given.

That night the new year celebrations started at around seven o'clock, with banging on the cell doors. Later, the landing screw asked us whether we wanted the cell light kept on, in order to see in the new year. I said no, so it was put out. As it turned out, we would see more with the light switched off. The banging and shouting from the prison wings went on and on. The transistor radios blared away from the cell windows. There was howling galore. I wondered what our neighbours in the surrounding streets thought of the racket. Smoke and fumes wafted in through the small window, as pieces of mattress burned in the exercise yard below, having been thrown out of the cell windows along with numerous toilet rolls. One of the lads was banging a drain pipe from his cell window, by using a table leg tied to a piece of linen strip.

As the midnight hour approached, ship's sirens could be heard in the direction of the River Mersey, as rockets were launched from the backyards of people's homes. Even a parachute flare drifted towards the prison. Later three screws appeared with alsatians below, as Gordon and I stared out of the window at a night never to be forgotten. The guard dogs invited barking from inmates. One of the screws was carrying a can of beer. We were not allowed alcohol. Gradually the noise subsided, but the fumes lingered on, keeping me awake. It had certainly been a night to remember. It reminded me of all those new year celebrations I had attended at Bogarts in Birmingham. Nothing since had been comparable until now. There were no women at the Hornby Hotel. It had all been good clean fun. I wondered where all my friends were at that moment. It was the first and only time that I was really glad to be in prison.

New Years Day saw us enjoy our third day of really good food. For breakfast we had corn flakes, baked beans, fried bread and bacon. Soon after slopping out we went to see the movie Rocky IV. A smelly tramp sat next to me in the cinema, scratching his head. The movie was the usual east west confrontation like Invasion USA. I got the impression that Americans are paranoid about communism and socialism. I fail to understand how the capitalist idea of individuals standing on their own feet without government support can be considered realistic in a robotic society, where wealth is created by expensive automation, and not through the direct effort of human beings. I somehow doubted whether the rest of the audience saw how outdated the films message was. The only really entertaining moment was during reel changes, when one of the winos stood up, imitating a boxer with clenched fists, to cries of support from other inmates.

Our magnificent lunch consisted of tomato soup, pork chop, which I bet Honey Monster looked at suspiciously, apple sauce, roast potatoes, carrots, cabbage and gravy. The third course consisted of rum flavoured Christmas pudding and white custard. I did not have coffee as my mug was already full with the soup. It was a really great meal, and for once I felt that the tax payer was getting value for money.

Gordon had spent three weeks reading the collective works of F Scott Fitzgerald. I thought, he would never finish it, as the book was so thick, but somehow he managed it. He had asked his mum to send him a book on the history of Liverpool. Must be like asking for a book on the dark ages, I thought. He eventually received a paperback titled Devil's Guard by G R Elford. Gordon told me that it was about a Nazi who joined the French Foreign Legion fighting in Indo China. Gordon thought, that it had been sent by one of his mates, who were taking the Glyney, but it later turned out that his mother had sent it to him.

For evening dinner we had luncheon meat, cheese, chutney, tomato, beetroot, brown bread and butter. For afters we had shortcake, ice cream and mince pie.

On January 2nd, 1987, Sheila flew back to Australia. She promised to write from her new address in Melbourne, so her postcard from London stated, but she never did. I never really expected her to. What with her boyfriend in Southport and another in Melbourne, she hardly needed one in prison. I soothed my hurt pride by writing to the only woman now in my life, my mother. Later that day we exchanged one long sleeved shirt for two tee shirts. I did not like the idea, as the Hornby Hotel was not all that warm, whilst the weather hardly invited tee shirts. Furthermore, my arms would itch and my elbows became sore whilst I was wearing my pullover. I therefore wore my one remaining shirt more often, which in the end stank disgracefully. I assumed that the tee shirts were one of the bright ideas brought back recently by the government team that visited privately run prisons in one of the warmer parts of the USA. At this time the British government was seriously considering the privatization of prisons. Most privately run prisons in the USA were for minor offenders such as illegal immigrants. Following the announcement of an agreement between the USA and Cuba to repatriate illegal Cuban immigrants held in US jails, Atlanta Prison in Georgia was to be burned to the ground by rioting Cuban inmates on Sunday, November 22nd, 1987.

