UTOPIAN DREAM

As I returned to A ward I felt like a human yo-yo. All I wanted was peace and quiet. I knew I would never find it in that ward. Sure enough, it was not long before incidents started to occur. No sooner had I settled in than Howler was transferred to A ward also. It was not long before the rest of the lads got sick of him. They started by taking the piss, then near bedtime, someone put water on his bed sheets. Howler created a right stink about that, as a result of which he was sent back downstairs, the reasoning being that it was easier to send one person down there than the rest of the ward.

Within a week, exactly eleven months after my arrival at Risley, an incident occurred which the staff were always trying to prevent. The previous day, one of the inmates had a boil on his back lanced by Mr.Pluto, so for that reason I will call the inmate Boil. That night I took my usual dose of Prothiaden. There was none of the usual nattering of the night before, so I quickly fell asleep. I had slept little the previous night as the lads had given the night watchman a right ding-dong. They had talked for hour after hour, carrying on like children, despite threats from the staff to have the culprits sent downstairs. In reality, no one could be sent downstairs as all the cells were full, as usual.

Anyway, on this particular night March the twenty-eighth, the night watchman Mr.Godfather went haywire as soon as he came on duty. He upset most of the inmates by switching the television off just before 'Dallas' finished. Having gained everyone's attention he then went into tantrums, accusing each and everyone of us everything under the sun. We all sat there looking at one another, thinking that he had finally cracked under the strain. You could hear his voice throughout the hospital and any minute now I thought, the staff will march in, put him in a straight jacket and wheel him off. A few minutes later, as if by magic, he was laughing and joking with us all.

"I had to do it," Mr.Godfather explained," as I promised last night's night watchman that I'd even things up after the way you pissed him around."

He then switched the TV back on again, retiring to the office to make a long phone call, no doubt to his antipodean relatives. Anyway, to get back to the story. There I was in the land of nod, dreaming out my wildest fantasies when around midnight Boil suddenly got out of bed and promptly collapsed on the floor. Fortunately some of the lads were still awake, as they called Mr.Godfather from his slumber. The night watchman went over to the corpus delicti. He slapped Boil several times across the face.

"Are yea dead?" Mr.Godfather prayed.

Presumably Mr.Godfather could receive messages from the other side when necessary. Blood was pouring from the arm. There were pools of blood on the mattress, with more flooding onto the floor.

From that moment pandemonium reigned. Boil had evidently slashed a vein in his arm with a disposable razor blade which he had brought in with him from the wings. He was eventually taken downstairs for treatment, whilst I slept on, oblivious to everything. That night, I was the only person in the ward to get a decent night's sleep.

I doubt whether a day went by in A ward without me thinking of suicide. I had often thought about hanging myself one night from the window bars in the wash room. It was not possible to do it in the bathrooms as they were locked up at night. Later I was to think about throwing myself down the dumb waiter shaft, which I never saw locked up when not in use. Using a razor blade or rusty wood screw, left by a careless workman, to slash my veins, was very messy and far from quick. My reason for wanting to die had little to do with my crime. The fact was that my future in prison, and even after my release, was bleak. I knew I would be released in one or two years time, and that worried me. Without positive treatment in prison, the problems I would encounter in society seemed insurmountable. I did not believe in life after death. If I had, then the idea of killing myself only to experience a worse existence in another world, would have stifled all thoughts of suicide. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself was that overpowering force called self preservation. If it had not been for the regular supply of magazines, which formed the only positive aspect of my imprisonment, then perhaps that feeling of self preservation would have been eroded to nothing.

There appeared to be little justification in staying alive. As far as I could see I would be a burden to society, upon my release, for a considerable time. Fit for nothing. At the age of thirty-six my brain felt warn out. In fact the very thought of doing a correspondence course whilst in Risley, brought on palpitations, chest pains and sweating. I knew I would have to take it easy for sometime to come. The sale of the bungalow, what to do with the furniture, the financial outcome of the divorce, coupled with the nagging question 'when would I be transferred?', were all constant worries which I felt powerless to overcome.

There were of course moments that took our minds away from our own problems. Often we would read newspaper articles or watch television news programmes about fellow inmates who had finally been brought to justice. Our Welsh vicar appeared on the front page of most newspapers, with two or three full pages devoted to him inside. How on earth barristers and judges could keep a straight face whilst discussing pricks being cut off, photographed, then fed to sea gulls, defied my imagination. The Devil Priest got just under four years imprisonment, which we all thought was a light sentence. There were doubtless some people in his own parish who thought he should have been burnt at the stake. According to the news media he was a man possessed by the devil, who drove a car with flaming serpents embossed on the side whilst dressed like a hell's angel. It was a strange story indeed, one which I was to come face to face with.

Well it was not long before I had reached my tolerance limit with A ward. I was sick of the constant obscene language, the belching, farting and the eternal stream of mindless cartoons and soap operas on the television, the uncleanliness of the ward and of fellow inmates. By now I had stopped talking to most inmates as I was sick of listening to lies and nonsense. Trying to get out of the ward was not easy however, unless one wanted to go straight into a stripped cell.

One of the childish tricks inmates would perpetrate upon an unsuspecting newcomer, was to tell him that every weekend we would be able to go over to the female wing for a dance. They were told to put their names down on a list in the ground floor office. Needless to say, as soon as they went to the office they were told to piss off. An even crueller trick was to tell some simple minded inmate about a dance at Christmas, Easter or Halloween, which would be weeks ahead, and then keep him in hope all the time. Whilst at Risley I heard of a man who took the joke a stage further. Now this inmate did not get on particularly well with his misses. She was actually glad that he was behind bars. On the day she came to visit him, he appeared with a large plaster on his face.

"What's the plaster for?" His hen'pecking misses asked.

"Oh, we went across to the female wing last night, for one of the weekly dances and I got into a bit of an argument with one of the girls," he replied.

Well his misses was furious. After parting she started f'ing and bleeding with the screws for ages. Whether one of them found the courage to tell her it was a joke, I do not know.

Stories like that, recounted by staff and inmates, use to cheer me up all too briefly. By now I had read all the books that the education officer could provide. My friend Brian would send me postcards from Anglesey, but they failed to engage my mind for long, usually containing only forebodings of more redundancies from Tinto. Two days after the tragedy at Brussels during the Juventus v Liverpool football match, where a large number of Juventus supporters were crushed to death, after tormenting Liverpool fans, then panicking when they turned upon them, I received a letter from my mate Ellis informing me that he was going to see the match. He was not listed in the newspapers as a casualty, fortunately. In fact he went on to enjoy the delights of the red light district of Amsterdam. My life seemed so dull in comparison.

It only took me a day to read the three magazines I received each week. My mother sent me three books during my stay in Risley, two of which were about space research. My brother sent me a book, as did Mrs. Jones. I had asked my solicitor to send me a book titled 'Jane's Spaceflight Directory.' It was priced at thirty pounds and not due to come out until the month of my trial. For some reason I never received the book, which was to be paid for out of my savings, the control of which was in the hands of my solicitor. The second edition was to cost twice as much but by then I had given up with my solicitor on just about all matters. I was also mistakenly told by the hospital officers that I could no longer receive books as I was convicted. The truth was that the staff did not want inmates to have anything of value in their possession as thefts were common place.

The lighter moments at Risley were well worth recording. There were not many inmates who were Welsh, so Mr.Porky received plenty of ribbing, particularly concerning their sheep, which he managed to brush aside, if not gracefully then certainly with humour.

"It was the Romans who brought sheep to Wales, and not even the Romans could subdue us," Mr.Porky announced defiantly.

Someone would inevitably make a remark about sheep shagging.

"In all my life in the prison service I've only known Englishmen and Irishmen to do that." he said.

There was once the case of a man who shagged a pig. The doctor who interviewed him here, asked the inmate if it was a male or female pig.

The inmate replied, "It was a female pig of course, what do you think I am, queer?"

"As sure as I'm standing here, its true," said Mr.Porky.

There were inmates whose language and subject matter was a lot more foul, but modesty forbids me from writing it down. One of these inmates was called Arthur Ape. He was aged about twenty-five years, and suffered from chronic anxiety, resulting in an extrovert personality. He said he was in for a traffic offence, but somehow I doubted it. Arthur's personality was something no inmate on the ward could escape from. He would constantly talk out loud. Not bad you might think, except that every time he spoke he always talked about one subject, sex. He must have talked about every sexual perversion under the sun, from dawn to well past lights out. It was bad enough having to listen to children's cartoons and those down under soap operas beaming from the goggle box, without having to put up with a string of lewd remarks for hours on end. To make matters worse he went around the ward like a gorilla on heat, making the most revolting animal like noises from the deep recesses of his throat. This man belonged in a cell downstairs, or better still behind bars in a zoo. Surely it could not go on for much longer, I thought. Two or three weeks went by. It seemed like years, but instead of being sent down, something strange happened.

