Deep thought

Playing at rehabilitation

I have a PlayStation 2 - and, contrary to the lies of the Sun comic, prisoners are NOT given PlayStations, we have to save up our pennies and buy them - and I own several games for it. One of those games is called "Need For Speed - Most Wanted". The aim is to buy a car, win a couple of easy races and earn money with which to buy a faster car that allows us to win a few more races, get more dosh and buy an even faster car - and so on. Before long, the driver is breaking all manner of laws of the roads, and of course the police begin to chase the driver which causes severe crashes - and so on. By the time the game gets to the better or harder levels, the cars available are on a par with small jet fighters for speed, and the police have become extremely aggressive in their pursuits.

It is all quite exciting, in a minor sort of way, and is good for speed of thinking and co-ordination between brain, eye and hand - visuo-spatial ability I think it is called by the experts in this kind of thing (which does not include prison psychologists, I hasten to add, who are experts at nothing but negativity).

Another game I acquired, at great expense, is "Driver 3" which is similar, with the added opportunity of stealing cars from other road users, and police cars too, and to shoot anyone who gets in the way.

All good for my sentence planning and rehabilitation.

However, that's not what I have in my mind at all, not a bit. We have a library here and in that library there is quite a large selection of films, but for some reason it has been decided by the morons who run this place that big, bad, hairy-arsed thugs cannot watch any films designated "18 or over". Instead we are all fed a diet of "chick-flicks" which, to be quite honest, most of us find quite puerile and sickening - the vomit kind. I'm certain that there is a ready audience for such stuff, but let's be honest, it's not the fare for the hairy-arsed etceteras mentioned earlier. Most of us would prefer stuff from the History Channel or something like that. However, we ain't being asked about it - we never are, we just get what is given.

So, I will continue to chase police cars - sorry, run away from police, (not that there is much difference really) - and of course work hard on my rehabilitation.

What a wonderfully meaningless word that has become in the hands of those charged with delivering it - the psychology charlatans. Now, I fully understand that there are times when some of the things I say about psychologists may seem a wee bit harsh, but I just want to say that if I ever say anything that in any way offends or hurts the feelings then, with the greatest of sincerity, and a large slice of humble pie, I want to say that I couldn't give a fiddler's fart. They make uneducated and unwarranted decisions about people, destroying future for both prisoners and prisoners' families as they do so - and they never give a thought to the damage done. Given that, why should anyone care about their feelings?

Apparently, they suffer from stress! Stress! What have they got to be stessed about? They go home each and every night. People like me haven't been home in almost a quarter of a century but we are not allowed to suffer from stress. Prisoners suffering from stress is illegal! It is against the rules! Any prisoner found suffering from stress will be instantly carted off to the Segregation Unit and punished. Well, we have to be fair about these things. If prisoners are allowed to suffer from stress who knows where it might end? The next thing we know, prisoners will want to be regarded as human beans, and that will never do. (The beans is deliberate, by the way, so please don't start writing in to complain - or sending me dictionaries.)

Oh well, I suppose I'd better go and get chased by the police or they will feel left out and stressed too!

Wasting away in the wilderness

Someone once said to me, "You are like a voice, crying out in the wilderness" - and that's where I get the title for this blog from. Just in case anyone is wondering. Of course it is originally biblical but I don't think I have to attribute sources in that direction any more - the copyright on the Bible ran out a while ago.

So, there I was, sitting in my little kennel - the 'Lizzie Windsor Suite' - and contemplating things in general and nothing in particular, when it crossed what I call my mind (that vast emptiness between my ears which is currently being crossed by two men and a camel, all wondering where they are) that I was really wasting time. Or was I? A line from a Pink Floyd song crossed my mind too:

We fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way.

We do too! Some may say that sitting here in pensive and philosophical contemplation is not time wasted or frittered, and that may well be true - but surely I should be doing something better! I mean, to what end? What's the point? Let me put it in the words of Douglas Adams in "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy":

What is the meaning of life, the universe, everything?

The bloody answer may as well be "Forty-two" for what sense it all makes (which, incidentally, was the answer given by the greatest computer in the universe - "Deep Thought").

Forty-two. I used to be forty-two. It went on for a whole year in fact - to the day! Three hundred and sixty-five of them, every one of them spent as a guest in the "Lizzie Windsor Suite". In the corner I have a washbasin and a toilet, so in reality I am living in a khazi - a bog, a loo, a shit-house. Mind, some people think I AM a shit­house, but we don't listen to such malicious things these days. Prisoners are sensitive after all, with feelings apparently - but only when it suits the authorities to appease the reformists.

So - here I am, a sensitive prisoner, sitting in a shit-house, contemplating my navel, thinking philosophical thoughts as I fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not complaining - what have I got to complain about? I am warm, fed, clothed and have a bed to sleep in (in my cosy little toilet). There are people a whole lot worse off than me in this world. Carping on about the fact that I shouldn't be here at all is just ungrateful - so I won't say anything on that subject - but I must say that I could, given some time for thought, think of somewhere I might rather be.

Oh, I don't know, somewhere much better than this like, er... lying in the accident and emergency department of some hospital with all of my bones broken. That would do for a start. It's got to he better than this - and, once I recovered, the nightmare would be over. This nightmare will never end, despite the platitudes I feed myself from time to time:

Don't worry, Frank. Nothing lasts forever.

Who am I kidding?

So, I may as well continue to fritter and waste the hours. Well, it gives me something to do - and the best part is that nobody can take it away from me. They have taken everything else after all. The ubiquitous "THEY" - the encouragers of fritter and waste.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Ages of Man - and girl

It doesn't tick my box

Well, I finally managed to get a response to my perpetual harrassment as I attempted to obtain the minutes of the Sentence Planning meeting held on November 18th of last year. I've had every excuse possible, including being told that there is no such person as Governor Karen Bourne - a bit odd considering that I now have a document not only signed by her but clearly proving that she does exist. Having said all that, it becomes clear to me that she is obviously one of those people (like me) who is invisible at the best of times.

So I finally got a response - not the minutes (I hasten to add), that would be too much to ask for. No, what I've got is a rewritten version of the Sentence Planning document. Evidently the original was too far from the facts. The new one is just as divorced, but one or two things have been altered. Maybe they think I can't read or understand the language, or that I will be thankful for small mercies and go away. It ain't happening!

I think my solicitor is as fed up with the intransigence as I am, because he has basically said that we might as well just ignore it all because it will all be brought out at the parole hearing in June of this year. I agree with him. Banging my head against a wall only has one thing to be said in its favour - it's nice when I stop. I shall continue my efforts to get my sweaty little mitts on the minutes of course - I'll be needing them for the parole hearing.

Then I had a letter from The Wallace, a woman I have a great deal of time for because I think that she is that rare breed - someone who wants to do her job to the best of her ability and to get things RIGHT!

The prison service has absolutely no interest whatever in getting anything right, in fact they avoid it where possible. All they want is the right ticks in the right boxes so that they can say, "You can't blame us! All the boxes are ticked!" How many cases have there been of people who should never have been allowed out of a cage, never mind out of prison! On the other side of the coin, how many prisoners are languishing in prison for no other reason than that they don't have the right ticks in the right places? Personalities, characteristics, behavioural traits, none of them is allowed to make any difference - if the right boxes are not ticked then the prisoner is going nowhere.

Every prisoner, sooner or later, will reach his optimum moment for release - the moment when he or she can released into the community and will never offend again. That is when that prisoner should be released, ticks in boxes notwithstanding. This moment of optimum release is quite plain and clear in many cases but can we expect the trainee box-tickers to recognise it? Can we hell!

The wrong people have managed to grasp the power in prisons, that's the problem. Young, inexperienced girls have taken over from the people who should have the power - the prison officer. The screw, kanga , warder (call him or her anything you like, they don't really mind, most of them) is the person who works with cons on a daily basis. The kanga is the person who should have the power because they are the ones who really see prisoners as they are, not ten minute interviews full of lies.

Will the prison officer - the kangaroo, the screw, the warder, the turnkey, the German - be given the power and listened to? The simple answer to that of course is 'NO'!

Oh well, I have plans to write a great deal on the subject when I finally get the opportunity, but this isn't it.

The third triplet

Fate has a strange way of dealing with us - I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again. How many times over the years, when we think everything is going well at last, does fate come along in the guise of Lady Luck with the express intention of booting us firmly in the family heirlooms? Here she comes, sashaying down the street wearing her Versace jeans and her Doc Martens, swinging her Dior handbag at passing children and grinning all over her wicked countenance. I've lost count of the number of times over the years that she has kicked me viciously in the testacularities and I may well have become inured to it so that I no longer feel the pain.

Well, suddenly it seems that things may have swung the other way for a change because, rather than bad news, I had a fairly decent day of news for a change. Maybe Lady Luck, that fickle ould tart, is off to watch the Winter Olympics or something and has taken her gimlet eye off me temporarily.

I spoke to my personal officer yesterday and, amongst other things, he told me that because of my age the C.S.C.P. programme had no interest in me. Those weren't his words but that was the general sentiment of what he said.

Then, when the mail came round, I had a letter from a very old girlfriend who I parted with in 1983 in a fairly acrimonious way. I simply upped my goods and chattels and left her high and dry. I never at any time abused her or raised a hand to her, or even my voice come to that, but I did treat her very badly. I was mean and nasty in fact. I didn't think she would ever forgive me, but it seems that apparently she has. The letter yesterday said that she had put my name into a search engine on the internet and there I was, so she wrote. There is a bit more to it than that of course, and I am sure that a fair bit of soul searching will be the order of the day soon. I've got a lot of apologising to do.

