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The Dandymite Kid

What's in a word?

Having myself a little ponder this morning, minding my own business, as I do, that phrase sprang to mind and got me thinking. "A rose by any other name is still a rose" as the great bard once wrote. Well, some say that Bacon actually wrote it, others say that Marlowe did, but after four hundred years I don't think it matters a fiddler's damn who wrote it, it's a fact "for a' that" - as another poet wrote, and as far as I know there is no dispute about Rabbie Burrrns, or if there is nobody's listening.

So, what's in a word?

This got me onto where words come from, their etymology, but I really began to wonder what came before the etymology, where did words come from? Somebody must have made them all up in the very beginning. Oh I don't mean that someone sat down one rainy evening and made up a lot of words, that's silly. They appeared one by one over the years.

This got me to thinking about the actual mechanics of making up words at all. I've made up a couple myself. One is "superlicious" and it means 'superlatively delicious' but really it's nothing more than a contraction. The one I particularly like, all my own work too, is "testacularities"! And if you can't work out what that one means then somebody has lead a very sheltered life.

This got me onto the making up of words by accident. Some years ago in Whitemoor prison one of the young fellows came to talk to me and he approached in a very furtive, clandestine manner. At this point I will have to start to censor the story to protect the guilty. I don't remember the conversation verbatim - I'm not a policeman - but the general gist was like this.

Him: Frank, I'm needing to ask you something.

Me: Oh dear, why me?

Him: You don't know what I am going to ask yet.

Me: It isn't going to be anything good, not from the way you came in here, looking shifty.

Him: Will ye listen?

Me: Get on with it then.

Him: I was thinking. When I get out I'll be needing a few things.

Me: Working brain cells on that shopping list?

Him: No, listen! I know where to get a "thing" from and the bullets, my cousin will get them. What I need is, I need to know who to see to buy some dandymite.

Me: What?

Him: Dandymite. I've got a plan to blow the bastards up for what they've done to me.

Me: You mean dynamite!

Him: Yeah, dandymite.

Me: For fuck's sake! How would I know that?

Him: You know everybody.

Me: Listen to me, numbty, you can't just buy dandy-bleedin'-mite. It's all regulated I should imagine. Dandymite! Give me a break.

That's the way the conversation went, if it can be called that, but my point is that his use of the word dandymite is probably a perfect example of how words evolve. That's why we have got so many words which mean more or less the same thing and which sound alike.

As for the Dandymite Kid, he went out of prison years ago and he blew nothing at all up. He is probably living somewhere in suburbia, working nine to five, rearing three kids and being bullied by his wife.

Prisoners get odd ideas, unrealistic ideas, but they grow out of them the minute they find something else to occupy their tiny minds.

Dandymite! If brains were dandymite he wouldn't have had enough to blow his bleedin' nose.

Another day

When I crawled out of my nasty little pit this morning at seven bells I did all the usual things: made my bowl of superfast oats, sliced a banana into it and munched my way through that. Then the cell doors were opened and I went out to get more hot water for a cuppa and to post a letter to Lesley, she of the impatience and bad temper. (I've told her! I can only write the letters and put them into the postbox - after that, it's in the hands of others! Is she listening? Is she bollocks. Like any other woman she only listens when it is her doing the talking!)

So, I came out of my kennel and ran into one of the boys who said, "Morning, Frank."

"Right," said I intelligently.

"Are you going to write one of your things today?"

"I am," said I, "so don't bother me," and walked off.

At the tea/hot water urn I ran into another one.

"Morning, Frank," said he.

"Bollocks," said I politely.

He said, "I always feel pretty good when I get up in the morning but as soon as they unlock us I get depressed."

I said, "So don't come out of your cell then!"

He answered grumpily, "I wish I didn't have to. I'm going straight back in as soon as I've made my tea."

"Me as well, mate. Me as well," I told him.

He asked, "Are you going to be tapping on that fucking typewriter again?"

I said, "What do you suggest? Should I sit scratching myself and get depressed like you?"

"Bollocks," said he and off he went.

I collected my water and headed back to my kennel, only about thirty feet away - sorry, we are on continental measures now so I'd better say about ten metres.

I was a step away from my kennel door and sanctuary when yet another mastermind accosted me.

"Hey ! Frank!" said he. "Are you busy?"

"I am," said I and went to enter my haven of solitude.

"The thing is," said he, "I've got nuffink to do all morning so I was thinking about having a go on your game!"

"Keep your eye on that then," said I, "because you'll never get your hands on it."

"You know what," said he, "you can be a horrible fucker when you want to be."

"Many years of practice and dealing with loonies like you," said I as I closed the door in his face.