Initially Arthur could not be sent downstairs as all of the cells were full. There were at least eighteen inmates on the ward at that time, whilst the staff preferred only fifteen at most. Arthur took advantage of the situation by calling the staff every name under the sun. The hospital officer on duty at this time was Mr.Island, whom Arthur would constantly refer to by his nickname. Mr.Island was not the sort of person you fooled around with. He was difficult to know, and certainly did not have much of a sense of humour. Amazingly he put up with these insults, and then retaliated by returning the complements. Eventually a rapport developed between them. After a while you would have thought they were life long buddies. The matter escalated further when another inmate decided to join in the fun. His nickname was Tomahawk, He came from Cymru and like many other inmates, he had a drink problem. Whilst arguing with his wife, his next door neighbour came around, whom Tomahawk attacked with a hatchet and flare gun. He later got fifteen months imprisonment. Sober, he was a nice chap. Having two gorillas on the ward however, was far from funny.

There was another problem too. Ward A and ward B shared the same servery, which by this time was being controlled by ward B, who did their efficient best to hog all the food. Normally ward B was called out first, but on one occasion ward A got to the servery before them. It was gammon that day and normally well worth having, but on this occasion all the gammon slices were small. Looking behind the counter I saw another tray onto which the servery lads had put all the large slices, for ward B. Mealtime meant a great deal to inmates, since there was nothing else to look forward to. The feeling of hatred I had for those guys built up during the rest of the day, resulting in numerous fits, which by this time had become no more than body tremors.

On Friday, April 19th, I looked forward to curry at lunchtime on Fridays. I had steered clear of curry until I entered Risley. It was nowhere near as hot and spicy as one would get in a restaurant, but it was wholesome. On this particular occasion I got only a third of my normal share. I never bothered complaining to a member of staff as I had little confidence in the system. I well remember complaining to a hospital officer about one of the night watchmen playing his radio loud in the office whilst we were all trying to get some sleep.

"Leave it with me," said Mr.Pardon, after I had asked to make an official complaint.

The message was apparently passed on but the night watchman, known affectionately as The Dog, carried on playing his radio regardless. What can you do? March into the office one night and throw the radio out of the window? As for getting a fair share of food, the temptation of starting a fight with another inmate, could only lead to legal proceedings and loss of remission. As usual there was no way I could express my feelings. They remained bottled up resulting in numerous fits. Finally I asked Mr.Island for a transfer back downstairs, but he refused to take notice of my request. That left only two choices, cause trouble and be frog marched into cell thirteen, or go on hunger strike. I decided the latter with always the danger that the staff would take no notice. Fortunately after only refusing evening meal, I was put downstairs. That night I got my first real sleep for what seemed like ages, for unlike A ward there was no nearby bed from which someone would be snoring.

I spent the following day cleaning my cell. Having a green scouring pad, I even rubbed off the graffiti. It was a warm day. My body sweated profusely, whilst my mouth became very dry. I wondered what I would normally be doing on the outside on a midday Saturday. Undoubtedly having a drink. I intended to return to Birmingham after serving my prison sentence. I was a social drinker, normally going to city centre pubs on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening. I would also go for a drink on Saturday lunch times, and hopefully after my release I would do so again with some understanding friends. There were plenty of nice pubs in the city centre, but on a Saturday lunchtime we met at one of the worst. It was frequented by many Irish people including my mate Jim. He was quite a handsome fellow, but a victim of divorce and unemployment. He earned his living doing building work, but the harsh economic climate and his inability to settle down with anyone else, caused him to take a drug overdose a couple of years previously. Fortunately a friend got him to hospital in time. When I heard about it I simply did not know what to say to him. I could understand why he had done it, but you can hardly say 'better luck next time.' Could he understand what had brought me to my present circumstances? Somehow I doubted whether any of my friends in Birmingham would understand, as they simply had not gone through similar experiences.

I had met Jim through Jackie who was in a class all on her own. She was a primary school teacher in Hockley, whose job made up for the fact that she had no children. Whenever we met her eyes would light, up bringing life to my soul. I had known her for about eleven years, ever since I met her working as a barmaid in a heavy rock bar and bierkeller called Bogarts in New Street. It was eventually closed down by the establishment, for reasons which I failed to understand. Rock groups playing there, caused shoes to fall off the racks in the shop next door, so I was told. Regulars marched in the street protesting at its imminent closure, but close it eventually did. There was unfortunately no real substitute for Bogarts.

I liked Jackie very much. We were like brother and sister, though I doubt whether her husband thought that. It was inconceivable returning to Birmingham without Jackie. Birmingham, a city of almost a million people, came alive on a Friday and Saturday nights, as thousands of people seeking excitement, piled off the buses and made for their local. At sometime or other I must have been to all of them, including the gay pubs. Every so often the brewery would do them up, change the name, ban undesirable people whilst putting up the prices. Unfortunately they never seemed to get around to Jim's local, the Victoria.

There were the museum type pubs like the Pot of Beer near Aston University, which owing to its distant location I rarely went to. I visited the Barrel Organ opposite Digbeth Police Station quite a bit to listen to rock groups, one of which Bess, my mate lan operated the PA system for. In New Street I would frequent the Yard of Ale and Bar St. Martin, mainly because my mate Ellis would not go anywhere else, as it was close to New Street railway station where he worked. I had been going to these public houses many years when they were called the Tavern in the Town and the Mulberry Bush, blown up by the IRA at 8-15pm on Thursday, November 21st, 1974, killing twenty-one people. By chance I stayed at home that evening, having a bath then later listening to records. I heard the muffled explosions from my flatlet in Aston, but thought nothing of it at the time. At work the next day, the manager told me that my mother had phoned to see if I was alright. He did not tell me why. I was too busy to phone her back. It was only when I got home that evening and switched on TV news that I found out about the incident. Considering all the misery I was later to cause, maybe it would have been best if I had been blown to bits on that night. The Yard of Ale was an olde worlde type of pub as was its predecessor, the Yard of Ale, whilst the Bar St. Martin was a typical disco type of pub without dance floor. Some pubs you could sit outside like the Grapevine at the central library and the Longboat by the Birmingham Canal, which Karen and I would often visit. Birmingham had more miles of canal than Venice, one is constantly told, and according to my stepfather they smell slightly better.

Birmingham had plenty of night clubs and ballrooms. My favourite was the Opposite Lock. The theme to the decor being motor racing, giving the place a distinctive atmosphere. It was located just along the canal from the Longboat, at the Gas Street Canal Basin. This area was immortalized in the movie 'Take Me High' starring the singer Cliff Richards. I nearly always went to the night club on my own and left alone, although once I seem to remember taking Pam. We sat opposite a couple. The woman was very attractive with long flowing hair, wearing an evening dress which had a slit in it up to the thigh. I could not take my eyes off her. The man with her was smartly dressed but appeared uneasy. It was then that I noticed that whilst I was eyeing her up, she was eyeing me up. I suddenly realised that the woman was not his girlfriend and certainly not his wife. Unfortunately Pam reached the same conclusion at the same time, and immediately proceeded to drag me off to the bar before I got the chance to discuss financial matters.

For the night owls the all night 'buzz' service became more like an assault course on new years eve. With council rates in Birmingham twice those on Anglesey, with services to match, it was easy to see why life on the dole was better in the city. In Newtown, Birmingham, where I had once lived, the buses ran every ten minutes during the day and once an hour after 11 pm. Sports and recreation facilities abounded, as did social services.

Pam was a very attractive woman. During the six months we went out together I took her on excursions to see the steam powered Severn Valley Railway, Aberystwyth and Llandudno. She was not on the pill and would therefore get very worried about getting pregnant after we had made love. To put it bluntly, she gave me nothing but earache. I once took her to an advisory clinic on the subject. The offices were on the first floor. As we ascended the stairs Pam chickened out, pulling me back down. She felt terribly guilty about sex. I think I was the first, at least that was what she said. When we were not on the job she worked at a rather snooty jobcentre. She had a neurotic nature, which after six months was beginning to wear me down.

We use to meet at her bus stop in the city centre. She was always twenty minutes late, so in the end I use to allow for that. She told me that she did not want to do anything special on her eighteenth birthday so I left it at that. Come her eighteenth birthday, I turned up at the bus stop fifteen minutes 'late' as usual and there was Pam wearing an evening dress, fuming away and spitting venom. She had evidently invited her parents out for a meal with us. After waiting five minutes in the city centre for me, she had told her parents to go home. Her parents were rather nice people, unfortunately blessed with a cuckoo. Like their eldest daughter they were also civil servants. Pam's father was the manager of a DHSS office in Leamington Spa and had once been a bomb aimer during the war, a job which also required the ability to carry out unpleasant orders without question.