In my defence may I say... Ah, fuck it - who am I kidding? I have no defence. I deserted her without a second's thought and what I did was unacceptable and inexcusable. So, as I say, I have a lot of apologising to do. She's a good person, from a good family, and I often wonder what she saw in a toe-rag like me.

I'm a different person now of course, but so is she - we all change in a quarter century or more. I have no illusions and certainly no expectations, but I do need all the friends that I can get, and hopefully Lesley will be one of them. It probably all depends on the mood of that cruel ould whore with the Dior handbag and the vagaries of her mood-swings. For all I know she may, at this very minute, be polishing the toecaps of her ex-miner's steel-lined boots prior to bringing me crashing to ground, writhing in pain and clinging on to what's left of the jewellery.

It's not easy being me, but I bet it's a lot harder being Lady Luck. As the comic would have it:

Luck! Don't talk to me about luck. If Dolly Parton had triplets, and I were one of them, I'd be the one who got the bottle!

Changes

On March 9th I will have been in jail for twenty-four years to the day. Sunday 9th March 1986, Mother's Day - somebody has a poor sense of humour. Oddly enough my birthday is December 28th, and THAT is Innocents' Day! Well, since March 9th 1986 EVERY day has been Innocents Day and precious little good it has done me.

Twenty-four years. Just one more year makes it a quarter of a century, a milestone in anyone's life or career. A lot happens in twenty-four years - and a lot HAS happened. There have been enormous changes to everyone's life and style of living. The internet arrived, with all that means to information and to the progress of mankind. Religious fundamentalism arrived and atrocities have become common-place. (Although atrocities have always been with us throughout history. These days it is the instant reporting which makes them so personal.) D.N.A. identification arrived and we have seen several wars in all parts of the globe. Children have been born, grown up and had children of their own. World leaders have come and gone.

There have been massive changes - but not in the eyes of the teenage girls who have managed to get a stranglehold on the prison system. As far as they are concerned there have been no changes - everything is the same and nobody has got any older, wiser or suffered any form of change of heart.

I spoke to one of these trainee experts recently and all I was trying to do was to get her to see that time alone changes everything and everyone. I tried several different tacks but she either wasn't listening to any of them or simply didn't understand a word I said. The only other alternative was that she didn't care.

Finally I tried a new approach and said, "Can you remember what you were doing twenty-three years ago?"

She said, "I wasn't born then," and I nearly threw my hat in there and then - or the towel, whichever metaphor you prefer.

"All right," said I. "So you weren't born. What about twenty years ago? Can you remember that?"

"I was only two!"

"Oh!" said I. "So you were two years old twenty years ago then?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well," said I, the wise man, "would you say that you have changed in those twenty years?"

"Of course I have, everyone does," said she.

"Yes," I nodded, "Of course they do, as you so rightly say. So if everyone does, everyone changes in twenty years, what the fuck makes you think I haven't?"

She didn't seem to have an answer to that one.

So yes, the last quarter of a century (almost) has brought about massive changes, in all of us, each and everyone of us. But for some reason the prison service simply cannot accept this blatantly obvious fact of life.

Shakespeare wrote of the "Seven Ages of Man" - and I could list them. I mentioned Shakespeare to the same trainee psychologist at the time and she simply went blank, as though I had administered some soporific!

Well, the old adage is certainly true in this instance - you can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink. We can lead these trainees to all the water there is but we will never get them to drink it - they can't see it for the blinkers they all seem to be wearing.

So once again I left the conversation feeling frustrated and not a little let down. Ah! But I have an adage of my own for such occasions and this is it:

You can knock me down, but you'll never get me to stay down.

The Voice In The Wilderness

"Hoss" - the new boss at the "Lazy L"

A couple of weeks ago I said that Ferdie the Fearless, the man with the ego as big as Jimmy Durante's nose, had departed this establishment for well brought-up young ladies. He had gone, closed the portcullis and buggered off to annoy someone else. That was all very true, he has gone.

Yesterday our new Governor arrived hotfoot from Featherstone - or was it Maidstone? Too many stones for my poor, under­developed brain to cope with - and his name is Cartwright, but I don't guarantee the spelling. Apparently, he comes from a Category C training prison and it may well be that he will be full of ideas to better the lot and the quality of life of scum such as myself. But fear not, give him a few months of banging his head against the P.O.A. rocks and he will soon be abusing the prisoners with the best of them. I am sure that at the minute he is full of good intentions and has a plethora of ideas to improve things around here. It'll do him no good. He will soon come up against the inertia, intransigence and stone-walling of the P.O.A., who object to everything which might improve a prisoner's lot.

I wonder if he will wander about the place at regular intervals and chat informally to random cons? Or will he simply accept and believe any ould toffee that his underlings tell him the way Ferdie did? These Governors think that they are in charge of the place, but they ain't , never will be. They are only as good as the information that their minions supply them with, and they only get to know what the lesser ranks want them to know.

So, 'Hoss' Cartwright (as he will become known if I have anything to do with it - well, with a name like that you would expect him to come from the Ponderosa at least!) will probably turn out to be just as ineffective as all of those who have gone before him and the cons, the scum - my comrades - will simply have to suffer it I suppose.

The trouble with the prison service (and most other institutions too, I suspect) is that no one is accountable any more. It doesn't matter what stupidities may be carried out, nobody will be brought to book for them but they will be protected by lies and cover-ups. I don't really see any alternative because nobody will admit it, and the first step in putting something right is to acknowledge that it is wrong in the first place. This, quite simply, ain't about to happen - not in the prison service, not in the police, not in the National Health Service, not even in the local coucil offices. Nobody is responsible for anything these days - but they all want a bigger slice of the cake.

My trouble is, of course, that I am a grumpy ould man, but being a grumpy ould man doesn't mean that I am wrong.

Well, we will see how 'Hoss' gets on with his mission I suppose. In the meantime, I am off to go for a drive in a fast car and to get the police to chase me - it's good for my rehabilitation.

The Voice in the Wilderness

Personally, I'm going to accentuate the positive

Personality

A word sprang to my mind earlier today completely unbidden and quite apropos to nothing in particular, and that word is... personality. Now, let me say right away that just because a person IS a personality, it does not follow that they HAVE a personality. This of course touches on the cult of celebrity, but I don't want to get onto that particular hobby horse. (They are generally a bunch of talentless morons - and that is being kind to a lot of them.) 

Another thing I'd better say is that I am not much of a personality myself, having the people skills of a bad-tempered Tasmanian devil and the social manners of Atilla the Hun. So this isn't about me at all - not everything is personal. Now that I have said all that, I'm not at all sure where I am headed with this, but I will plod along and see what transpires.

There are all kinds of personalities. There are those who walk into a room and, without doing very much of anything at all, can dominate it or, after putting it about a bit, there are those who can become the life and soul of the party. At the other end of the spectrum we have the crew who, when THEY walk into a room, everything goes quiet. They are the atmosphere hoovers - they seem to suck the life out of a room just by being present. Thankfully, I am not one of those.

Personality - it's an interesting word. A long time ago, during my studying years, I often had to write essays on just one word. I would get the instruction from my tutor, "Write three thousand words on the word 'and'" - and if anyone thinks that is easy, try it. My tutor never gave me the word 'Personality' but I wish she had. She never gave me the word 'if' either, and I would have enjoyed writing about 'if'. I could have started with Kipling's poem, for a start, and then moved on to 'if' being a word for children building castles in the air.

I once said that to the parole board, the bit about castles in the air. They asked me what I would do if... and that's as far as they got because I interrupted and said, "If is not a word to play with. It gives false hopes, it misleads, and besides, it is a word for children building castles in the air." I never did find out what they were going to 'if' me about. Ha! If my grandmother had a pair of bollocks she'd be my grandfather, so I don't really want to hear about 'if'.

Come to think about it, I don't particularly want to near about 'personality' either. My trouble is that I am getting old and have become a grumpy old man. Don't think I didn't notice it happening either, because I did. Every age has its compensations despite what Shakespeare may have said on the subject. I am quite enjoying being old and look forward to getting much older. I can't wait for the time when I can stand in the queue at Tesco's checking-out till and simply piss myself. Everyone will let me go to the front of the queue. I will also pretend to be deaf so that I can drive everybody mad.

By then I may have developed a personality - if I live that long.

A new broom?

It may be remembered that at the beginning of the year I wrote that Ferdie Parker, the little man with the ego the size of Gibraltar (or a small range of mountains), had departed these shores. I said that he had left the prison to annoy others elsewhere but added that there seemed to be a certain amount of ambiguity about the information. It turned out that he hadn't gone.

However, I can now say categorically that this time he has gone. Ferdie has packed his potted plant, tucked his knickers into his wash-bag, pulled up the drawbridge and turned off the lights! Ferdie has left for pastures new at last. He wasn't popular with anyone as far as I can tell. There is a rumour going round that even his dog bit him, but that may just be a dirty communist lie put about by his enemies to discredit him and is not to be given credence by decent folk and other members of the criminal fraternity and scum class. (Have no fears, I am a fully paid-up member of both, I have no illusions.)