On the third of January we watched the British movie Car Trouble. It was an adult comedy, and judging by the raised temperature of the cinema at its end, it went down very well. It was definitely the sort of movie that needed to be shown in prison.

The principal officer visited me that day to tell me that he had received a telephone call from the probation service at a place called Westbury, who apparently wanted to come and see me. He said that he would see me the next day, but failed to turn up. Where the hell is Westbury, I thought, he must mean West Midlands.

Yesterday an inmate had got nine months added to his sentence, for trying to escape from the Hornby Hotel using a gun made from matchsticks. It must have been very realistic. Most of the lads made cuckoo clocks and gypsy caravans out of them. Meanwhile the light went off in our cell for the second time in two days. Evidently an inmate was deliberately short circuiting the system. As part of their bloody minded attitude towards the system, many inmates would not have their cell light on during the day. Roger Turvey had been one of these. He use to stick a matchstick in the light socket. The screw would open the cell door thinking that someone had taken the bulb out. When he saw the bulb in the socket he naturally thought that it had blown. To get a new bulb it was necessary to take the old one down to the PO's office first thing in the morning. Used bulbs were definitely not to be used as weapons.

Whilst about to sit down in the cinema that day, an elderly man said hello to me, He apparently knew me from Risley, but I did not recognise him. His appearance was unlike anything I had seen before. His hair was short and blotchy. Half black and half white, like a leopard's spots. It was caused by the stress created by imprisonment. I had seen many symptoms of stress in prison, but this was certainly the most dramatic. Also that day I saw Dummy on G wing, where he had obviously been sent after his trial. We exchanged nods.

On January 5th, 1987 I made a serious study of the graffiti in my cell. One read, 'be a gardener - plant a screw,' whilst another read, 'screws are like bananas, they are bent, they hang around in bunches and they're all yellow'. Another one with an arrow pointing to the spy hole read, 'son of a cock sucker'. The only poetry I could find read, 'sometimes the door is open, I see a friend or two, but then the door is closed again, by the man we call a screw'. Little of it made intelligent reading.

On the seventh I received a letter from my mother, which explained the principal officer's visit to me recently. Apparently my mother had gone to see her local social services department, concerning my suggestion to her that I spend the last few months of my prison sentence at Bedford Prison on an accumulated visits transfer. The social services had referred her to the probation services, who apparently were not helpful. Later that day I saw the principal officer and enquired about the status of my parole. He was not helpful.

Gordon got his application for educational classes KB'd (knocked back) for three months, for security reasons. I realised then that there was no hope of me getting into an open prison at that rate.

Later that evening the landing officer told me that I could only put in an application to see the welfare on a Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday night, for the following day. I wanted to see him, in order to sort out my parole application and accumulated visits transfer. The bureaucratic system in prison moved unbearably slowly.

January 8th, 1987 was shower day, being a Thursday. After a shower and receiving my clean clothes, I received another supply of tissues, issued to us on the way out. I now had three weeks supply of tissues in my box. I could not think what the other lads did with them all. I was obviously not tommy tanking enough. I wished that Sheila was here to give me a hand job. Meanwhile, Gordon showed me his hands. Prior to entering prison he was receiving treatment for the removal of his tattoos. They were being removed chemically, which left no scarring. He told me that it was not possible to get them removed in prison, owing to the AIDS scare.

"Fucking mad. No skin off my nose. I'll murder the bastards," he said in frustration.

"My heads cabbaged," Gordon later said as he tried to understand one of my books.

That day British television commenced the portrayal of advertisements warning people of the dangers of contracting AIDS, whilst the British government announced that their predictions indicated that by 1990 four thousand people will have died from AIDS in the UK.