Unlike her mother, Pamela wanted more sexual experiences before marriage. One Sunday we failed to meet up. She went into a pub, got drunk with an architectural student from Hong Kong. Went back to his flat in Aston, and got raped, held prisoner for two nights, during which the two other flat mates did nothing to help her. Upon returning to work she was given an official warning for being absent. We split up. She went steady with the rapist. That's life. It took me a long time to get over loosing her, though I certainly never forgot her. We met for the first time in Bogarts. She was the friend of my girlfriend, Jill. I never got the chance to really know Jill as she soon left Birmingham to study for a degree in Newcastle, later to marry lan and move to London, from where we kept in touch. In a highly mobile society it is too easy to lose contact with friends. The older you become, the more you miss them. I wrote to Pam from Risley. She was one of the few people I knew, not to reply.

Within six months of Pam leaving me, I handed in my notice at work then spent five months on the dole. My job was monotonous, the working environment I found insulting, and the pay mediocre. The work place was a single storey, converted sweet factory. It had a pitched roof, under which hung hot water pipes as the sole source of heating. There was no partitioning, a lino tiled floor, whilst the only modern furniture was the AO sized draughting machine. I could not force myself to go to work. I was given an official warning for being absent. The manager banned me from doing interesting projects, replaced with clerical work. When I went contracting as a draughtsman I was to work in conditions even worse than that. In my opinion it was a deliberate policy of management, who wanted a perpetual turnover of labour, so that they could review wages downwards at regular intervals. HMG did nothing to improve working conditions, except from a safety perspective.

Without Pam my life had lost its meaning. I was to be without a girlfriend for at least one and a half years and drank heavily. I found life very frustrating during this period, not least because the couple in the flat opposite me were prancing around naked most evenings after coming home from the pub. I do not think they believed in curtains. Frustration reached new heights when the condensation on my window formed faster than I could wipe it away. The occupants of the top floor use to watch these antics from the landing window, giving them a gynaecologist's eye view. The day I left my job was the day these exhibitionists moved out, making my life very dull indeed.

The thought of that pint of beer on that hot day in Risley brought back many memories like these, some happy, but many sad. There was no beer in the hospital to make those memories less painful. That warm dry Saturday went by very slowly, finally being brought to a close by my tot of Prothiaden. Who loves me now? Oh Karen, I'm sorry.

A few nights later a bizarre incident occurred in the closed ward.

"Hey boss, come quick, there's a fire!" Shouted the inmate in the cell next to mine.

The pounding of the quickening footsteps down the landing got louder and louder. Three members of staff suddenly appeared outside my cell.

"I can't smell anything," I said.

The staff looked at me suspiciously, then looked in all the other cells but could not find any fire. Eventually they gave up and went to the office. They probably felt that they were having some kind of joke played on them, but nothing was said to that effect. A few minutes later however, there patience was to be tested again.

"There's a fire, come quick!" The same inmate shouted.

This time the staff came down the corridor more slowly. Oh dear I thought, they are going to kick the shit out of him if they fail to find anything this time. I could not see any smoke but I could detect a strange smell, which I could not explain. Evidently the 'fire' was coming from the cell diagonally opposite mine. One of the officers went into the cell.

"What did you do that for Wells?" Asked the officer.

One of the officers informed me that Wells had not set fire to his cell. He had in fact set fire to his own hair! I found it hard to believe. The next time I saw Bob Wells was in the exercise yard. His hair was so short that he looked like a concentration camp victim. It was impossible to feel any sympathy for him considering the reasons for his return to Risley. A couple of weeks later I asked a member of staff why Wells had burnt his own hair. The hospital officer believed that he had done it to change his appearance, as there would be two witnesses giving evidence at his trial. Wells had also reduced his food intake to achieve the same ends. Soon after that incident Wells was made a category A prisoner, so I never saw him in the exercise yard again, as cat A's always went on exercise alone.

It did not seem all that long ago when Bob Wells was being questioned by the lads in A ward concerning the sex attack on a mentally retarded girl. Now he was charged with murder. It was believed that whilst an inmate in a mental hospital he had somehow managed to obtain a knife. Entering the hospital grounds he met a female outpatient who was an epileptic and about the same age as my wife. Her naked body was found later. Wells was chief suspect, particularly as some of his clothes were found recently washed. In Risley he would make a point of talking to the female staff, no doubt to create the impression that he was harmless. Wells was probably the only inmate in that establishment that I really loathed.

I had serious doubts about whether Wells was mentally ill. I do not believe a person can commit a crime and know absolutely nothing about it. There must always be some realization that there is something wrong. I never saw signs of mental illness in him. Indeed he was a cunning person. Had he always been that way, or had medical help failed him, to the point where he felt he had no alternative but to become devious. As my own mental illness dragged on year after year I became disillusioned with my doctors, and certainly less revealing to them. Were I to kill again, would I be as co­operative as I was last time?

On Monday, April 29th I was sent up to B ward, which turned out to be deceptively quieter than A ward. The next day one of the inmates had an epileptic fit, keeled over and landed on his face, giving himself a beautiful black eye. Being an epileptic was certainly not funny. A few months before, an inmate had had a fit in the linen stores, breaking his jaw bone. There was blood oozing from his chin. It was not a pleasant sight. A member of staff had sent him up from the ground floor to get a set of gear. Being unable to find what he needed in such a jumbled maze, his brain became overloaded resulting in a fit.

By the end of my first week in B ward another inmate became ill. He was in a bed near the office. The previous night the Dog had had his radio blasting away as usual. Whether this had any influence on what had happened next is purely conjecture. The inmate not only could not get out of bed, but looked dead to the world. There was blood coming from his nose, whilst he appeared to be in the first stages of rigour mortise. The doctor was called in to look for signs of life. There was apparently no reflex action in the feet, nor elsewhere. The inmate was eventually carried off. I do not know what happened to him.

That same week I volunteered to keep the wash room and bathrooms clean. They obviously had not been cleaned properly for at least a month. Surprisingly the first job was to clean the mop. During the first few months at Risley I noticed scabs forming on my hands. Since I was a clean person I could not understand why they were forming. It eventually dawned on me that it was caused by the dirty wooden mop handles. These I would regularly clean with a scouring pad from then on. I also got some medical cream for my hands, which lasted throughout my term of imprisonment. After cleaning the mop in B ward the water felt as thick as soup. It took at least five mop buckets full of water to clean everywhere on that first day. I spent about four hours cleaning floors, walls, doors, four hand basins, two loose, a sluice and two baths. Now I could meditate in a clean environment, I thought. I had to prop a window open with a book to let some fresh air in. All but one of the window latches in the wash room were broken, resulting in the windows banging at night during violent storms. The taps on the hand basins dripped as the washers were warn out. Half the time the inmates did not bother to turn them off anyway.

I found the night watchmen extremely troublesome when it came to trying to get some sleep. Each one had their idiosyncrasies. Not only was the Dog playing his radio, but Lofty would be doing his cooking at 10pm, just as we were going to bed. The cooking smells from his frying pan would take hours to clear. Sometimes he would fry a couple of slices of stringy bacon, swimming in fat, whilst on another night it would be a huge slice of steak. Another night watchman, Boy George, would pace up and down the ward at all hours of the night, smoking his wretched pipe. I would be unable to breath let alone sleep. There were only two night watchmen I regarded as OK. Mr.Soft Shoe Shuffle had a small radio to listen to, which fortunately no one else could. He would do his rounds in his brothel creepers without disturbing anyone. As for Mr.Godfather, the first thing he did at lights out was to grab a couple of pillows and flake out in the office.

As for dealing with the Dog, Lofty and Boy George, the inmates in B ward were a timid lot. Everyone knew that for an individual to complain about the night staff's antics would be a waste of time. The trouble was that no one would back me up. Since most were only there for three months, it did not pay for them to rock the boat. They were a complacent bunch. Most of them would not even open their windows to let out the cooking smells and tobacco smoke, let alone the suffocating heat at times. I got the feeling that at night at least, they did not like fresh air. The pipe smoke would make my lungs feel heavy in the morning, whilst the lack of sleep made me feel like a zombie.

Boy George's pipe smoking habits reminded me of the Professor in A ward six months previously. He was a pipe smoker, the smell of which upset some of the lads. One day an inmate decided to get his own back by inserting some match heads into the bottom of the bowl of his freshly filled but as yet unlit pipe. A few minutes after the Professor lit up, the bowl erupted, and so did the expectant inmates. Unfortunately it did not stop him from smoking the damn thing.

It is my firm opinion that smoking is not just a filthy disgusting habit which ruins your health and sex appeal, but is also a sickness of the mind. From my observations at Risley of men rummaging through dustbins for dog ends, I can only conclude that the sooner its banned completely the better. It is not only a waste of money, but the reflection of a weak mind. The Arabs had the answer long before tobacco arrived on the scene. To keep hands occupied and the mind at rest with itself, they used worry beads. If it was good enough for Shake Your Money at OPEC talks, then it's good enough for prison inmates and staff. As moves to ban smoking from public places continued in Great Britain at this time, I felt certain that the practice of smoking tobacco would eventually die out, or that smokers would become social outcasts in the same way as most people shunned drug addicts.