Whatever the truth, Ferdie has gone, he is no longger with us. I have no idea where he has gone and what's more, I don't care. The big question now is, who will we get to take his place? Who will arrive like a new broom to sweep everything under the carpet? Who will come rolling in with the intention of sorting the place out only to crash onto the P.O.A. rocks and be scuttled? What this place needs is someone with a positive outlook and attitude, but it's doubtful whether such a person exists, at least not in the high security estate where negativity is encouraged.

It has no direct effect on me of course, although I am sure it will affect me indirectly sooner or later. I shall continue to sit here in my little kennel, tapping away indiscriminately at this machine and hoping that one day I will write something worth reading. In between times I will play on my Play Station like a good little twelve year old and go to bed before ten each night so I can wake up nice and fresh and early each morning to do absolutely bugger all.

The way this place is run now, so negatively, it is designed to crush the spirit of even the strongest-minded nitwit such as myself, and I admit that I am slowly getting to the stage where it seems that there is nothing to get up for these days. Will the new governor change that? I somehow doubt it. We will probably get a career man who is using this place simply as a stepping stone to a full time position at the Home Office where he would no longer have to see or listen to prisoners but could take unwelcome decisions with impunity, destroying lives as he did so. Oh yes, it's a dismal world, this world of prison.

Personally, I try to stay positive. I seek the glass half full rather than the glass half empty, but that is merely a manifestation of my years of experience coupled with a strong mind. There are fellows who are not as stubborn as I am. Oh well, we shall see what we shall see when the new face on the block takes over and begins to make his presence felt. In the meanwhile, I will continue to play a game called "Need For Speed Most Wanted" which consists of driving fast cars with the police in hot pursuit - it's all part of my sentence planning as far as I can see.

Give me a break!

At the height of summer in the year of 2002 I was in Full Sutton Prison. Actually, I was in the seg unit there because I would not plant my lips firmly on the wing P.O.'s gluteus maximus. He had taken umbrage at the fact that I didn't see him or any of his gang as blood-brothers. They had me in a cell in the seg unit which had a plastic sheet across the window with a dozen small air-holes drilled through the armoured plastic.

It was very hot at the time - the dates are available, but I can't be bothered to search my diaries to get them. I have to say that breathing in that sweat-box wasn't easy, so I devised a scheme to get myself moved to a cell which had proper windows that opened. I complained that I had breathing difficulties - and they panicked. In no time at all an ambulance arrived from the local hospital and paramedics were doing tests on me as I lay on the floor pretending to be gasping for breath.

They decided to take me out to hospital.

Hold on! This is not the plan! I only wanted a cell with windows. I didn't want chaining to a bed in a hospital surrounded by thugs wearing body armour and armed policemen patrolling the corridors! (I was High Risk at the time.) So I simply refused to go to the hospital under any circumstances.

One silly sod said, "You might joss it if you don't go." Considering that I was only pretending, it seemed unlikely.

"I don't care," said I. "I'm not going."

In the end they compromised by letting me go across to the prison hea1thcare, where I had a nice roomy cell with large windows which opened wide to let the air in past the bars. 

Victory was mine!

In my latest Sentence P1anning document, they have trawled through my record and found this incident from Full Sutton and marked me down as being at risk of self-harm! In their desperation to find something negative to say about me, someone must have spent hours trawling to uncover the above - and this is what is wrong with prison assessments. In that self-same record there are countless positive things to uncover - my charity work, my mentoring, writing, academic achievements, writing awards, and so on. Not one word of that is in the sentence planning document - nothing, nada.

Self harm? Give me a break! Being a dedicated coward I could never hurt myself, I've got no desire to hurt anyone else, never mind myself. Looking at my wrists and arms there is not a blemish, not a scar, nothing - apart from a series of very tiny scars, all about three millimetres in length, from cuts made by handcuffs being put on me forcefully. I have three of those on my right wrist and one on my left.

Incidentally, the only other thing they could find to say about me in the Sentence Planning document is that I present a high risk of peril to a 'known adult', whatever that may mean. And they wonder why so many cons refuse to take part in this nonsense of "sentence planning".

It is also no surprise that they are STILL refusing to give me a copy of the minutes of the actual sentence planning meeting last year, and the reason is quite simple - they intend to distort and twist. In fact they already have, and to give me the minutes would simply allow me to point out that they have distorted and twisted. They can't do that. Three months since the meeting on the 18th November and so far I've been given half a dozen excuses as to why I can't have the promised copy. Even my solicitor can't get a copy and I think he has asked several times.

Well, the alternatives now would seem to be either to change the report or continue with a lie which will be uncovered when we sit in front of the Parole Board later this year. What bothers me about all this is - why do they do it? What is the point?

I like to think that I am a reasonably well-balanced individual these days, a man with absolutely no desire for confrontation of any sort at any time, but the prison service seem actively to seek problems where they don't exist. I wonder why. It's not as though I am a new boy or a tourist or something. I know the system, I know the rules. I solve problems before they arise generally, but what can I do against underhand behaviour such as false or distorted reporting?

Oh well, we shall see.

Now, I know that this week's offering isn't up to the standard of drivel that I would normally churn out, but I hope the reader will acknowledge the extenuating circumstances and forgive me. Normally I would finish with a little story but it wouldn't be appropriate. Instead I will finish with the words of Tolstoy who wrote:

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry (very sorry) for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Nothing much happens - in three parts!

Part One - Porridge and common sense
 
Listening to the radio this morning whilst cleaning my teeth and generally pottering about in my kennel - I listen to the radio in Van Gogh mode, with one ear - I heard someone or other discussing humour in general and prison humour in particular. I think it had something to do with Ronnie Barker. The fellow speaking on the steam-driven wireless seemed to have a slightly unreal idea of prison life because he said that the humour in "Porridge" wasn't far from the reality of prison. What gammon.

I grant that "Porridge" was funny in places, and very entertaining in its way, but whoever wrote it got his idea of prison from someone who had a very romantic view of it all. There IS a lot of humour in prison, most of it pretty dark too, but it has little connection with the humour in "Porridge". Prison humour is far funnier, more prosaic, crueller, biting, vulgar, very often painfully near the mark or the knuckle - and there is ALWAYS a victim. As often as not, this victim is a member of the "enemy", but not always, not by a long shot. Anyone who really wanted to experience prison humour would have to spend considerable time there. It's no good talking to others who HAVE spent considerable time there because what is passed on will inevitably be a sanitised version.

Come to think about it - and to expand the thought a little further - I think that this applies to everything, almost every job and walk of life. Interviews with teachers, nurses, policemen, doctors, roadsweepers and kings only bring out what the interviewee WANTS to bring out. The innermost secrets are never disclosed, not in anything at all, ever. This is why these "in-depth" and "frank" interviews are just the opposite really. We, all of us, only reveal what we want to reveal - for all sorts of reasons, not all of them bad. That's why committees to investigate drugs, crime, the health service, armed forces and so on ad infinitum, are never too successful because of the self-censorship involved - and the fact that they generally ask the wrong questions anyway.

This brings me back to the prison estate. Prisoners are in the thrall of a group of young girls who have, in effect, taken over the prison system. These are the trainee psychologists whose uneducated and unqualified utterances and judgements on people are taken by the powers that be as gospel and are not questioned. A trainee psychologist can condemn any person in prison and there is no recourse. It is actually impossible to get these inexperienced children to change anything they write about anyone and they insist that they know better than the judge of the court in which the prisoner was tried and sentenced. It's not vindictive, not in most cases anyway; it is not even the lack of experience, although that plays a large part. The fact is that they simply do not care!

So, the prisoner has to deal with these charlatans and the only way is to lie. A prisoner learns all the right answers, totally meaningless to the prisoner really, trots them out and gets a tick in the right box. The charlatans then hold up the paper bearing the tick in the right box and declare that they have proof that the prisoner will not re-offend. It is as false and as worthless as an ashtray on a motorbike and Lily Savage's tits. It is as much use as a glass eye.

These psychologist have no insight at all into the people they are dealing with. How can they have? What can they learn in a few hours (total) of interviewing? The people who CAN have insight into a prisoner's mindset are the prison officers, yet prison officers are ignored and are the last contingent anyone will listen to, if they ever do.

Something is absent from the whole system - and that something is not experts, it's not committees and it is certainly not a shortage of psychologists. It's common sense - nobody uses it. I wonder if they are all scared to use it!

Part Two - Nowt to report

Jails are made of bricks and passions,
Broken dreams and ribald men...

Words originally written about Kilmainham Jail in Dublin - closed down and now a museum and tourist attraction of that fair city. Bricks and passions.. broken dreams... ribald men. I suppose that those words can apply to any prison really.

No news again this week - nary a word, zilch, zero, nada - unless, of course, we consider the fact that I now have a new personal officer, Miss Sensitive apparently having gone elsewhere. I have no idea where, and what's more, I don't really care where. Her record for underhand obstruction is better left unrecorded but it is up there with the best of them. So now I have a new one.

I was getting a cup of one day earlier in the week - hot water for tea - when one of the kangas said, "Wilko, " (he will never know how much I object to being called Wilko), "I am your new personal officer now."

"Wonderful," said I. "What happened to the other one?"

"She's gone elsewhere," said he, which in effect told me nowt.

That's a great word - "nowt". It has such a definite and unquestionable finality about it, leaving no room for ambiguity or confusion. It does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. Of course it is a northern word - all good words are, when you come to think about it. Compare "nowt" with "nuffink" - "nuffink" just hasn't got that ring of confidence about it. So, nowt has happened yet again in this emporium of misery and uncertainty... this pile of bricks and passions with its broken dreams and ribald men.