Meanwhile the Customs & Excise announced that drugs seized last year had a street value of eight-five million pounds. Whilst the Department of Unemployment announced that since Mrs. GG came to power in 1979, two million jobs had been lost in manufacturing industry in Northern England, Scotland and Wales. So much for the information technology revolution.

The next day, January the ninth, I was due to see the welfare officer, but instead I was transferred to F4-21. I was also told that I would be working in the tailor's shop, making shirts. Well it beat sowing mail bags, I thought. I was sorry to leave Gordon. Of all the cell mates I was to have, he was the best. He showed promise, if only he would stay off the bottle. I hoped that when he had seen enough run down elderly looking winos in prison, he would do just that, if only for his parent's sake.

F wing was considerably colder than H wing. At least ten panes of glass were broken in the end window. The pigeons took advantage of this, by coming in through the windows at night and perching high up under the roof. Nearly all the panes of glass in the wash rooms were broken. This coupled with the poor heating system made the wing chilly, but my cell was even colder. The cell window high up on the wall, was divided into three sections. Evidently during the new year's eve celebrations, an earlier inmate had ripped out the centre window and thrown it into the yard. Although the staff had been notified, no one had come around to repair the damage.

F4-21 was occupied by a Geordie who lay on his pit most of the day, covered in blankets. He told me that I could get moved to another prison in a couple of weeks time, so it was advisable to see the welfare officer as soon as possible.

January the tenth was a cold and miserable day. I did not sleep much as it was so cold with the winter wind blasting through the open window. I felt very depressed. I told the landing officer that I was too cold in my cell, and that I wanted to be moved back to H wing. I did not get much of a response from him, so I told him that I was not prepared to work. He said that he would look into the matter, but nothing happened. Eventually my cell mate Les Walker, blocked up the open window using a stiff canvas picture that was hanging on the cell wall. After a couple of hours the cell warmed up. I had already packed my gear ready to move out, so now I felt obliged to reverse the process. I hid my box out of sight under my bunk, as Les had told me that his picture of Madonna, that once hung over his bed, had been taken off the wall by someone during slopping out, whilst his cell mate slept on.

Whilst cleaning the cell that day, I found a piece of plywood at the back of my locker. Les used this to block up the window permanently, breaking it to size after first scoring it with a Bic pen. He made a really good professional job of it. It stayed like that for the remainder of my time at the Hornby Hotel, despite the fact that it obstructed staff from checking the cell window bars on occasion. Life cheered up a bit more that day when we watched a spaghetti war film called The Unmentionable Bastards. It was another movie glorifying violence. I did not enjoy it.

January the fourteenth saw the first snowfall of the year. Les got transferred to Preston Prison that day. I had heard good reports about Preston from inmates, which I considered highly unusual. That morning I saw the governor in the PO's office. The governor turned out to be a woman. I had to wait about an hour before she finally turned up. Instead of an accumulated visit transfer which lasts only twenty-eight days, she suggested that I apply for a terminal transfer. Bedford Prison, a Victorian allocation and remand prison similar to the Hornby Hotel, was the only prison I knew of close to my parent's home. The governess said she would make enquiries regarding more suitable accommodation.

I wrote to Toff that day after receiving another letter off him. I could not understand why he was writing to me so often. I was glad that Les had gone, as he was treating me like an agony aunt eventually. He had however cheered me up with his tales of Geordie life. He had a habit of taking a true story and supplanting himself somewhere in it. I could not make out whether he actually believed in what he told me, all of which I wrote down. I wondered whether he really did have a stack of video recorders hidden in his mum's loft, just waiting for the day he would be released. After learning scouce, hearing Geordie was a refreshing change. A canny lass, meaning woman, a gaggie meaning man, and a jam sarni meaning police car, were all music to my ears.

Later that evening the principal officer came to my cell, and informed me that I had to make out a petition to the Home Secretary regarding my terminal transfer, as Bedford Prison was in another region of the prison service. I spent that evening writing it all out, after cleaning the cell with a mop from the wash room. The letter was unrepentant, and was as follows:

Even if the application was unsuccessful, it did keep the Home Office on their toes, and it told the prison authorities exactly what sort of prisoner they had in one of their cells, since I had a suspicion that they knew very little about me.