The antics of the night watchmen, the shouting between wings, the loons banging away downstairs, the noise from inmates going to the toilet at all hours, plus the non-stop belching, farting and smoking by inmates, not to mention the stream of floodlighting through the windows, were not the only factors which kept inmates awake and on edge. If all these failed then the Home Office had a new secret weapon for ensuring that if the wages of sin were no longer death, then they sure as hell were going to remain close to it.

This new weapon was the latest fireproof and leak proof type of mattress. They were as hard as a boxer's punch bag and had as much life in them as a dead cat with rigour mortise. An inmate had to crush them with his fist or jump up and down on them in order to instil some bounce. Many times whilst working on the closed wards I was called upon to replace torn or soiled mattresses, with the new type from the stores. They were so heavy that I had to drag them along the floor. Tiring yourself out by dragging such a mattress was probably one of the few ways of getting a decent night's sleep on one.

During May 1985 I noticed some improvement in my condition. Comments like this in my diary occurred quite frequently, and reflected the constant hope that I would get better. But looking back at the situation two years later, I have to conclude that such thoughts were unfounded. My mind at this time became more tranquil, and I spoke to people more. I was afraid that I was enjoying my surroundings too much, by coming to terms with the rogues I was incarcerated with. To be fair, many of them were like me, victims of circumstance. I had great sympathy for those in for domestic disputes caused by a woman. It never ceased to amaze me how women could be so stupid as to provoke a man into killing them. Just because their husbands did not knock them around, they regarded them as weak minded. They never seemed to consider the possibility that their husband loved them too much, or regarded violence as an uncivilized and immature way of resolving differences. It does not take much courage to kill someone, but it can take a lot of self control not to. The human body, like glass, is very fragile. Hit it and its processing systems fragment. In many cases alcohol was also a contributing factor, whilst in others a scheming woman was the instigator. In the bed next to mine in B ward was a man whose case fell into both categories. On this particular day he was writing furiously to one of his friends. His name was Vince Reed, known as Fire Water to his mates.

"What are you writing Vince, the confessions of a nicked knickers nicker?" I asked.

Vince just laughed. Earlier that day the ground floor cleaner had given Vince a pair of knickers which he had found in the main ground floor office. Mr.Pluto had been on duty in that office the previous night. The mind boggled.

Vince was the warn out remains of an alcoholic. He would constantly belch and fart to the extent that it was like breathing in the bad breath of a dying whale. I had never come across anyone like him before. He possessed a constant urge to create noise, probably due to the effect of alcohol on his brain. Listening to him over the weeks was almost enough to put me off alcohol for life. He wrote about thirty-five letters to relatives and friends, but as far as I know he never received one reply. Evidently he had plenty of money, and had tried to procure friendship by buying people presents. He should have realised that all they wanted was for him to stop drinking alcohol, and become a decent citizen that they could respect. For Vince it was now too late. Even his family did not want to know him, for they had suffered enough. He had once worked behind the pressure shield on the Dartford Tunnel and later the Hong Kong Metro. The air pressure had seriously affected his legs for which he received substantial compensation and spare time, thereby promoting his pastime, drink and women.

Whilst under the influence of gin, and the evil influence of the female proprietor of a massage parlour, he had set fire to her partner's launderette, as a result of differences in a business settlement. During the ensuing fire, a couple living in the flat above panicked. During their escape the woman fell, sustaining serious back injuries from which she became paralysed. The concrete building however, contained the fire to the launderette. Vince's life now lay shattered before him, all because of alcohol and the stresses that made him drink heavily in the first place.

It was now Sunday morning as Vince and I started talking about the pathetic Sunday services in the prison chapel.

"Its just loud pop groups, films and pathetic singing. The services would be a lot more interesting if we had the Devil Priest putting on the show," I said casually. No sooner had I said this than an inmate I knew only as Taff, quickly moved away to the far end of the ward.

"It's him!" Vince said, pointing at Taff.

That was the first time I realised who Taff was, as the photographs in the newspapers showed a much younger man. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties, a short man with grey hair, who spoke with a quiet voice.

After a couple of days I finally plucked up enough courage to talk to him. Devil Priest, or should I say Denzil Williams, shared the same table as me during meal times. He spoke with a Welsh accent, his parish being in a small coastal town in that country, but had served in God's ministry in Liverpool, Birmingham and Coventry, before ending up back in the 'land of song.' In a conversation I had with him he told me that he had cut off the penis' from three corpses and photographed two of them, and that these incidents took place in 1977 approximately. The incident came to light when the local police started investigating a poison pen letter, the hand writing of which was similar to that seen in a bible. The police asked Denzil if they could search his home and he agreed. During the search of a book case a photograph of a human penis came to light.

Denzil maintained that there were not tonnes of pornography in the house. The newspapers implied that he led a homosexual life style, living with a man whilst another had committed suicide. He stated that he lived on his own in a house belonging to the church, and that a distant relative had died. He tried to explain to me why he used flaming serpents to cover up the corrosion on the bodywork of his car, but why he did not use spray paint like any normal person, I still could not figure out.

He had paid for his own defence, which came to about five thousand pounds. He was contemplating an appeal which would also cost a considerable sum. Personally, I thought he had got off lightly, eighteen months for writing malicious letters, and two years for mutilating bodies. The sentences were to run consecutively. The crimes that he committed were so obscure that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had trouble finding charges to fit the misdemeanour's. It was this technicality that he wanted to base his appeal on. Considering his trusted position within the community, and the profession and beliefs which he betrayed, I was surprised not only by the light sentence, but the fact that his associates within the church visited him. To be a practising Christian obviously is not easy at times.

Surprisingly, I found Denzil to be a nice bloke. We had one thing in common in that we had visited many of the same tourist attractions in North Wales. I asked him why he had done it. Evidently four doctors had interviewed him. He had also undergone an EEG and brain scan, whilst at Rainhill Mental Hospital he had undergone other tests. There was nothing physical to indicate why he should have behaved that way. The doctors evidently thought that he had done it due to overwork with insufficient human interaction in his life. As a man of the cloth he worked seven days per week with little if any holidays. All of these factors coupled with the mental stress from his job and the influence of pornography, without anyone to really talk to about 'his' problems, caused him to go off the rails. In a few moments of weakness he had destroyed his personal life, career, his life savings and his self respect. Would his relatives understand? I think he was relieved to talk to me about it. He certainly had no plans to return to his parish in mid Wales, but he did have plans to retire in the land of the red dragon, but exactly where, I am not saying.

The days rolled on by. In the relatively fine weather, inmates painted the outside of the hospital. Working from a vertical tower made of scaffolding, they would open the windows and beg for orange squash and tobacco. Some inmates were stupid enough to give them it even though all inmates at Risley received the same basic pay. News stories were broadcast on television only to fade into a hazy memory a few days later. One incident that did not fade so easily was the fire in the wooden stadium at Bradford City Football Ground. Most of the lads were watching the match live on television.

"There's a fire in the stadium," said the announcer casually as I walked past the dining area.

I turned to look, and like most people in that room and in that stadium, I just looked. We all laughed. We couldn't feel the heat radiating onto people's heads. We could not sense the terror that the fire's rate of progress created, and above all thank God, we could not see the spectators being burned alive at the back of the stand, where the exits were locked. No one was brought to trial for negligence. Evidently not all crimes were recognized as such by the state. A car driver who killed a pedestrian on a pedestrian crossing, or through the drinking of alcohol, could expect a year or two in prison, but burn to death fifty or more people, partly as a result of accumulated rubbish under the stadium, and its nobody's fault. As a result of this disaster, fire standards at football grounds were to be improved, to the extent that many stands had to be rebuilt, whilst facilities at other sports venues such as cricket grounds, were ignored. Such was the pathetic way in which bureaucratic government managed Great Britain.

At this time it was revealed in government statistics that for every job vacancy there were forty-two youngsters leaving school. In Scotland and Wales the figures were higher, one hundred and forty-four and one hundred and twenty-nine respectively. I could not understand why the government compiled such statistics when Mrs. GG did her damnedest to ignore them. Unemployment was to cost the Earth. In the financial year 1984/5 unemployment and supplementary benefits were to amount to seven point four billion pounds, lost national insurance contributions five point two billion pounds, lost income tax five point seven billion pounds and lost industrial revenue tax one point six billion pounds, making a total of nineteen point nine billion pounds. The cost of attending to para suicides, mental illnesses, stress related illnesses, together with crime and punishment related to unemployment, would push this figure to even dizzier heights. The cost of destroying a generation's opportunity to contribute new ideas, and the destruction of their drive, a view which would no doubt be passed on to their children, would be incalculable. The young were to become second class citizens superfluous to requirements, except when Great Britain had to fight a war. There seemed to be only two things they were entitled to partake in in society, the right to sign on the dole, and the right to vote. In reality, none of the political parties at that time were worth voting for, since none believed in the establishment of a full employment society, only in the creation of one or two million more jobs at most. As a result, the British rarely appeared to take democracy seriously. The responsibilities placed on the shoulders of the electorate were ignored by many.