I don't know this new personal officer's name - he didn't deem it right to tell me and I'm not interested enough to go out of my way to find out. He did ask if there was anything I needed a hand with, but I think he only did that to show willing. If I had actually asked him to do something for me he would probably have been taken ill and been off work for three months suffering from some stress-related affliction. Of course this assumption on my part may be entirely uncalled-for and verging on the slanderous, but there's not much that can be done when experience tells me otherwise.

Now, I know perfectly well that I say a lot of things which some folk take exception to, I know this... but there is no need for them to do so. Not much that I say is personal or aimed at anyone in a particularly vindictive manner. I am usually pretty general in my outlook ( I hope), so if anyone takes anything seriously or personally, it is more a reflection on them than on me. I don't think I am a vindictive sort of cove at all. If anyone looks carefully at whatever is written or said, they will see that it is mostly written (or said) with the tongue firmly embedded in the cheek, that raddled part of my visage which botox is scared of.

However, if anyone should take exception to whatever I say or write, I can do no better than direct them to the words of Julius Gaius Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon:

Coppula eam, se non posit acceptera jocularum!

Which, as all we Latin scholars are fully aware, can be loosely translated as "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

And now, as the sun sinks slowly o'oer the barbed wire of my country estate, I can go back to contemplating the bricks... and the passions... and the ribald men... and the broken dreams...

Part Three - Paying Danegeld
 
It occurs to me as I negotiate the hazards and pitfalls of prison life (navigating the corners carefully, because I don't want any accidents at this stage) that some people seem to sail through with neither let nor hindrance, while others struggle to get their meals on time. Why should this be?

Of course I am fully aware of the main reason - and that is that some fellows never lift their heads above the parapet, are never on show and never come to the attention of the authorities. Sensible fellows, really. Then we have the obverse of the coin, people like me - the problem children who, for some reason, attract attention, much like a turd attracts flies. Maybe I should disguise myself, wear a mask or something - mind, some people would see THAT as a good idea too!

To get back to the fellows who sail through prison unscathed. The real fact is that they never question and will tolerate any ould crap and let it pass unchallenged. In days of yore they would be called quislings, Petainists, appeasers, the payers of Danegeld. It is a mistake to pay Danegeld, always has been - history shows that to be true. No matter how much is paid, or what concessions are made, the Dane will always come back for more.

At the same time, a balance must be found between stubbornness and appeasement - never an easy thing to do. As far as prison is concerned, I suppose it comes down to the quality of life - and not just for prisoners but staff too, to some extent, although they are being paid decent money and go home every night.

I try to tell people that being nasty to prisoners for no good reason isn't good for anyone's morale. The thing we all need to remember, and to bear in mind at all times, is that this is not a dress-rehearsal for something else, not a bit of it. THIS IS IT! This is our only shot at life on this benighted planet and we had better make the most of it because we won't get another opportunity. We can't go to some complaints department and say, "Listen, I've fucked that right up! I'd better start over again." Oh no, it simply doesn't work like that. We get one shot at it and one shot only.

And that gives me the perfect excuse to repeat (as I have done more than once in these pages) the words of Stephen Grellet*, a man of great humanitarian outlook, when he wrote:

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again...

The Voice In The Wilderness

*From Wikipedia:
Stephen Grellet (November 2, 1773 – November 16, 1855) was a prominent French Quaker missionary.
He was born Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier in Limoges, the son to a counsellor of King Louis XVI. Raised as a Roman Catholic he was educated at the military College of Lyons, and at the age of seventeen he entered the body-guard of Louis XVI. During the French Revolution he was sentenced to be executed, but escaped and eventually fled Europe to the United States in 1795.
Impressed by the writings of William Penn, George Fox, and Quaker beliefs, in 1796 he joined the Society of Friends. He became involved in extensive missionary work across North America and most of the countries of Europe, in prisons and hospitals, and was respectfully granted meetings with many rulers and dignitaries, including Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander I, and the Kings of Spain and Prussia. He encouraged many reforms in educational policies and in hospital and prison conditions.
In 1804 he married his wife, Rebecca, the daughter of the publisher Isaac Collins.
It is reputed that he was the last living person who could have identified the "Lost Dauphin" of France.
He died in Burlington, New Jersey on November 16, 1855 and his body was buried there behind the Quaker Meeting House at 340 High Street.

Living with the demons of the night

Another week passes when nothing at all happens, nothing is said or done and I am starting to feel invisible again. I've read my recent crop of books and things are getting so desperate that I might start getting books from the library. The trouble is that I like to own my books and to read them at leisure, often over and over because I miss so much on the first reading.

However, I'm not here to discuss books, that is a subject better left for a much longer dissertation than this is destined to be. Forget books, they only give us ideas above our station and cause trouble anyway.

Last night, (there is nothing like a quiet Saturday night in) I sat here in my comfy kennel in silence. Telly off, because, to be quite frank about it, it's mostly puerile rubbish anyway. I didn't have my stereo on and I didn't feel like playing with my PlayStation. I've already mentioned that I've read all of my new books -that's a hundred and eight quid I'll never see again - and all I was doing basically was contemplating my navel and cogitating pensively.

Then I had a mini epiphany... The whole place was silent! Normally at about nine at night, there is maybe a bit of music to be heard faintly, a telly on that little bit too loud or someone chatting rubbish to his pal out of the window. Last night - not a sound. In fact, I bet there are graves where there is more noise.

This got me to wondering. What are they all doing in those cells all around me? Reading? Studying? Writing a letter home? Watching the telly? They would be doing all of those things, certainly, but there would be a a few who were simply lying on their beds, maybe even in the dark, and they would be living inside their own minds. Thinking of family, friends, brooding on enemies and the ills done to them, regrets, sorrows, and in some cases downright misery.

Of course, the dragon-chasers would be doing none of those things. All they are doing is wondering who they can lie to to get their next short-lived trip to a false oblivion. I don't want to waste my typewriter ribbon on them, so we will leave that little lot to their own devices.

Yes...all around me there would be men experiencing all of the emotions the writers have been scribbling about for centuries. How do I know this? Well, I'm glad you asked because I can help with that one. I know all this because I have experienced it all for years. Countless nights have been spent living inside my own mind. I've gone through the brooding, the hatred, the blame, the regrets, the sorrow and all of the other things too, and there was a time when it turned me quite mad.

Then I discovered the secret of life in prison - how to survive the nights. The days are easy, it's the nights where the demons live. Whenever I started to brood on the ills done me I would instantly get out of my bed and start to read or write, anything to stop my mind from travelling the road to rage and anger.

It works too!

In addition to that, the reading and the writing tires out the mind, and that is inducive of good sleep. It is no matter how tired the body is, that can be fully rested by simply lying down for a few hours. But sleep, that healing sleep, needs a tired mind.

I sleep well enough these days but that wasn't always the case of course. It must be the reading - and perhaps the little bit of writing I do helps too.

So, in conclusion, may I give a little bit of advice to those who suffer from any form of insomnia - have a good read, and the more boring the book the better. Having said that, I have to admit that I found Leon Uris a great writer and most people think he's boring, but that's probably more a reflection on me than it is on them. I once read Archbold Criminal Pleading Evidence and Practice 1992 from front to back and found it quite interesting, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of what constitutes a good read.

Finally, a story. Yesterday, a female kanga asked me if I was okay. I must have been looking a bit off! I jumped at my chance.

"No," I said, "I'm not."

"What's the trouble?" asked she.

"My brother has been diagnosed as having Zachary's disease."

"Oh. What's that?"

"His face is Zachary like his arse."

The Voice In The Wilderness

A rocky coast where ships can founder

It has been yet another week where news or progress is, shall we say, noticeable by its absence. Nothing to report and, as Henri Maria Remarque might have said, "All Quiet on the Western Front". 

However, being a prolific writer (of sorts), I am never lost for a few words, and this week is no exception. Incidentally, may I just say that I never sit down at my typewriter with anything specific in mind to write about. I just sit down, light my fag, have a drink of my tea and start bashing the keys, just to see what drivel I can come up with THIS week. 

And this week, what has come to my mind are two things. One - a couple of idiots on this wing (staff and not cons), have tried to deny that a certain governor works in this prison and that she doesn't exist at all! Not to worry, no doubt that little matter will be sorted out in no time at all.

The other matter is a conversation I had earlier in the week with one of my fellow zoo exhibits, another member of the Scum Class of two thousand and ten. (I've said this before, it's not easy being scum like me you know.)

So... there I was, standing minding my own business and waiting to collect my lunch, which, incidentally, Egon Ronay it ain't. So... (I've got to stop saying 'So') So... there I am with my dinner plate and one of the younger fellows comes to stand next to me and he begins to chat. Now... (that's nearly as bad as 'So') I don't pretend to remember his words verbatim - I'm not a policeman or a trainee psychologist - but the general thrust was...

Him: All right Frankie?

Me: Well, you know me, when am I not all right?

Him: Here! You've been in jail a long time, haven't you?

Me: I'll be starting my twenty-fifth year in March.

Him (in disbelief): Fuck me!

Me: Thanks for the offer, I'll bear it in mind, but playing hide the diddler with a geezer has never appealed to me.

Him: No! Listen! Did it go quick?

Me: What?