On the fifteenth of January I received an unexpected but long awaited visit from Toff and Maxine. Toff told me that he was far from pleased with Sheila, who had stolen one hundred and fifty pounds from his money belt. His financial problems were still not sorted out, but his plans for the future were certain. Despite everything that he had been through, he still intended to return to Australia as soon as he could get a passport. Toff and Maxine both sat there looking very well dressed, putting my prison uniform to shame. Maxine was a very pleasant person, and not unattractive. She watched the children belonging to the other visitors, as they ran around the visiting room, and smiled at them often. It was obvious to me that she wanted children of her own. It was also obvious to Toff, who at his age was most embarrassed by it all. There was no doubt about it. Toff was a very lucky fellow, if only he could stay out of trouble.

I spent the rest of the day reading my magazines. Having the cell to myself had its drawbacks. Having no one to talk to made my mental condition worse, whilst at slopping out, the same inmates would hang around outside my cell like vultures, waiting for an opportunity to do some thieving. When I went to the toilet during slopping out, it was necessary to lock my cell door behind me by slamming it shut. The landing screw would then have to unlock it for me after my return. Even when emptying the piss bucket or wash bowl. I was never away from my cell for more than fifteen seconds. There was an underlying feeling within me, that if I caught one of them at it, I would kill him. A few more notches would not make much difference to my already ruined life, I thought.

January seventeenth. There was no television, no radio, no newspapers, and I still had not been allowed to visit the library. I went to the movies that day. We sat there watching a crap film called The Hills Have Eyes. It was another blood lust extravaganza. It was meant to be a horror film, but it had been made so badly that one could only laugh at some scenes.

"One off!" Shouted an inmate imitating a screw, as the alsatian in the film pushed one of the baddies over the cliff edge to his death. The audience described the movie as shit, and stomped their feet in disgust at the end.

That day I received another letter from Toff, in which he had included a cartoon torn out of Playboy magazine. Why didn't he send the entire magazine, I wondered. Inmates at the Hornby Hotel could receive pornographic magazines, and often did. Magazines on body building, the military, and motor bikes and cars were also popular. Somehow though, I just could not envisage Toff sitting up in bed with his wife, looking at a girlie magazine.

There was still no word concerning my parole application. It was now over two weeks since my parole date, so I felt resigned to the fact that I would not get it. I found it hard to believe that they would only release me on my EDR and run the risk of me having no fixed abode.

As slopping out was carried out in stages, I would get pestered many times during the week by inmates who would come to the spy hole begging for cigarette papers or matches. I would inform them that I did not smoke, and often receive a string of abuse in return, culminating with the switching off of my cell light. The conversation would often go like this.

"Have yea got cigarette paper?" The inmate would ask.

"No, I don't smoke," I would reply.

"Have yea got matches?" The inmate would then ask.

"No, I don't smoke," I would say again.

"All he says is that he don't smoke," the inmate would then say to his mate.

Some mothers still had 'em, I thought.

I well remember an incident that Gordan overheard one day outside our cell. It was a conversation between two screws, and went something like this.

"I went to that cell to answer the bell, and when I went to look through the spy hole, the inmate stuck his finger out and nearly poked out my eye," said the alarmed screw to the other.

Just what kind of effect prison would have on such mentality, I shuddered to think. I had a feeling that many required ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) in mental hospitals in order to erase their memories and start afresh. On the other hand euthanasia seemed to sound very inviting on a number of occasions. Quite frankly, the mentality I found amongst many prison inmates I had never seen anywhere else. The trouble with many inmates was that although they could not look after themselves in a way the general public would describe as acceptable, they were not totally incapable the way many mental hospital patients were. This is what happens when schools don't teach life studies. Welfare benefit system, personal health, first aid, DIY, gardening, fashion, transport, housing, job hunting and apprenticeships, etc.