"I'll vote labour because our families always voted labour," say some.

"I'll vote conservative because I'm all right thanks," say others.

Whilst other voters voted for change, for changes' sake. This then was what many of the electorate did. The election manifestos and previous government record were largely ignored, whilst smiles often won the day. Few of the electorate were liberal minded, let alone Liberal voters. The creation of the Social Democratic Party, to break the mould of British politics, seemed a brave but naive approach. Nothing short of revolution, be it a violent revolution, or a revolution of the mind, was going to change the political and hopefully constitutional face of Great Britain. British history had shown this to be so throughout the centuries. There was no reason to assume that it would be any different now. Civil unrest in India a year after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Tamil massacres in Sri Lanka, Soviet inflicted genocide in Afghanistan and the disintegration of Lebanese society by civil war and invasion, were all reminders at this time of the fragility of democracy.

On May 30th, 1985, Wayland Prison at Watton, Norfolk was opened at a cost of sixteen and a half million pounds, catering for four hundred and sixty-eight inmates. Each prisoner would have his own cell with en suite toilet facilities. Wayland Prison was to be the first of sixteen new prisons to be opened by 1991, at a total cost of three hundred and fifty million pounds, plus two hundred million pounds to be spent on modernizing older prisons. The annual prison budget now stood at six hundred million pounds, of which three quarters was staff related costs.

A quarter of the prison population was on remand, 3,500 inmates in shit heaps like Risley. Great Britain had one of the largest prison populations for its size, in Western Europe. There were now nineteen inmates on the ward. One of the hospital officers told me that there were now four to a cell in the Hornby Hotel. The most overcrowded establishment in the country was thought to be Leeds Prison, designed for six hundred and thirty inmates, it now held thirteen hundred and twenty. Descriptions of prison life in Brazil at this time, sent a shiver down my spine. Prisoners sharing cells drew lots to decide who was to die, in order to create more room for the rest. I hoped that none of the nutters in here got any of those ideas. Prison building in Great Britain at this time was one of the few growth industries, increasing by 176% in the last ten years. I could not help thinking that even more prisons would be needed if the government's proposed social security reforms turned into swinging cuts.

I could hardly believe my eyes when on Monday, June 3rd at 11am I spied an intrepid fellow actually cleaning the hospital windows, on the outside. Considering the state of them, I looked upon it as a bloody miracle. The weather was great that day, so that afternoon it was a pleasure to be sent outside for exercise. The staff told us not to sit on the tarmac as it was melting under the sun's heat. Dug up by inmates heels, it would then get onto prisoners jeans, or mark the hospital floor. It was my first opportunity to get a sun tan that year, so I lay amongst the long grass in the middle of the courtyard. The inmates in the cells overlooking the courtyard called out cuckoo, cuckoo, in an attempt to get our backs up. Scotty was doing somersaults in the long grass to cheers from the wings.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" Shouted the lads from the overlooking cells.

"I bet you haven't got grass in your exercise yard," Shouted out Paul Atkins to the lads on the wings.

I was later to get to know him better.

"Shut up yea four eyed twat!" Came the swift reply.

"Now, now, let's not get onto first name terms until we've been properly introduced," Paul shouted.

And so it went on and on, neither side giving an inch.

A very large trench was being dug, about four hundred metres long on the other side of the perimeter wall. On the site were two large mechanical diggers, two mobile cranes with lorries coming and going for weeks. There was a great deal of speculation as to what it was all for. Some said it was simply a land reclamation scheme, whilst others said it was a mass grave for Liverpool supporters, following the Brussels tragedy. No sooner were the holes made than they were filled with rubbish. It had become a council refuse tip. English clubs were banned from world soccer following the diagnosis at Brussels. The ban on Liverpool was to last years.

One afternoon the inmates watched a school's programme about child birth, on television. After the climax there was a rush to the loo for 'relief.' I do not find scenes of child birth at all erotic, on the contrary, I find it off putting. If I was a woman I do not think I could go through with pregnancy. A week later the inmates watched the same programme again. I thought it a pity that some inmates could not be artificially inseminated as a means of behavioural control.

B ward gradually changed its character. I moved out of the corner bed partly because I was sick of Vince's belching, farting and walkies at five o' clock in the morning. My new bed was the third nearest the television. It was not ideal, but there was simply nowhere else for me to go. The strain of having to put up with nine hours of television each day, soon became apparent, as my fits recurred frequently.

Mr.Bump started his tour of duty in B ward each morning by switching on the television at 9am. I was not amused. On the night of June the sixteenth, I found the strain really heavy going. The Dog was on night duty. He was a cantankerous bastard in my opinion. He did not give a damn about anyone but himself, and refused to listen to others. That night he leaned back in his chair listening to radio three, I think, whilst all the inmates were trying to get some sleep. He would replace the orange night light on the office wall with a really bright white one, which flood lit the ward. On a couple of occasions he even unscrewed the shades from the wall, in order to fit his bulb. A special screwdriver would have to be brought up from the ground floor office by the other night watchman. That night he even switched the lights on in the wash room, after I had gone in there to turn off the lavatory cistern. There were times when I felt like throwing a bucket of cold water over him, and flushing his radio down the loo, or worse.

The following morning I was predictably very tired. I had only got three hours sleep at most. Something had to be done. I decided to write to my solicitor, enclosing a letter for the home secretary. It never occurred to me to petition him direct. Either I was unaware of the system, or I had no confidence in it, or my brain was simply too muddled, whilst under the affects of Prothiaden. A solicitor's letter on the other hand, was the only letter that would not be read by the staff, as it could be sealed before posting.

I also wrote a letter to the doctors which stated;

I never delivered this letter. My solicitor wrote to me stating that he had contacted the senior medical officer, Dr.Shrunk, about my letter to the home secretary, but I heard no more, for no sooner had I written the letters than I was moved back downstairs.

I think my transfer downstairs, on the day that the space shuttle Discovery was launched, was because I had refused to take any more Prothiaden. My move simply reinforced my belief that drugs were used as a means of controlling inmates and protecting staff, rather than to cure. I had serious concerns about whether my tinnitus, that high pitched whistling noise in my inner ear which had been going on for months, was caused by the stress of living in Risley, the constant noise, or the effects of a years treatment with Prothiaden.

The previous Wednesday I had been interviewed by three doctors and male nurses from North Wales Mental Hospital, Denbigh. My probation officer from Bangor was also present, although I did not recognize him at the time. It was a long interview, during which I was asked whether I would like to finish the rest of my sentence at Risley. The thought horrified me.

"I'm sick of these bloody nutters in my ward," I said.

I was of course referring to the night staff, tramps and other misfits, of which few suffered from a mental illness. The statement was more a sign of exasperation with the conditions at Risley. I was sick of the noise, lights, lack of privacy, smoking at night and over crowding. Surely a proper hospital was not like this. I got the feeling that the people interviewing me really thought that this was a hospital.

There were people wandering around the open wards who, if not mental were certainly on the verge of it. They were neurotic inmates whose violent nature was accepted as normal within the community they came from, meaning Merseyside in the main. I kept well away from them. Their condition reminded me of an incident which occurred at my in-laws home about three years earlier.

Whilst sitting in my in-laws lounge, some relatives of their's arrived from Liverpool. It was I believe, my father-in-law's brother accompanied by his wife and two young sons. Glyn was showing one of the boys a ballpoint pen which incorporated a digital timer. The boy, not more than six years of age, was handling the pen when he accidentally dropped it on the carpet. As Glyn bent down to pick it up, the young lad gave him a bunch of fives to his north and south. It shocked all of us. The parents were obviously not to blame, but I could not help wondering what the conditions in the community and particularly in their local school were like. Like many people before them and since, this family moved out of Liverpool, in this case to the Wirral. Many families were obviously not so fortunate. Central and regional government indifference or incompetence, and the lack of private investment which follows in the wake of government investment, leads to poverty, frustration, resentment, violence and a neurotic community. The violence becomes engraved onto the mind. A strengthening of the brains defence mechanism takes place, which to all normal circumstances overreacts, becoming a threat to society. It perpetuates the violent society from which it has emerged.

There were many minds like that in prison, but I did not include myself as one of them, as I had never believed in violence as a means of solving a problem, although my other self would certainly disagree. Anyway, near the end of the interview with the doctors from Denbigh, I asked them how long it would be before I was transferred. They told me that the head of the department was on holiday, and that he would probably like to see me before any further steps were taken. This was likely to be in the next four weeks, I was told. Later whilst talking to Tomahawk, who had been in Denbigh at one time, I got the impression that I had actually been talking to the head of the department there.