Him: The years!

Now... l've had this question, and variations, asked by a lot of fellows and it is a rocky coast where ships can founder if care isn't taken in the answer. These youngsters, whatever they may have done, sooner or later come round to the realisation that whatever it was may not have been such a good idea after all. They realise that this life is not some sort of dress-rehearsal for something else... this is IT! This is the only chance they will get at life and they want someone, anyone will do, to assure them that everything will be fine. They need a mother's hand to brush away their fears and to tell them that it's okay, things will be okay in the end and they CAN have a bit of cake for tea. Well, it's not that easy unfortunately. There is no mother's hand, and only God can change the past - no, on reflection, not even He can do that.

No, this is it I'm afraid - but I couldn't tell the young fellow that because he would end up as one more statistic on the list of suicides in jail. When all hope is taken away, nothing is left, and a weak character soon finds himself against the wall without a blindfold.

So, I sort of grinned at him.

Me: How long have you been in jail?

Him: I've done nearly four years now.

Me: And if you look back on those four years I bet they have gone by like the snap of your fingers, eh? (And I gave my fingers a snap.) Just like that.

Him: Yeah , it's pissed past.

Me: And you look at the years ahead and think they will never pass, right?

Him: Yeah.

Me: Don't worry about it. Live each day as best you can, get whatever small pleasures you can for each day and, before you know where you are, you will look back and it will all be gone, just like a snap of the fingers! (And I snapped my fingers again.) Just like that.

Him: Yeah! Yeah! You are right.

Well, what I didn't tell him was that he would also be older, not a patch on the man he is now, bent-backed and tired. But let's not tell him that part, he can discover that himself. All around me are young men, some not much more than teenagers really, and they have twenty, thirty, forty years to serve. May the good Lord have mercy on them, because the prison system won't.

The Voice In The Wi1derness

Paranoid eyes?

This week I have something to report for a change. During the early part of the week I was given a paper informing me that on Thursday 14th I had a video-link conference scheduled for 2:15 pm with The Wallace, my probation officer. I had been informed of this much earlier, of course, by The Wallace herself, but the paper made it official.

I'd  better mention The Wallace, as I call her (the name she used in the film 'Braveheart'). I don't call her that to her face of course - she's taller than me and probably packs a healthy right hand. (I'm foolish, I never said I'm stupid.) I like The Wallace and I can easily see her in one of those period dramas dressed in plaid and saying, "0ch wee manny , eat yerrr gruel and ye'll grow up tae be a big lad like yer mammy."

Anyway, to get back to the point, I went down to the legal part of the visiting area on Thursday afternoon and they put me into a little room and there was The Wallace on the telly! I got seated and the kangaroo buggered off - these things are private apparently.

"Hello Frank," says she, but I can barely hear her and she can barely hear me. I thought we would be reduced to sign language, and I only know one sign - it's universal and everyone knows what it means but I would never use it with The Wallace because I like her and besides, I refer the reader back to my earlier statement concerning her right hand. It turned out that I had to use the phone to speak to her, so we got that sorted out and settled down for a chat with me doing my usual slagging off of psychologists - but that's another matter.

The Wallace can't understand why I am not being progressed to a less secure establishment. Neither can I. I'm not at all sure if I should be saying this, but I'll say it anyway. The Wallace says that I should be released into the community because I can be managed better there, or words to that effect. She said much the same thing at my last parole hearing and intends to say it all again at the next. It won't do any good of course - they ain't listening to anything like that. All they want are further reasons and excuses not to let me out of jail. Considering the junkie rats who are being released on a daily basis, with the system being fully aware that these people will reoffend at the very first opportunity, it gives me pause for thought.

However , I'm not here to condemn other people, leave that to those who enjoy inflicting misery on others, I'm only discussing my own position here. The question has to be, why will the Parole Board not only refuse to sanction my release but not even sanction my move to a less secure establishment? It took me twenty-three years to get downgraded to a category 'B' prisoner and that only came about because they lost a court battle!

The Wallace has no idea. She has asked but can't get any sort of answer, let alone one that makes sense.

So where does that leave me? Well, all I can do is plod along in my own inimitable way and adhere to the words of that famous poet, Roger Waters, he of Pink Floyd fame:

Button your lip and don't let the shield slip.
Take a fresh grip on your bullet-proof mask.
And if they try to break down your disguise
With their questions...
You can hide behind paranoid eyes.

I've just realised that The Wallace will read this - I'd better get more than a bullet-proof mask in that case! I've said it before - it's not easy being me.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Leave it with me - I'll get back to you...

It will be remembered that on November 18th of last year I took part, reluctantly I might add, in a Sentence Planning meeting - me, a Governor, a supernumerary and someone taking the minutes. In fact I reported on the meeting and wrote a quite hopeful and enthused vignette for this blog. I was complimentary - nice in fact. I saw no reason to be otherwise. At the end of that meeting I was promised by the Governor who was in charge that I would receive a copy of the minutes as soon as they had been typed up and that if I had any problems doing so to contact her on the subject.

Since then I have made several applications for these minutes and sent each and every application to the Governor involved. Not once has she responded and, needless to say, I have never received the promised copy of the minutes.

Now, this didn't bother me over much - people are busy, computers break down, typists run off to sea with one-eyed Lascar sailors and all sorts of things go wrong, often as not nobody's fault. Trusting soul that I am I saw nothing sinister in my lack of success in obtaining those minutes - not until yesterday that is. Yesterday, Saturday 9th January, I received the "Summary" of the "recent Sentence Planning meeting" and, not to put too fine a point on it, and not wishing to be needlessly rude or crude, it is all a complete and utter bollix! There is not one single word of any sort of a positive nature. Everything in that summary is negative, everything.

However, that's not what is exercising my ire, as they say, oh no. What is attracting my animosity is the way that what I said to the board has been substituted for what they think I SHOULD have said. My words have been twisted and perverted and on a couple of points words have been attributed to me which were never said at all.

The sort of thing I mean is, during the "little chat" I said that the Lifer Manager at Whitemoor seemed to dislike me, although we had never met, and he seemed to have a problem with my obtaining three degrees. I said that he seemed to resent me for some strange and quite obscure reason.

The "Summary" states: 

Wilkinson said that the Lifer Manager was jealous of him.

There is a world of difference between resentment and jealousy. I have to say that I resent the way this "Summary" has been written, but that doesn't make me jealous! I'd have got my spelling right for a start.

There are several instances where such perversions have taken place and, in all fairness, it could be simply that the person who wrote the summary doesn't really understand the meaning of the words - though I doubt it. I think they knew exactly what they were up to, otherwise they would have given me a copy of the minutes of the original meeting! That seems logical to me.

Logic! HA! Logic and the Prison Service - never the twain shall meet. In fact I think it is against the rules to employ logic or to apply it in the prison system. It is certainly stupid to expect to find any applied logic being employed.

So, I have sent the "Summary" off to Mike Pemberton and of course he will send a copy back for me to send to the website. I have written an official complaint out about not getting a copy of the minutes of the meeting, and if that fails to produce the required result then I'll ask the Ombudsman to get involved. I can't see any reason why they can't supply me with a photocopy of the handwritten minutes. Whatever I get from them now will always have that odour of suspicion about it, much like Governors in general I suppose.

Finally, let me give a bit of advice to anyone out there who may be thinking of a career as a prison governor. You only need two skills:

1. You will need to learn how to say 'NO' in a thousand different ways and several languages.

2. You will have to learn how to repeat the following sentence with heartfelt sincerity:

Leave it with me. I'll look into it and get back to you.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Lap dancing for the over sixties

There is no news this week, not of any sort at all, but that's only to be expected considering that it is the beginning of a new year and nobody has really recovered from the debauchery and hedonism of that particularly pagan celebration yet. Next week should see things getting back to some sort of normality, or what passes for normality in places like these.

Oh! Before I forget, there IS one bit of news, or it might just be gossip or wishful thinking, you never can tell around here. Our wonderful Number One governor, he with the ego as big as Brighton Rock (ha ha), has departed, gone, left, moved to pastures new. Of course I asked about it and was told that he hadn't gone. So, as I say, gossip or wishful thinking - the fuel of prison life.

So, nothing to report at all really, but I did have an interesting conversation the other day with a kangaroo who clearly was as bored as me.

At this point I want to mention the art of asking stupid questions - and it is an art, well around here it is: "Are you reading that paper you are sitting on?" We all know the sort of thing I mean.

Right, to get back to the interesting conversation. During the course of it, the kanga asked me, "Frank," said he, clearly under the impression that we are related, "Frank, you can't have long to go now. You've been in a long time. How long?"

"Nearly twenty-four years," said I. "And thank you very much for reminding me."

He ignored that but went on. "You'll find things a bit different out there now. It's all changed now."

"Everything changes, in time," said I. "Even rivers change."

He ignored that too but went on to ask the question that started this whole thing off. "When you do go home," said he, "what will you do for a living?"

"Well," said I, "I've given that a bit of thought and to be quite frank about it I am torn between several possible careers."

"Oh yeah!" said he. "You mean with all the education you've done?"

"Not really," was my answer. "But I have got options."

"I wish I had options," said he. "What have you got lined up?"

"Well," said I, getting ready to deliver my normal plethora of idiotic abuse. "I can't make my mind up whether to be a film star or a drug dealer. Mind, I've also been thinking about lap-dancing for the over sixties with a little part time job doing favours for sailors down the docks. According to Blackadder there's good money in that. I considered being a model but I haven't got the legs for tights. I'm keeping my options open, I haven't decided yet."