On the nineteenth, the supervisor from the tailor's shop came to see me in my cell. He wanted to know whether I had any experience in such work, which of course I had not. He informed me that the tailor's shop was closed last week due to staff shortages.

The next day I went to see the principal officer, and complained about not being allowed once to visit the library during my six and a half weeks at the Hornby Hotel. That afternoon, after seeing him again at lunchtime, he took me to the library where I selected five books, the maximum allowed. My five books were about the V2 rocket, spy satellites, the strategic air command, the Apollo space programme and early submarines. Well. I had to pick something that did not go up into the air. There was definitely a shortage of books on space research. I think I had borrowed them all. I wondered what I was going to select on my next visit. The library was not very big for such a large prison, full of men with little to do.

That morning I went with the other lads on my landing, to number three workshop, the tailor's shop. The workshop included three rows of sewing machines, eleven tables to each row, plus two steam presses. My 'exacting' job was to cut the excess thread off the finished shirts. Six of us stood at a long bench, taking shirts off one pile, snipping them here and snipping them there, before putting them on another pile. It was boring. In fact all of the work done in that workshop was mind-bogglingly repetitive and boring, even on the sewing machines. I stood there for about two hours until a quarter past eleven, snipping here and snipping there. It was my first paid job for about six years. I was apparently fit for nothing better.

The workshop was on the first floor of a relatively modern purpose built building. There were bars on the windows, though whether they were to prevent inmates escaping or others thieving, I was not sure. There were three screws sitting in the workshop all day, in addition to the two supervisors in white coats. The screw's job of keeping an eye on the inmates was boring, even at fifteen thousand pounds per year. The screws at the Hornby Hotel did not seem all that bad, although it was impossible to really assess them, since we were separated by the cell door most times of the day. None appeared neurotic.

At meal time I noticed a dead mouse on the ones, under the servery table. It probably died from hypothermia, poor devil. The bad weather was over for the moment, the wing being warmer. Lying on my bed that day, I had a fit and bashed my fist into the frame of the top bunk, cutting my knuckles. Evidently my mental illness was here to stay. There was no doubt in my sick mind that I should have been getting proper medical treatment. My tinnitus was also playing up for days on end.

The next day saw me in the tailor's shop again, trimming shirts for a couple of hours. I could do it with my mind in neutral, listening to Radio City blaring away from a speaker above the supervisor's office. For some reason we never worked in the afternoon. That day I received another letter from Toff, written on note paper taken from a hotel in Bali, Indonesia. Enclosed was a postcard of the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. The letter however, was definitely posted in Southport. He explained to me that the cartoon he sent in his previous letter, was lifted off the notice board in a hotel in Nouméa, New Caledonia, and that he definitely did not have the rest of the magazine. It was obvious that he had travelled to many places, at least before the police caught up with him. At the end of his letter he informed me that, after Maxine had left him, he had wasted no time in writing to a thirty-one year old woman in Manila, and had just received a positive reply. As for all the letters he was sending me, I got the feeling that he wanted me to do something for him, but of what there was no clue.

On January 24th, 1987, we trooped off again to the cinema to see another film epic. This one was called Truck Turner, full of prostitutes, bad language and of course violence. Just as the lights went out, an inmate dashed up the aisle, and much to my alarm, sat on my knee. Fortunately he was not queer, he just wanted to talk to one of his mates. A screw saw him and led him away. Upon entering the cinema, inmates had to proceed in one line, and sit where the screws told them to sit. It was the same for church services. This cut down the amount of chatter amongst the audience, and also increased the degree of security.