There was to be no interview in the coming weeks. What had happened to my transfer to Park Lane? Tomahawk described Denbigh as a large old building, with large grounds but without a perimeter wall. In the main, it consisted of open wards. It did not sound as if it was much better than Risley, although Tomahawk had liked it there. Since it was a less secure place, maybe the authorities thought I was not dangerous enough to go to Park Lane. I did not know what to make of it all. The answers to my questions were to be long in coming, and even today I am not satisfied that I have received a full explanation.

I was now in cell number ten. Thatcher's den, on the south wing. On the same wing was Bob Wells, who although a category A inmate, had more freedom than I. He frequently patrolled the landing like a creeping Jesus. My cell was the usual shit heap. I could barely see out of the murky windows, whilst the dust stuck to the window bars like growing coral, or dead man's fingers. There was no locker for me to put my belongings into, whilst everything stank. It was obvious that another massive clean up was called for, but I was too tired to do it that day. I ate my evening meal whilst seated at my bed, crapped in my piss pot, then tried to get to sleep. It was not to be.

Jim O'Hare, had also been moved to the south wing, and now occupied the cell opposite mine. O'Hare usually mumbled a great deal to himself, but on this occasion he was being taunted into making even greater sounds, by an inmate called Noel Matthews, who occupied the cell diagonally opposite mine. Matthews was a sadist outside as well as inside prison. He got a great deal of pleasure out of tormenting O'Hare, something which the cat A screws and hospital officers did nothing to stop. The sickening dialogue, accurately reproduced here (contemporaneously), was as follows:

"Come on, get 'em off!" Matthews cried.

"Fuck off yea cunt," replied O'Hare.

"Come on, get them skids off," repeated Matthews.

"Go away yea stinking cunt," said O'Hare.

"They're full of shit!" Matthews shouted.

"Yea dirty stinking twat!" O'Hare shouted, who by now had been well and truly worked up.

"Get in the stripped cell," Matthews laughed.

"Go and stick yea fucking [inaudible], up yea fucking arse, yea cunt!" 0'Hare cried in defiance.

"Slop out O'Hare!" Matthews exclaimed in delight.

"Go and get yea dirty sweaty knickers off, yea cunt," said O'Hare, returning the complement.

"Come on!" Matthews said, knowing that it would not take much encouragement to keep O'Hare shouting from then on.

"Get 'em off, dirty twat, dirty this," O'Hare mumbled, his brain by now in an obvious state of mental disorder.

"Come on Warrington Road!" Matthews shouted, his trump remark now played.

"Let me out, I wanna go home, Go out the gate, turn left, walk down the Warrington Road to Kirkby, then Liverpool to cash me giro," said O'Hare mumbling on and on.

The taunting of O'Hare continued for ages. Finally his sadism sated, Matthew's mind would find something else to amuse itself with. Was there an ounce of sanity in 0'Hare's brain, crying out to be recognized and respected? If there was, then taunting O'Hare was certainly an act of cruelty.

The next day I woke up early, having slept slightly better than the previous night, but I still had a slight headache. Was this due to lack of sleep, or a withdrawal symptom, as a result of not taking my Prothiaden, I wondered. Anyway, the best way out of that problem was not to think about it. I therefore got down to cleaning the cell. It was unfortunately a warm day, so by mid morning the sweat was pouring off me. I had a mop bucket and ordinary plastic bucket, both full of hot water, plus all the usual cleaning gear. This was the third cell I had cleaned from top to bottom. I had obviously learned from previous experience, as by midday I had completed the task, and being pleased with my work, the headache was no longer apparent.

I returned to my reading of the Paris Air Show report. The newspaper's revealed the latest in the TWA airliner hijacking at Beirut, plus the belated discovery by police, of a torture chamber in California where at least twenty-five people were thought to have been murdered, then cremated. I was trying to get well, whilst all around me insanity reigned. Surrounding me was my clean cell, my clean world, a defiant symbol signifying that I was not prepared to be swept up into the melting pot of depravity and apathy that I witnessed all around me.

In Risley I was an exception. Even the staff who did not know me would look at me strangely, as I enthusiastically cleaned my cell, no doubt thinking we've got a right one here. I will never forget my first arrival at Risley. I stripped naked in front of a prison officer seated behind a desk. He was filling in the necessary details about me on a form. He asked me the usual questions, name, age.

"Distinguishing marks?" Asked the prison officer.

"None," I replied.

"No tattoos or scars?" He asked.

"No none," I said.

In fact I was very much an enigma. No tattoos, no scars, no birthmarks, no poxy face, no scabs and no sores. Physically I was unblemished, and looked considerably younger than most inmates of my age. I had never had a serious illness, except mumps and measles as a child. I had never had VD, no gonorrhoea, no herpes, and no syphilis. Having been in the merchant navy for four years, taking precautions came naturally. I had at various times in my life been inoculated against poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, whilst at Risley I now wished I had been vaccinated against every other pox going, judging by the state of my surroundings. I dreaded the thought of catching hepatitis B, C or AIDS, not to mention pneumonia, owing to the cold damp weather and poor ventilation.

When I left school I was very naive regarding the precautions one should take concerning the prevention of disease. I remember one incident whilst at sea on my first ship. We were required to grease the wire cables on the ship's derrick. Since I had to write everything down in my journal, I asked the mate what kind of grease was used.

"Crab grease," the chief officer replied.

Now the companies grease products had very strange sounding names, so I did not think any more of it. That evening I diligently wrote down in my journal how we had used crab grease. The following Sunday morning the captain read my journal as usual. He was not amused. Crab grease was evidently used for prevention and treatment against the crab louse, phthirus pubis, found in infected pubic hair, and transmitted by sexual contact. I learned fast after that indoctrination.

That evening O'Hare was talking to himself as usual. He went on and on and on, for at least two hours, with the occasional inmate joining in, though I think by now most of the inmates were sick of it.

"Slop out! Empty the pot! Let me out!" O'Hare would shout, over and over again, the latter remark was sure to receive a negative response.

After two hours of it I was getting a headache, whilst feeling the urge to be physically sick. It was no joke. During most of the day the flap on 0'Hare's door was bolted shut, so that he could not annoy anyone, but with a change of staff the flap was lowered, enabling O'Hare to take his revenge. O'Hare kept asking for Mr.Flight for some reason, but he was not on duty. Instead we had lovable Mr.Stone.

Finally, Mr.Boxer went over to 0'Hare's cell door, and commenced talking to him quietly. This I thought was worth watching, as I had never seen Mr.Boxer use tact before. I could not make out what he was saying, as it was so soft, but it appeared to calm O'Hare down, at least momentarily.

"I wanna empty me piss pot! I want Mr.Flight!" O'Hare shouted.

"For fuck sake shut up yea cunt," said Mr.Boxer.

That was more like Mr.Boxer, I thought.

"It's seven o'clock. You slop out at five o'clock, and Mr.Flight's gone home to have a wank, or he's shagging his misses!" Mr.Boxer shouted for all to hear, with obvious despair in his voice.

I was beginning to cheer up.

"I wanna empty me piss pot!" O'Hare exclaimed.

"I haven't got the fucking key," shouted Mr.Boxer.

Realizing there was no alternative but to be nice, Mr.Boxer lit a cigarette, then gave it to O'Hare. The scene was almost touching, but quite frankly, I wished someone would strangle the noisy bastard! Fortunately, the trick with the cigarette worked, bringing peace to the ward. There were no straight jackets and padded cells at Risley, but worst of all, there were no sound proof cells either. The reluctance to use drugs (or was it indifference?), and the poor staff communications at all levels, led me to believe that Risley was the last place on Earth where the mentally ill should have been housed.

There was no doubt in my mind that 0'Hare's condition was now considerably worse than it had been on the other wing. I also had the feeling that I was less tolerant now than I had been then. I had noticed that near the end of my interview with the doctors from Denbigh, the previous week, I had been trembling in speech and body, in particular my legs, as if in a mild form of shock. Years later I learned that it was a symptom of anxiety. Whilst at Risley I thought that my thirteen month stay was getting the better of me. The thought of being carried out of Risley a gibbering wreck, like a long grey haired prisoner from a medieval dungeon, sent the shivers through me. I was always aware that at the end of my prison sentence, the authorities could always write out a medical order designed to keep me behind bars permanently. As the months ticked by, and my release date got nearer, the incentive to converse with the doctors about my mental condition vanished. I realised that I had to grasp every comical situation, and use it as a metaphorical life jacket upon which my sanity would thrive.