I kept my face straight through all that too.

He looked at me and finally said, "You know something, some people think that you are just taking the piss half the time."

"Ah!" said I. "That's because I am taking the piss."

"It's no good talking to you," said he and went off to be bored elsewhere.

Why do people ask stupid questions? Maybe it's just me. Maybe I attract them. Maybe I have the face that cries out to the rest of the world and invites silly people to ask silly questions and I haven't got the decency or social grace NOT to take the opportunity to take the piss. This clearly makes me a bad person.

Mind, when you think about it, lap dancing for the over sixties isn't THAT bad an idea. I might get on the telly!

Yeah! Crime Watch!

Happy New Year.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Nobody lives forever

Today is Sunday 27th Decemher 2009 and, to all intents and purposes, Christmas is over. Just the New Year to get out of the way now and that will be that until next year. That's what it means to most convicts anyway. But, as we all know, I have to be awkward - nothing is simple with me. I have my birthday in between Christmas and the New Year and what this has meant over the years is that whatever presents may have come my way have always come with the words, "This will do for your christmas AND birthday." I've told you before - it's not easy being me!

Lots of things happen at this time of year. We have all of the awards - "Man of the Year", "Sports Personality of the Year", "Biggest Mug of the Year" and all the rest of them. Then we have all of those programmes on the idiot box where everyone tells everyone else what hopes they have for the coming year and, of course, we have the insane and pointless practice of making New Year resolutions which we have absolutely no intention of even attempting to keep. 0h, we think we intend to keep them, but that's only because we are usually pissed out of our brains when we make them - apart from us poor little cabbages in prison, that is. (Although I am certain that there are a few drunks in here too!)

None of these, or any of the other seasonal lunacies, is attracting my attention this year - not a bit of it. What is exercising my three working brain cells at the minute, and has been for some time now, is the fact of my own mortality. Nobody lives forever, although there are one or two around who give the impression that they might. Every time we turn on the idiot box, there they are, and seem to have been since Adam and Eve were arguing about the best fruit to use in the cocktail and settled for apple.

When we were young, we just knew that we were indestructible and would live forever. William Hazlitt got it right when he said:

No young man believes that he shall ever die.

It's true too - that's how politicians can persuade young men to be soldiers and go off to war.

The young never die. No, it is the old buggers like me who do that. The older we get, the more aware we become of our own mortality. We know that we are not far off meeting the Grim Reaper when our contemporaries begin to drop off this mortal coil and we suddenly find that we are attending a lot of funerals. 

Willy the Bard told of the Seven Ages of Man, and I suppose that he too got that more or less right. What I mean is that the Bible mentions "three score years and ten", which would give Shakespeare's seven ages ten years to an age. In which case, I am into my seventh - three years in, in fact: the old dotard, sans hair, sans teeth, sans just about every­bleedin'-thing.

Yes... I am becoming aware of my own mortality, no two ways about it. Oh, I am not saying that I am about to snuff it and everybody should start a collection for flowers, nothing like that. I'm good for another thirty years yet, and, with the advances being made by medical research, that could well extend a long way. However, medical research and the passage of time to one side and notwithstanding, I am fully aware of my own mortality. And it comes home to me most sitting in a cell in the silence of a quiet night, surrounded by the sobs and groans of the tough guys.

It also comes to me that I could do no better than to finish with the words of Nicolas Sarkozy:

Life is the same for everyone when you are alone at night in an empty room.

Good luck for two thousand and ten.

The Voice In The Wilderness

The cheating game

Yesterday, Saturday 19th December 2009, a couple of things happened which, whilst completely unconnected, are worth a bit of a mention - well, I thought so.

The first came about as I idly watched a pair of hooligans pretending to be Ronnie O'Sullivan on the snooker table. As everyone is fully aware, I am not allowed to name either Noel or Israel so I have to give them noms-de-convenience. Therefore, I shall call these two fine, upstanding villains er... Christmas and Syria. No connection there then.

So, Syria is playing properly in that he attends the table when Christmas takes a shot. On the other hand, Christmas buggers off when it is Syria's shot and Syria has to wait until he comes back. This is annoying to Syria, and so it should be.

In the end I say to Syria during one of Christmas's absences, "Why not just cheat? Move a red!"

"What!" answers Syria in shock. "I'm not cheating!"

"Why not?" I ask, curious.

"I don't cheat," says he sanctimoniously.

"So," say I, "you are quite happy to rob, cheat, steal, lie and point guns at people, but not to cheat at snooker eh?"

A crook by definition spends his time cheating society yet won't cheat at a silly game! Curious indeed.

The second thing was a letter from my probation officer. She tells me that there is to be a video-link on Thursday 14th January at 2:15pm during which she hopes to see my sad and raddled countenance and have a chat. I've never been involved in such an enterprise before, it should be very interesting to say the least. I'm not at all sure why she has this desire, but I suspect it probably has something to do with the new parole hearing scheduled for the New Year. She has to make a report. She also seems a bit, shall we say, 'put out' by the fact that she wasn't asked to contribute to my recent Sentence Planning Meeting/Board. (Incidentally, at that board they promised me a copy of the minutes - I am still waiting.)

Well, Syria may have an aversion to cheating but the prison service has no such moral qualms. It will not only cheat but will lie blatantly to achieve its own ends. So, who is the better? The prisoner, who makes no secret of the fact that his social conscience leaves a lot to be desired, or the person working for the prison service, who does exactly the same thing with the full support of a failing system?

I hope everyone who reads this has a good Christmas and I wish them all the luck they wish for themselves in 2010. Dear me, the year two thousand and ten .... I'm still struggling to get used to the nineteen seventies!

The Voice In The Wilderness

The case of the vanishing men

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, prisons ran more or less calmly without drama or crisis (apart from the odd riot here and there - though a good riot never hurt anyone and often helped clear the air of tension, not to mention presenting the prison with an opportunity to get rid of a few less desirable elements).

So, prisons ran fairly calmly and, left alone, would continue to do so. Each wing had a wing governor - an Assistant Governor who held the acronym A.G. Above him was the Deputy Governor who everyone called 'The Dep'. Then we had the Chief Officer who ostensibly held sway over the staff and their behaviour, but at the top of the pile sat the Number One Governor. The Number One! A prisoner could get up in the morning, go to the Principal Officer's office and make an application to see the A.G. of that particular wing. The P.O. would ask what it was about and, if he couldn't deal with it, he would send the con into the next room where the A.G. sat dispensing decisions. If the A.G. could not deal with the matter, then the con would be added to the list for lunch hour. If the Number One was on a day off, then the Dep would take the lunch-time applications. At lunch-time, the con would see either the Dep or the Numher One, get a decision and, hey presto - job done.

Today, just a few short years later, what do we have? Well, we now have governors for bins, table tennis balls, low flying ducks and knitting circles for one-eyed lesbians from third world coutries. The prisons are crawling with governors! However, try to get to see one, or worse, actually speak to one and ask for a decision about something. Go on, just try it. These men (and women) will not even condescend to answer a WRITTEN application let alone see (and God forbid actually SPEAK) to a con. As for a decision about
anything - forget it. They don't do decision-making - bugger that, they might be held responsible for it! No, they hide away in their little dens and hold perpetual meetings about insane things which serve no other purpose than to irritate the prison population. Prisons are no longer being run for the benefit or betterment of their charges. Oh no, they are being run for the convenience of the staff!

Where are these governors? They have all disappeared into thin air! They have gone! They have vanished! Why don't the media send a group of investigative reporters to find these poor, lost souls? Surely their families miss them and have reported them missing to the police!

Mind, the police are not much better I suppose, they are far too busy running down old age pensioners for not paying their telly licence fee.

Oh dear, I'm just getting old, that's my trouble.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Business as usual?

It occurs to me that I may give the general impression that prisons in general (a lot of generals there - more than the Italian Army), and this one in particular, run fairly smoothly. Well, I'd better correct that I suppose. This emporium of misery and soul-crushing staggers from crisis to crisis and nobody seems to know what anyone else is doing. Nor do they care. Still, what can you expect from a prison with a governor who has an ego the size of a small planet?

Be all that as it may, I mention it in passing because some fool managed to lose a quarter of the wing's canteen sheets this week and consequently those fellows can't have any canteen - no tobacco if they smoke, no stamps to write home to their folks with or to send Christmas cards with, no toiletries, no little bits of food to supplement their diets, nuffink. And, what does the prison do about it? Sweet bugger all, that's what, and the reason is simple: they don't care. Why should they? They go home every night and can toddle off to Tescos with the best of them.

But I am not desiring to discuss the hubris of this prison and the shrinking violets who ostensibly run it. No, I want to bring up the subject of the Parole Board. I had my last parole board in March of this year, nine months ago. Apparently we, us prisoners with no prospects, get such a board hearing every three years, unless there are exceptional circumstances. I have received a letter from the Parole Board informing me that I have a parole hearing next month, January. This will, of course, be a paper exercise because my solicitor will request an oral hearing and then it will all be postponed for a few months. The point is, I have a hearing scheduled for next year.

Are they going to free me? Of course they aren't. I have only been in prison for coming up to twenty-four years, that's not half long enough. I'm just learning the rules! Besides, I haven't been punished and tortured enough yet, not by a long chalk.

My guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it. The prison service sees itself as far better judge than the men (and women) who sit on the Benches every day dealing out the years. These judges sit and listen to cases, all the ins and outs, and then come to a studied decision. But when the prison service get hold of a poor unfortunate, they completely ignore whatever the court felt was a just and fair sentence and impose their own.

Who is behind such decisions? Who is running the engine room? I'll tell you - trainee psychologists who have recently left school and who have absolutely no experience of anything at all. They don't look old enough to have left home never mind making life-affecting reports and ruining lives. They may be doing their best; they may be full of good intentions - but the good Lord preserve me from people who are doing their best and the road to perdition is paved with the souls of the well intentioned.

Speaking for myself, I'd better get off my gluteus maximus and go and see about getting my canteen, or at least get some bloody postage stamps - or nobody will be getting any letters from me this week.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Hope

The question has been asked - would I write a piece or vignette about my years in prison and my hopes and aspirations for the future?

Well, the years in prison - almost twenty-four and counting - would take a long time, and that would be WITH my diaries to help - diaries, incidentally, which I keep every day (it's therapuetic). Putting all that to one side, the story would be a long and very unsavoury horror story worthy of the pen of Mary Shelley, or even one of the major political parties' manifestos.

So I won't write about my years in prison, not here anyway - I am already doing that in 'An Abuse of Justice'. Which leaves us hopes and aspirations, and once again I have to say that it would take longer than a short effort such as this will allow. Ah! But all is not lost, because one word springs from the question which I can say something about. The word is 'HOPE' and, when it comes to prison, hope is often the only thing we have.

Hope - it springs eternal according to the poet, and as far as I am aware, he knew nothing at all about prison. Maybe he would have seen things differently if he had. Arthur Clough had something to say about hope, although not in so many words. He wrote:

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks, and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the Main.

I know that I have used this quote before, but I DO like it - it speaks to me, as it were. It first came to my attention several years ago via the agency of Hilary Hinchliffe, as fine a person as ever graced this sorry planet, and even now the ageing, yellowing piece of paper which she sent to me bearing that verse still sits on the wall before my face - and ever will.

Hope - often the only thing a prisoner has to keep him going. Oh, they can take so many things away from us - our freedoms, our rights, our families, our decency, even our life sometimes. But they cannot take away the hope. Even the meanest prisoner can, in the confines and privacy of his own cell and mind, cling on desperately to hope. It is often all that is left.

Of course, some prisoners give up and lose that hope. It is quite simply crushed out of them by an uncaring system, and when that happens yet another mother..father..brother..wife..son..daughter.. gets a letter to tell them that their father..mother..son..husband.. has committed suicide in their prison cell.

But the majority of the prison population carry on with that small fire burning in their hearts, the fire that is hope. We all have it. One day we will end this nightmare and come back to the world where people treat each other with common courtesy generally, and decency. We all aspire to going home, the promise of seeing a friendly face at last, the pleasure of closing our eyes and sleeping properly at last, the chance to finally let down the guard we have held up for year after year, the hope of better times.

I do not even try to say that every prisoner is a good, decent sort of cove, because they quite simply ain't, not by a long chalk. However, as bad as some may be, and they are, that gives no one the right or mandate to crush hope out of them. Eleanor Roosevelt said:

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

Well, removing hope from those who need it the most is really putting them into a category as unworthy, inferior - in all the years, through all the tribulations, I have never given anyone permission to look on me as inferior.

Happy Christmas and all my very best wishes for the coming year. May everyone receive the good fortune they wish for themselves.

The Voice In The Wilderness

The human touch

On Wednesday 18th November I had to go in front of a Risk Assessment Management board, one of those wonderful devices created by the prison service which tell the future. (Why are more of these people not winning the lottery?)

So, there I was, sitting in my kennel reading (again) a book by Geert Mak - 'In Europe'. I have read it before but I always get more from a book on the second or third reading because I race through in the first reading - I can't help myself, I have to know what is on the next page. However, that's not important, we are not discussing books here, we are discussing RAM boards.

It will be remembered from last week that Sympathetic Salome had informed me about the board and shortly after 2.30 on the afterrnoon in question she arrived to escort me before the board which was being held in a little back office where no-one would hear my screams of pain and outrage.

"It's on the wing," said Sympathetic Salome.

"Have you been pulling me to bits?" I asked in a jocular fashion.

"Certainly not," said she - and I believed her!

In we went to be confronted, not by the usual collection of dire, po-faced, miserable sods such as Oliver Twist faced in the Board of Governors at the work'us, but by nothing more than three pleasant young women, one of whom was of course Sympathetic Salome, she of the honest face and decent manner.

"Have a seat!" or words to that effect, said a young woman wearing glasses who I can't name, beyond the fact that it was Governor Karen Bourne whose name must be changed to protect the 'concerned' amongst us, such as Fiddler the Wise. (We all know Fiddler by now.) I shall call the governor Freda the Fair and hope she doesn't take offence - none is intended.

The third person, another young lady, was taking the minutes of the board and I shall call her Quink the Quill, and my remarks about not taking offence apply to her equally.

So there we sat - Sympathetic Salome, Quink the Quill and Freda the Fair - with me of course: the Sacrificial Lamb.

I have got to state here, right now, unequivocally and without any form of prejudice whatsoever, that I have never, in my twenty three and half years in prison, been treated so fairly by any board anywhere. I have to ask myself - why? Obviously my own attitude had a good bit to do with it. I don't care for men much. What I mean by that is that for some unfathomable reason, men always come across as aggressive on these boards and I react badly to aggression. However, I am never rude or offensive to females and I do not generally find them to be aggressive - so I give no aggression back.

Well, we all had a good, long chat and I gave them a short extract from 'An Abuse of Justice' to read - 'March 12th 1996 - Ambitions' - and after it had been perused, Freda the Fair said, "I don't know anyone who could have written that!"

Sympathetic Salome said, "Anyone would think you were outside. It doesn't seem to have been written by someone in prison."

Quink the Quill didn't say anything as far as I can recall.

The final outcome of the whole affair was that I would be assessed for the C.S.C.P. programme as quickly as possible - but I probably would not need to do it - and they wanted me moving on to a Category B prison as soon as possible. So everything will be fast-tracked. And that seemed to be that.

I asked about a copy of the minutes and Freda the Fair assured me that when Quink the Quill had typed them up I would get a copy.

"I'll put them onto my website," said I.

"What website?" asked she.

"Mine," said I, and gave her a letterhead from Andrew so that she could go away and have a look.

I have to say that it was a very convivial affair and although I always keep a sort of poker face, the three young women seemed to laugh quite a lot. Not a sour note to be heard anywhere. Oh, and it wasn't a RAM board after all, not according to Freda the Fair anyway - it was a Sentence Planning board! A Sentence Planning Board after all of these years eh? I've got a sentence plan, the best one in the world - I plan to go home as soon as possible. If anyone can suggest a better plan than that, I am fully prepared to listen.

Finally, may I just say to Sympathetic Salome, Quink the Quill and Freda the Fair, thank you. Thank you for a pleasant hour or so, and for treating and talking to me like a person rather than a nasty smell in the room. I could get used to that kind of treatment, I really could.

So you see, not everyone in the prison service is determined to kick me in the testicularities. Perhaps Lady Luck had a week off!

The Voice In The Wilderness

Wham, bam - thank you RAM!

It makes a change to have something to report this week, although even I have to admit that it's not very interesting. It would seem that I have a Risk Assessment Management (R.A.M.) board on Wednesday of this week, the 18th in fact. Having said that, I have been given no official instruction on the matter, not a word. RAM boards sit every year and I had one in April or May, just six months ago. 

All of that notwithstanding, I am informed in a left-handed fashion that I have a RAM board on 18th November. To this end I have had a long chat with a female, whom I am not allowed to name for several reasons. I am not allowed to name or be nice about any member of staff because, apparently, it makes them feel vulnerable, according to Fiddler the Wise (a gentleman we have met before and who is officially known as the Brain of Britain 1926). So that's one reason I can't name her - the other reason is I don't know her name.

So, we had a chat and basically it all came down to, "I am fully aware that a large amount of the information which the board will take into consideration is completely false, but I can't do a thIng about it. However, leave it to me. I'll look into it and get back to you."

This woman deserves a name. She is destined for greater things with an answer like that - I would guess a desk at the Home Office as a minimum. I shall call her Sympathetic Salome, or SS for convenience.

So, SS assured me that she will be sitting next to me on the board and will no doubt do her best for me. It's all a waste of time really because we know what will happen. They will simply dictate to me without any input from me. They will listen to nothing I have to say. They will not accept the fact that I am not the person I may have been a quarter of a century ago, and they will not even accept the fact that I am an appellant! The fact that Sympathetic Salome has been speaking to my solicitor, who has informed her categorically that my case is currently with the C.C.R.C., will cut no ice with the ostriches on the board, who have their own agenda which has nothing to do with facts. Besides, their heads are firmly buried in the sand of error.

Ah! But then we come to the real reason why I am being given a RAM board six months early - somebody is after me. Twice in the last couple of weeks I have had delegations at my door to tell me that I had been downgraded from Enhanced to Standard and they were to take away my Play Station.(They can have it, I'm fed up with it anyway - but that's not the point.) Twice I have asked "Why?" No answer has been the reply - they don't know, just someone wants me downgraded. Well, if that's the case, they will have to get me to commit a couple of offences against discipline, which I never do these days. The only other method is to give me courses, and when I refuse to do them - BINGO! Downgraded.