So, there I was, in my kennel, water for tea and my typewriter just sitting there waiting for me to start hitting the keys. I sat down, made the aforementioned, and stared at the machine - but nothing presented itself as a topic. I have nothing to tell anyone, not a thing. My mind is in neutral this morning and I can't be bothered. I've got nothing to give, nothing to write about. I am bereft of inspiration this morning.

Oh well, what can I say? "Tomorrow is another day," said Pooh.

You can quote me on that

Today, Friday 9th April 2010, I find myself sitting down to my typewriter without a preconceived topic for this attempt at perspicacity (or sagacity or wisdom, call it what you will). I am topicless. However, I do have, running around the desert of my mind, two quotes, not entirely unconnected with each other in that the writers were contemporaries and acquaintances and may even have been friends for all I know.

On 4th September 1844 in his judgement in O'Connell v the Queen, Lord Denman said:

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

While, at about the same time, William Lloyd Garrison said:

I am in earnest - I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD.

Now, it is a well established fact that we can find a quote to cover every eventuality and situation, all we need to do is look hard enough in the right places. This got me to thinking about quotes in themselves and how they become quotes. Clearly they come from the fact that someone has either said or written something that sticks in the mind and becomes memorable and therefore quoteable.

I wonder if, at some point in the future - when I am long gone and am sitting next to our current lot of corrupt politicians in purgatory's waiting room, listening to them whingeing about where it all went wrong and wondering where their next cigar is going to come from - will there be students somewhere quoting me?

That begs the question, did I ever say or write anything memorable? Come to that, did I ever say or write anything sensible? I don't think we can judge our own work or writing, not in an objective way. I suppose that's what editors are for and, now that I have mentioned editors, that's what I need - a good editor who can encourage but at the same time be ruthless with a red pen.

I know better than anyone that I ramble on, I digress, I lose the thread, I go around the houses, I waffle and write a lot of complete, total bollocks sometimes - most of the time in fact. That's why I need a ruthless wielder of the censor's axe.

Where would I find such a person? Am I asking the rigt question? Shouldn't I really be asking, where can I find a person who is prepared to get involved with a low-life like me and the outpourings of his diseased mind? Is that a better question to ask?

Well, it probably is but that's all by the way really because the thing that counts from my perspective is that I have a lot of things I wish to say. I possibly have pearls of wisdom (learned in a very hard school) to pass on.

So, where does that take me? Back to the words of Garrison I suppose: 

I am in earnest - I will not excuse - I will not equivocate - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Ships that pass in the night

The other day, sitting here contemplating my navel, life, the universe and everything (a practice which I sink into from time to time - it keeps me off the streets), I somehow managed to direct my cesspit of a mind into thinking about the countless cohorts I have been associated with over the years. Some were in my range for short times, some for longer, but they all moved on in the end. Everyone goes their separate way in the final analysis - ships that pass in the night.

Many of them, those who I have been particularly friendly with, have left my dominion breathing promises of undying friendship and vowing that they would never forget me, and I am sure that each and every one of them meant it - and still does. They are still my friends and haven't forgotten me, they just aren't in contact with me now and probably wouldn't know how to contact me in the first place.

What are the words of a hymn I used to sing as a kid at school?

Time, like an endless stream,
Bears all its sons away.

That's not exactly what I mean, but the sentiment is there. The river of life has moved everybody downstream - apart from me. I'm sort of stuck on a beaver's lodge or some other obstruction.

However, out of the blue, in response to something I wrote on the blog, there has been a voice from the past. Not a voice exactly, more a few lines. Micky Boyle, a rather funny and fun-loving fellow from the land of the lobscouse and the Liver Birds, was incarcerated with me in Whitemoor for quite a long time, in his terms (but for a mere five minutes using my timescales) and then he left to progress to another jail and now apparently to home. Fair play to you Micky. Enjoy the rest of your life my ould son.

He has found me on the internet, sends a friendly message but says he has no idea where I am or how to get in touch with me. Well Michael, it's not rocket science, you nitwit. All you need to do is send a message to the website (www.justiceforfrankwilkinson.co.uk) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=292639565135) and that will get to me. In fact, the address of this jail is there for all to see (www.justiceforfrankwilkinson.co.uk/html/contacts.html), and anyone who would like to say anything to me or communicate in any way can do the same thing. I quite like communicating with people and I answer every letter I get. Let's be realistic here, I need every friend I can get.

So, if Missus Boyle's little soldier, her pride and joy, wants to write to me - then go and buy a biro, Einstein! Or use the "email a prisoner" service (www.emailaprisoner.com) - I'm at HMP Long Lartin and my prisoner number is R60852.

I wonder where all of those ships are now, those ships that passed in the night, a lot of them practically unnoticed and often unremarked. Well, I have no idea where you are, all of you - men, women, and a few we were never sure about. All of you, wherever you are - and all of those I have never met and who only know of me from the website - the whole, bally lot of you, thank you for making my life that little bit richer and, do me a big favour, a service. The next time you have a drink (I don't drink myself) then have it to me. Raise a glass and silently salute the ships that pass in the night.