I went to bed that night listening to the howling screams and banging from inmates on the wings. Evidently a soccer match was in progress on the radio. My brain felt numb. I was unable to feel any emotion. It was as if my brain was floating on a sea of insanity. Somehow I dropped off to sleep. At 5am, rays of sunlight entering my cell, woke me up. It also woke up another inmate.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! In rapid succession, as fists pounded on a cell door. The blows were so rapid and numerous, you would have thought there was an octopus in there wearing boxing gloves. The inmate soon settled down to sleep again, but unfortunately I did not. The daylight, plus the anticipation of more noise, kept me awake. Eventually the fire alarm bell rang at 6-45am.

During his rounds that morning, Dr.Sauce was surprised to see me in a cell. The accompanying hospital officer explained to him that I had been brought downstairs, because of the letter I wrote to the home secretary.

That morning I washed my shirt and underwear, as I no longer had direct access to the linen stores, whilst the inmates who ran it were none too keen to come down to the cells, to exchange our clothes and linen. I washed my underwear in a bucket of hot water and disinfectant, which I later used to clean the cell again. Everything smelt grand. I then decided to straighten out the bed, quite literally. Instead of springs the bed consisted of a steel wire mesh, welded to a steel bed frame. At least it had been welded originally, but someone heavy had been using it as a trampoline, causing the mesh to sag considerably, to the point where it was like sleeping on a camel's hump.

Although I straightened out the mesh, the twenty by three millimetre steel reinforcing strips that spanned the frame in two places, producing the humps, could not be straightened. How they had been bent in the first place I could not imagine. I decided that for the moment at least, the bed would have to stay as it was.

We had exercise period that afternoon. No one had cut the grass in the courtyard so far that year. It now stood half a metre high in places. Lying in the grass, trying to get a sun tan, was the closest I could get to a state of meditation. The time was always all too short. Later, evening dinner consisted of spaghetti, cheese flavoured mashed spud, four slices of bread and a sickly looking rock cake. The spaghetti and mashed spud were unusually good, so I gave the rock cake to the birds. Moments later there occurred an awful lot of squawking outside my window. There was a group of starlings milling around the bread, and one of them was feeding a bird much larger than itself. The thought occurred to me that it may have been a cuckoo, being fed by its adoptive parent. There were enough cuckoos in the hospital, without having them squawking outside my cell window, I thought.

The call of nature arrived and I did not have a locker in my cell, to provide a screen from the eyes of the ever watchful staff. There were two cat A screws midway along the landing in addition to the hospital officers in the office. The screws were guarding Noel Matthews. He was the ringleader of a gang who tried to emulate the Kray brothers, by sadistically killing two young men in the Peak District. Matthews got life with a recommendation that he serve at least twenty-five years. The trial had been a few months previously, as he was now on trial for head butting a prison officer, I believe. Matthews would peer through the bars in his cell door, with a smirk on his face, as if to say, if you get too close its your fault. He bore a striking similarity to my mate Allan on Anglesey, making me realise that you cannot recognize a criminal type by appearance alone. The female deputy governor, known to the staff as the 'screeching owl', and her cronies, would visit him twice daily, treating him with fraternizing respect. I got the feeling it was psychological warfare, in an attempt to stem off further attacks.

Anyway, the call of nature had to be answered, so there I was sitting in the corner of my cell, looking up at the door, whilst defecating into my plastic potty, hoping that no one would see me. Sure enough a nose protruded through the bars. It was Mr.Gravy. Perhaps he would like to hold it for me, but he disappeared before I could say anything.

The day seemed to be going well, but there was no let up inside my brain. The high pitched whistling noise had started up inside my head again. I had not taken Prothiaden for four days, so was it the absence of this which caused the noise? Mr.Flight had told me that it was caused by high blood pressure in the brain, but how could it be when I actually had low blood pressure? Why did the whistling start after I had been reading for sometime, or get louder after I had gone to bed, or migrate to the inner ear after I had been lying in one position for ages? Why is it that I cannot remember what I am reading?

It was at this time that a cat A screw told me that the noise was called tinnitus, and came from the inner ear. A relative of his had it, but unfortunately there was no cure. What caused me to lash out with my fists at the air around me? What was creating the floaters in my eyes? These questions would worry me as I mulled over them time and again. I never asked the doctors as they never seemed to tell me anything. In prison there was no one to turn to for the answers. I would constantly look for answers amongst the medical articles in New Scientist, the only source of medical knowledge I had access to. The latest medical research into the workings of the human brain was listed there. It all made very heavy reading, but one thing was clear, scientists were a long way off in unravelling its secrets, let alone knowing how to put right what was wrong.

I had damaged my eyesight during a partial eclipse of the sun in November 1984, whilst still in A ward. Jock, the hitch-hiking Glaswegian who killed a queer, convinced me in my drugged state, that it was quite safe to look directly at the sun through a small hole in a piece of paper. This I attempted to do, making my eyes water. I soon discovered that it was easier to look at the sun through the thin bottom of a plastic mug, but by then the damage to my eyes had been done. In my drugged state, all the warnings I had heard from Patrick Moore during the televised astronomy series Sky at Night, had counted for naught. Since there was no optician at Risley, getting advice on the subject was impossible.

As I went to bed that evening, I noticed that the starlings and sparrows had still failed to penetrate the rock cake. I wondered what I would do tomorrow. Therapeutic work I had done by cleaning my cell twice. Sunbathing had been the nearest I could get to meditation. I had resumed my exercises, which I always did whilst in a cell, twenty trunk curls and twenty press ups each evening, but no more as I had never been enthusiastic about sport and exercise, much to my cost. I weighed a mere fifty-seven kilogrammes, and for a height of one hundred and sixty-eight centimetres, I certainly was not overweight. On the contrary, there was always the danger that I would end up like the sparrows outside, so to speak, as I never received enough food to do work, let alone exercise. Lying in bed that night, I could feel the stress around my body, like a steel mesh drawing tighter and tighter. My brain also started to ache on the right side only. I must get a decent nights sleep this time, I thought, but it was to elude me. The more I thought about sleep, the longer I stayed awake. We had a particularly talkative guard that night. He seemed to be talking the inmates to sleep, one by one, ending with Matthews. He was obviously desperate for someone to talk to, as he spoke to Matthews for hours, finally trotting off to the office at about 2am. After that, I could hear a transistor radio blaring away from somewhere, whilst occasionally a loon from the other closed ward would start ranting and raving. By comparison, a pneumatic drill would sound mild.

I woke up at about six-thirty. It was a Thursday, as O'Hare was only too willing to remind everyone.

"Tuesday, Wednesday,,,,,,,,,, Thursday today!" 0'Hare would shout gleefully.

Matthews of course, would try and convince him that it was some other day. My wife did the same when I first met her, as her brain struggled over a period of months to remember the month, the day, then finally the date. Yes their was a sane part to 0'Hare's brain, struggling to be recognized. I could not help but feel sorry for him. He certainly did not get the sort of devotion that I gave my wife.

A few minutes later the bell rang in another new day, with uncalled for enthusiasm. I tried to sleep on without success. I did not clean my cell that day, as it was not dirty. Instead I spent the morning browsing through my magazines. I had been unable to get my hands on a newspaper since the previous Sunday. I had already read everything in my magazines once, whilst the next delivery was not due until Saturday or Monday. After lunch I slept for an hour, hoping my headache would go away. It did, but something unexpected was to bring it back. At one o'clock we all went outside for exercise period. I was just about to lie down in the grass when my name was called out. What had I done wrong now, or perhaps it is another interview, I thought, as I was led back into the hospital.

Outside the ground floor library stood one of the prison chaplains, holding a letter. He beckoned me into the small library where we sat down.

"I want you to read this letter, now," he said.

The letter was from my mother. Evidently her father, my grandfather, had died the previous Sunday, in his sleep at the age of ninety-three. Two weeks previously he had gone with my parents to the seaside resort of Bournemouth. During their stay there, the weather had changed for the worst. After returning home he developed bronchitis. He was admitted to the local hospital, where he appeared to improve, and very much enjoyed watching the trooping of the colour on television, in celebration of the queen's official birthday. He had lived a long life, and had been married over sixty years. In his youth he had joined the British army, serving in Ireland and northern France and Belgium in world war one. He returned from the trenches of northern France, but his brother did not. He was always a great critic of British society, and his close relatives dreaded his lectures on the subject. He kept his faculties right up to the end, and his humour, with a little help from me.

His wife had died four years previously, having suffered from osteoporosis and dementia for years. Having died shortly after an operation on her hip, he felt guilty at having agreed to her being moved, instead of getting home help. The guilt and the stress over the circumstances surrounding her death deeply affected him. I wrote to him from Anglesey, hoping that my carefully chosen words would bring him out of his depression. He was deeply touched by my letter. It did the trick.

My grandfather, or rather gramp as he was called, lived for many years on a miserly state pension, having refused to bow to a means test for supplementary benefit. He had done his bit in two world wars, and was hence determined to retain his self respect. He had not seen me during those last sixteen months. I wondered whether my absence had changed his opinion of me in that time. His funeral cost five hundred and eighty-four pounds, of which the DHSS contributed fifteen pounds.