So there it is, that's why the board. Whose hand do we see behind this? Well, it could be several people, including Fiddler the Wise or one of his minions, because they have a tendency to pass their dirty work down to others to do. It could be anyone in fact, but I am not about to allow any of this to get to me. Why should I? It's all a bit childish. Here I am, a geriatric pensioner who has been enjoying the tender administrations of the prison service for almost a quarter of a century, and they are still not happy. They seem to struggle with the concept of "leaving people alone", especially people who are not bothering anyone at all. Maybe they haven't heard the old saying:

It is easier dealing with a friendly lion than it is to deal with a mad dog.

We shall see I suppose - on Wednesday 18th in fact.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Invisible man

Another week passed, another week of nothing at all being said to me about anything at all - every day is the same day and it is very much Groundhog Day around this place, or any other prison come to that. It sort of makes a bit of a nonsense of the prison service's practically indecent haste to move me here in March of this year. Nine months now, nine months of no activity whatsoever as far as any prison activity is concerned.

I have become the invisible man. Even my complaints and requests are ignored.

Now, any casual passer-by could be misled by all this and get the idea that the invisible man is having a bit of a grumble, but the fact is that I'm not, not a bit of it. I'm quite happy being the invisible man INSIDE the prison, as long as I don't become invisible outside as well.

I had a letter this week from one of my brothers, Jimmy. He lives in Sunderland and is a nice enough fellow with a very poor sense of responsibility - he is a bit carefree. Jimmy has reached the stage where he understands that he only has one life and nothing he can do is going to change the course of history. He understands too that he cannot please everyone all the time, so he just goes about the place pleasing Jimmy, but not in a selfish way, not a bit of it. Jimmy smiles a lot.

So, I had a letter from Jimmy giving me a certain amount of family gossip and scandal - that's normal in my dysfunctional clan. He also informed me that he had something to tell me but clearly he had no intention of putting it in a letter; he understands that my letters are censored.

THAT brings me neatly back to letters in general, and it seems that the post office lemmings have decided to stop voting for their own demise and will have no more strikes this year - so perhaps the invisible man might get a few more letters now.

And THAT brings me conveniently back to the invisible man:

One day, Superman is flying around Gotham City seeking crooks and criminal deeds, when he looks down and sees Wonder Woman lying on the roof of a building in the nekkid. He flies down and in a split second has done the dirty deed and flies off again. Wonder Woman didn't even open her eyes! The Invisible Man stands up, rubs his bum and says, "What was THAT!"

Oh leave me alone - it's not Chubby Brown you have here you know!

Finally, and I bet there are some folk who think it was a big mistake to teach me to read and write in the first place, I have been accused this week of being a recluse. What they mean by that is that I rarely leave my cell these days, apart from the essential things. Well, I've got nowhere to go! After all of these years I have heard all the stories and there is nothing new at all. So the choices are:

a) Listen to my fellow scum talking the same ould rubbish that I've been listening to for over twenty years
or
b) Lock myself away in my cell, listening to good music and reading various books or writing about my experiences in the year 2003

Mmmmmm, let me think about that for a while.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Prison politics

I had a letter this week from Campbell Malone, a miracle in itself really - not because he rarely writes but because of the Post Office lemmings who are heading for the cliffs at a rate of knots. Mister Malone has sent the information about the new witness off to the C.C.R.C. and invited them to interview the witness, a man who I am still reluctant to name in such an open forum as this. However, it occurred to me that maybe it would have shown more willing if we had sent someone to interview the witness ourselves - demonstrate our keenness to have this person as a witness after all of the barren years.

Now, are we sitting comfortably? (At times I think this place is about on a par with Watch With Mother...) Are we sitting comfortably? Excellent!

When I speak or write about my solicitor and about the case or those connected to it, I use the collective 'We'. This got me thinking about the Stockholm Syndrome and it suddenly occurred to me that right at this very minute I am living in amongst a few cons here at Long Lartin who are actually suffering from what I call the 'Long Lartin Syndrome'. It's much the same as the Stockholm Syndrome only it is pathetic.

For some reason, partial running of the prison has been gifted to a small number of prisoners. Now we shouldn't be surprised by this - for years the prison system has been doing its best to abrogate all responsibility for running the jails.

Here at Long Lartin they have 'Prisoner Committees' and 'Prisoner Wing Representatives'. These self-serving grafters have wormed their way into everything and no matter what area it is it will be the same names involved in everything. They have managed and been allowed to build themselves a power-base, and the people who ought to be doing things have allowed prisoners to take over. Only selected prisoners of course - only those suffering from the Long Lartin Syndrome.

What brought it to my attention was when I applied to a governor to have free televisions for the retired, the old codgers amongst us - not very many I may add, probably a dozen in the whole jail. We get a tenner a week pay but that is a fixed sum, it can never be improved on, although the governor, FerdieParker, fixes the rate of pay for us geriatric scum. Out of that tenner we lose a quid automatically to pay for the weekly rental of our tellies. Then, if we need some toiletries and maybe a bag of sugar and a magazine (so we know what is on the poxy tellies) we don't have much left for essentials, never mind luxuries like soap!

So I put an official application in to ask for free tellies for the decrepit crowd. The answer came back telling me that I would have to ask my prisoner representative to bring the matter up at the next meeting! I wrote back on a complaint form to tell the "Powers That Be" that I do not make applications to inmates. The answer came back telling me that it wasn't an application.

What else is it then? If I cannot bring a matter before the governor unless I go through an inmate, that's an application by anyone's criteria.

I wrote back and pointed out that I don't make requests to self-serving grafters and THAT annoyed the wing governor so much that he accused me of being offensive! Offensive to whom?

I asked who appointed these rats and was informed that they had been selected from volunteers. So I have asked other cons around the place about voluteers and nobody knows anything about any lists of volunteers. It transpires that these grafters are all self-appointed!

The worst part is that they are even trying to tell other cons what they can or can't do! The tossers actually think they are no longer in the ranks of the lowly or common convict!

Last week I had to spend an hour dissuading one of our more volatile members from committing an atrocity on one of the so-called prisoner representatives, and that should never be the case. So, we have the Long Lartin Syndrome fit and well and running the place. It's very gratifying to know that my interests are being served, it really is.

Ah, prison politics! I struggle to keep out of them, I really do - but you've got to love 'em.

The Voice In The Wilderness

A laugh in the face of adversity

And so I come to yet another week-ending where nothing has taken place that is worth mentioning. We've had the postal strike of course - the lemmings heading for the cliffs, but they can't see it. Well, I suspect that they can, they have just managed to put themselves into the hands of yet another nitwit who thinks he is far more powerful than he really is. The fool has even had the temerity to compare himself with Scargill and to add that he has more power. That must be the power of self-delusion, a wonderful thing.

So - nothing to report at all.

Instead I will tell a little story that happened a couple of weeks ago here in the wonderful world of Long Lartin jail. But before I start, I'd better point out, as I'm sure you're all aware by now, that I am not allowed to use the names of any members of staff. They are all hiding their identities - from the Taliban, the general public, Special Branch, even their own families, for all I know. Whatever the case may be, their identities must remain confidential, so I must either make names up or call them nothing at all.

This story, then, concerns a female member of staff - Miss Nothing-At-All.

One day, a couple of weeks ago, I was standing leaning on the rail watching a couple of the fellows playing snooker down below me, on the ground floor - and let me just point out here that John Higgins has nothing to worry about from these two. So there I stood, or leant, and I must have had a pensive look on my visage because Miss Nothing-At-All, who had been passing, found it necessary to stop and say, in a sympathetic manner, "Are you all right, Frank?"

Well, show a greyhound a hare and he will go for it.

"As a matter of fact, no, I'm not," said I.

"Oh," says she, leaning on the railing next to me and getting comfy for a chat, "What's the trouble?"

"Well," says I, "it's my brother Tommy."

"What's wrong with him?"

I sighed, heartfelt too. "He's a lot older than me, (I'm the oldest in the family) and he isn't all that well to start with . He lives in one of those sheltered housing things, you know, a flat in a block with a sort of caretaker looking after the old people."

"Oh," says she, "I know what you mean. My auntie lives in one."

"Well," says I, "our Tommy hadn't been seen for weeks so a couple of the family went round there with the police and the social services and they knocked on the door for ages but they couldn't get any answer."

"What did they do?" asked Miss Nothing-At-All, doing a good job of sounding concerned.

"Well," said I with yet another sigh, "they did the only thing they could do, they kicked the door in and went in. The whole place was stinking and they found opened tins of dog food all over the place - some had been half eaten and still had forks stuck in them. They found our Tommy lying on the floor in the kitchenette."

"Oh God!" says she, "Was it food poisoning?"

"Nah!" said I. "He'd broken his neck trying to lick his own bollocks!"

Now, most folk would find that quite amusing - I did, but then I have a twisted sense of humour. Miss Nothing-At-All said, "That's horrible!" and went on her way. Obviously another one of those who take themselves far too seriously and, as they say in Ireland, are 'slightly up themselves'.

I tell people that they have to learn to laugh in the face of adversity. The alternative is to cry our eyes out, and I forgot how to cry a long time ago. Who was it who said, "When we get old nobody gives us time to cry"? Oh! I know! That would be me.

The Voice In The Wilderness