The twenty-seventh of January was definitely to be a day to remember. It started off much like any other day. I received a clean bed sheet, a clean pair of jeans from the ones, a shower, and a clean set of other clothes. I also received a letter from my mother, and a letter from my probation officer who advised me about my terminal transfer, but the best news came from the landing officer who brought me a letter from the Home Office. At the top of the letter in bold black letters was the word memorandum. Below that it stated that I had been authorised parole from March 2nd, 1987, subject to an agreeable release plan, hostel based. I felt very pleased. It was not a parole licence, since a release plan had to be perfected by my probation officer, and approved by the parole board at the Hornby Hotel and the Home Office. The letter had come via Risley, and was dated January twentieth. There was less than five weeks to work everything out, as I had already lost almost a week due to re-direction of mail. That evening I applied to see the welfare officer, and a special letter to my probation officer. I could not be certain that the Home Office had notified my probation officer, so I decided to ask the welfare officer to inform him by telephone. If that failed then the letter would have to suffice. This time I was taking no chances. There were going to be no last minute cock ups. At least none committed by me.

The next day, a prison officer responsible for liaising with the welfare department came to see me, wanting to know what I wanted to see the welfare officer for. I got the impression that it was his job either to stop complaints about prison staff reaching the welfare department, or to stop loons from pissing everyone around. After telling the officer about my parole, he informed me that I could see the welfare officer in an office on the ones at lunchtime. I duly went down to the ones at lunchtime, where the prison officer I had seen earlier told me that the welfare officer was not available, but that the man would see me that afternoon. That afternoon the welfare officer failed to turn up. My special letter for my probation officer was delivered to me. I quickly wrote it out and posted it. I had anticipated the incompetent bureaucracy of the prison system.

On January the twenty-ninth I saw the principal officer, regarding the unavailability of the welfare officer. He simply advised me to see the prison officer in charge of welfare again, which I did. He assured me that I would see the welfare officer sometime that day.

During breakfast a prison officer arrived with a receipt book for me to sign. He told me that someone had sent me a computer chess set, but that prison rules forbid me from having it. I signed the book, which in the description column simply said 'post'. I did not even see what I was signing for, evidently radios and games were allowed in prison, but not electronic games for some reason.

No chess, no library, no work, no welfare, I was not getting very far.

At lunchtime the welfare officer finally came to see me. He promised that he would contact my probation officer regarding the release plan. Since the release plan had to be formulated then approved at the prison, then at the Home Office, I could not see how it could be done by March the second.

Gripping stuff, ain't it!

That afternoon I received a new cell mate, Desmond Boyne. He had descended from the fives. Presumably he could not get on with his cell mate, although he did say that he was trying to get in with his mate, who was also on the threes. He arrived with a friends transistor radio, which he would play all day, making my tinnitus run riot. He was six foot three (1,90m) and weighed fourteen stone (89kg). He was keen at sport whilst I knew him, doing weight training and badminton frequently and undoubtedly took to imprisonment like a duck to water. He was doing three years, but for what, I simply cannot remember. Whilst on the cell door, some joker had changed his cell card from three to eighteen years. He was waiting to be transferred to Strangeways Prison, Manchester, as he was expecting another trial soon. Not soon enough as far as my inner ear was concerned. The next day however, he left me in peace, as he was called to work in the tailor's shop. I do not know why they did not take me as well. I was probably superfluous to requirements.

I had still not received my spectacles. Standing out on the landing waiting to be banged up after slopping out, I noticed that for some reason my eyesight appeared better on some days than others. I thought that it must have been due to the amount of reading I did, which varied greatly from day to day.

Some days I had nothing to read, as my library books did not take long to go through. I was annoyed that my chess set had not been given to me.

On the last day of January I watched a movie starring Michael Caine, about an escape from apartheid torn South Africa. I had once been to Durban whilst in the merchant navy. It was a beautiful place, but unnerving to see how politics had made it so uninviting. After the movie I told Desmond about my crime and mental illness, I should have known better.

The next morning Desmond moved out to the cell next door. By now the inmates on my landing regarded me as a loon, someone to be avoided. That day I went to the library to get five more books. I commenced reading the book Into Japan by John Lowe. It was an interesting book, and well worth reading. I noticed that the book had been borrowed three times previously, but I could tell by the way the pages were still stuck together, that I was in fact the first to read it. Evidently to many prison inmates, taking came naturally, but reading did not.

There were now only three weeks to go before my release on parole.