The formalities over, I stepped out of the library. An inmate was cuddling his spouse in the hospital visiting room. It made me feel even more lonely. I walked out into the courtyard, where the exercise period was still in progress, lay face down in the long grass, under the warm sun, and cried. As I wrote to my parents that evening, Matthews was still taunting O'Hare. My headache returned, and so did a feeling of nausea, the latter was something which I was to live with for years.

I slept on and off throughout the night, the ward being disturbingly quiet. The morning was cold, wet and windy. It was classic funeral weather. At a quarter to two that afternoon, Friday, June 21st, in a medieval church, the funeral service took place, followed by cremation. Despite O'Hare and the noise from the screws portable radios, at the appointed time my thoughts went out to those solemn proceedings, as my mother had requested. I was there in mind if not body. My other relatives would not be told why I was not there, only that I could not get away, which was true. That afternoon I received a letter from my solicitor, asking for my permission to hand over the keys of the bungalow to the building society. My wife's divorce would evidently be granted on July 3rd, with the decree made absolute six weeks later. All in all it was a hard day. The longest day of all the longest days of my life.

The following night O'Hare was at it again. Why his jaw never seized up I will never know. He was put in a stripped cell for the night, in the desperate hope of keeping him quiet. Mr.Lonelyheart was whispering to Matthews again, in the dark. Why most of the staff wanted to talk to such a sadistic killer, I could not understand. Maybe they secretly wanted to be murderers themselves. I could see it now. The inmates would wake up in the morning to find another freshly dug plot of soil, amongst the tall grass, and a much quieter atmosphere. Somehow I just could not see the staff being that keen. My personal thoughts on the subject were less drastic. I had visions of praying to God.

"Dear God," I would say, "Please send O'Hare away for just one night, so that we can all get a decent nights kip. Send him to entertain the heroic men of the British Antarctic Survey." (The nights are six months long there.)

As for Matthews, I later learned that he had a reputation for being a homosexual, blackmailing inmates who had intimate relations with him. As for me, I refused to talk to the cretin.

Whilst Mr.Lonelyheart was talking to Matthews, a buzzer sounded and a red light came on outside one of the stripped cells. The alarm was from the stripped cell occupied by O'Hare. After the screw had answered it twice, it became obvious that what O'Hare wanted was absolute silence. For once we were in agreement. Eventually, after apparently burning out the alarm, by keeping his finger pressed on it constantly, O'Hare resorted to throwing his shoes against the walls and door. His shoes were then taken off him, as he was transferred to another cell. In the other cell he found a mug with which to bang against the door. It was quickly taken off him, so he then banged against the door with his fists.

"For fuck' sake shut up," screamed another inmate.

Eventually 0'Hare's bare knuckles gave up, and silence reigned. I was then able to get some long awaited slumber.

At this time we had an alcoholic drying out in one of the stripped cells. You would have thought he would dry out quietly. This he did during the day. At night he would shout out like a regimental sergeant major. He would shout out numbers, as if counting physical jerks, particularly at first light, around five o'clock.

At this same time, the annual meeting of the British Medical Association was taking place in Plymouth. Doctors were calling for higher tax on beers, wines and spirits, plus a ban on the advertising of alcohol. Alcohol was blamed for one in three divorces, one in five hospital patients, and was a major factor in child abuse, which in 1979 totalled 4,500 known cases, rising to 6,400 cases in 1982. Alcohol abuse resulted in wife beatings, road accidents, and a decline in industrial output through absenteeism. It was believed that alcohol accounted for 15,000 deaths in Great Britain each year, at this time. Looking at the alcoholics being dragged into Risley, it was easy to believe those figures. Banning alcohol from society is a far from easy task. What do you replace it with, more depression and anxiety? We live in an artificial environment, often at odds with the thoughts of the human mind, thereby creating a need for alcohol, drugs, tobacco, etc. Strictly rationing these commodities, along with government creating a less stressful more caring society, is probably the only answer.

On the nights when the hospital was quiet, the misfits would start howling from one wing to another, quite literally. It could be clearly heard even with the windows shut. The screws appeared to do nothing about it. Occasionally an inmate would have his radio blaring away on the window sill. The noise would begin at around ten o'clock, and sometimes carry on until two in the morning. On the few nights it was absolutely quiet in all directions, I still could not get to sleep, as my mind was constantly on edge.

I assumed that the reason why I had not been given proper medical treatment was so that my symptoms could be put on display whenever I was required for interview, or maybe there was no suitable drug therapy. It was at this time that I learned from a hospital officer that Prothiaden was for the treatment of depression, and not just to help me sleep. I found it hard to believe that the medical profession had deceived me. How many more lies had I been told. From then on I showed no trust towards doctors, nor anyone else for that matter.

I had mixed feelings about being transferred. On the one hand I knew that I could not take much more of Risley without becoming permanently mentally disturbed. I will always remember what Pamela's mother told her, after I had taken Pam to see the movie, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.

"You wouldn't find it funny if you had been in there," she said to Pam.

She was referring to the occasion when she was sent to a mental institution for attempting suicide. The place had been so grim that on the families first visit to see her, they were shocked by the conditions and decided immediately to bring her home. Pam had few polite words to spare for the family GP after that. I now knew how she felt. When I looked at the state of British society in the 198O's, suicide seemed to be a perfectly natural thing to commit.

What would North Wales Mental Hospital be like, I wondered. None of the staff appeared to know.

"Oh, you'll like it there," was all the staff would say.

The words seemed to imply that the sooner I cleared off, the better they would all feel. During the interview, I had not learned much from the doctors. My ears pricked up when one of them said it was a mixed hospital. I presumed they did not mean black and white. Tomahawk told me that the doctors did not accept any monkey business. That and the thought of the place being full of poxy women, as at Risley, did not fill me with the urge to pack my bags immediately.

As the date of my divorce got closer, I became more and more bitter towards women. The only trouble was that there were none around to abuse. As a consequence my dyspepsia returned.

"So release me and let me love again," O'Hare sang loudly.

What woman in her right mind would want O'Hare, I wondered. For every man there was a woman, but I hated to think what his woman looked like. I sincerely hope that she does not see me first, I thought. Still, if he could feel optimistic at his age, then there was no reason why I should not. At this time I was certainly not thinking of remarrying. My opinion of women was at rock bottom, and seemed certain to stay that way for a considerable time. On the other hand, looking at it from a woman's point of view, who would want me. By the time I was released I would be in my late thirties, unemployed, little money, no car, no home to call my own, few friends, and having killed two people together with a history of mental illness, women would scatter in all directions if they knew. There was no way that I could ever tell a woman the truth about my past. Well not until after we had made love, that is. I would then have to pray that she was intelligent enough to understand. That was a tall order, finding a woman of sufficient intelligence in Birmingham. Such a woman was bound to ask me all about myself, before we clinched our relationship. Since you could not base a strong relationship on lies, it all seemed an impossible task.

It was on the twenty-seventh of June, six days before the decree nisi, that I wrote to my sister-in-law. I had never written to her before. I found the letter very difficult to put together, and with only four sides of paper allowed to write on, it was hard if not impossible for me to write all that I wanted to. It took me three days to write, and I was always aware that it could take just three seconds to throw away. The letter expressed the hopes, fears, and questions surrounding my case and its aftermath. Deep down I felt it all a waste of time, but it was better than doing nothing. There was nothing new in it, so I will not reproduce it here. The letter ended 'a divorce will not remove the guilt, its all yours.' The two unrelated parts were an expression of bitterness and exasperation.

As I lay on my squeaky bed, listening to O'Hare pleading with the guards for the umpteenth time to let him empty his piss pot, I had visions of a final solution. There walking along the landing would come a smartly dressed young man, wearing a white suit and carrying an executive brief case. He would also be wearing a plastic bag over his head, a 'sales' gimmick. The man paused at 0'Hare's cell door.

"Good morning Mr.O'Hare. I've been asked to visit you, by all your friends at Risley. I'm the local area representative for Exit Incorporated. Here's my card," said the nice gentleman.

O'Hare would stand there ashen faced, his jaw moving up and down, but no sound coming out.

Its working, its working, I would be thinking. Any second now and his ticker will have ticked its last.

"Oh, you've come to take me down the Warrington Road," ponders O'Hare,

Failed, I've bloody failed again, I thought, there's no justice.

Late that night 0'Hare finally decided to go to bed.

"Goodnight!" 0'Hare would shout out to his friends.

He did not really have any friends, but it was amazing the enthusiastic response he got when he said that magic word.

"Goodnight O'Hare"

Unfortunately O'Hare always liked an encore, so he would say goodnight three or four times, to which the response would be even more deafening, "Goodnight O'Hare!"

Finally there was peace and quiet, but of course it never lasted long.