Finally, and I know I have used this one before but it IS a big favourite of mine, let me end with the words of the poet, Hilaire Belloc who wrote:

I will hold my house in the high wood,
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men who were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Enhanced thinking

Staring into space
Sitting here this morning just staring into space, as is my taste from time to time, I began to reflect. I do that a good deal too! The older I get, the more I find myself reflecting on time and the passage of the same. Let's face it, I'm not getting any younger, and every day spent in the middle of this nightmare is a day I will never see again.

I seem to do that with an increasing regularity as each day passes - reflect on time and the nature of it. This morning it has been triggered by my remembering a passage from William Hazlitt, who died on September 18th, 1830. He wrote:

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in this respect.

I think that I am becoming a miser of time in that I no longer have any desire to afford the time to listen to those around me who don't really have anything interesting to say. That may seem a little on the arrogant side, as though I think I am better than those around me. Yup! That's me - a big success! The only thing I am a success at is my ability to accumulate a catalogue of disastrous decisions going back a long long way. Mistakes by the bucket full, that's all I am a success at - and our mistakes in life are really the only thing we can truly call our very own. No, I'm no better than anyone else, not even the worst of my contemporaries.

Then my thoughts - thoughts, according to report writers, that I am not capable of because I haven't been taught to think and am not capable of abstract thought - turned to those very report writers who, year after year, continue to trot out the same old, tired falsehoods (because apparently they haven't done the Enhanced Thinking Skills course either, although they insist that they can teach prisoners how to think).

These report writers completely ignore the facts because, quite simply, the facts do not suit the report they want to write. Well, I've got some news for them - Aldous Huxley once wrote:

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

So, to ignore the facts of any matter does not make a difference to the value of those facts. These report writers make quite outlandish and extraordinary claims with very little and often no evidence whatsoever to support these claims and, as Carl Sagan said:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The report writers continue blithely to repeat absurdities year after year despite any arguments or any conflicting evidence that the prisoner may offer to refute the absurdities. These "facts" then get included in various documents - Sentence Planning, OASys, Risk Assessment Management, all manner of assessments and, of course, the prisoner's Parole Dossier.

Various boards and committees then examine the "facts" and come to their decisions based on inaccuracies and, in many cases, downright lies. They make their decisions and create hurt and misery.

Was it Voltaire who said:

Those who believe in absurdities will commit atrocities.

We're not all bad - or worthless
It is generally accepted (amongst the 'Holier than Thou' crowd) that prisoners are hulking brutes who drag their knuckles along the floor as they clump along and that they communicate in a series of grunts and neanderthal sounds. 

Well, there may well be one or two who fit that description around the place, it would be of little use denying it. However, most prisoners are quite reasonably turned out, generally polite and can actually read and write to a fairly competent level.

"Good Lord!" the cry goes up, "Prisoners reading and writing? Whatever next? Our children are leaving school and they can't do that!"

Well, send the little buggers to prison then - or put the teachers in jail!

Given a level playing field, most prisoners would be quite decent people and the real truth is that all that the majority of them really need is a chance in life. Okay, nobody is denying that they (the prisoners) have made a few mistakes, some quite terrible and horrific mistakes too, but should they be condemned forever because of those mistakes? Show me someone who hasn't made mistakes and I will show you a liar.

Many prisoners are not really bad people, they just don't know who they are - either because of environment, peer pressure, misguided cant or downright confusion. Of course we have the intrinsically wicked fellows, but they would be that way no matter what, and their numbers are a lot fewer than the authorities would have us believe.

Part of the problem with many villainous characters, and I know more than my share, could well be a sort of personality crisis rather than a natural evil. Nobody is born evil and the only evil that gets into a child's head is that which grown-ups put there.

There used to be a President of what was once Czechoslovakia and, while he was seen as a wicked fellow, he once wrote something which actually made a lot of sense and touches on why a lot of people seem to be quite wicked. He was speaking more about the arrogance of man rather than criminality but the sentiment is quite valid when it is examined objectively.

Allow me to reiterate what he said and then let me leave it to the reader to think about. It's quite enlightening in its way. Vaclav Havel wrote:

If I don't know who I am, who I want to be, what I want to achieve, where I begin and where I end , then my relations with the people around me and the world at large will inevitably be tense, suspicious and burdened by an inferiority complex that may go hidden behind puffed-up bravura.

The prison service could do well to study that passage because if they continue to tell prisoners that they are no good and worthless, then there is a danger that sooner or later the prisoners will believe them.

Tbe Voice In The Wilderness

Waiting for Charon - or Godot?

Mud and stars
 
This week, for the first time in a long time, there is news. Mid-week they handed me my parole dossier for the provisional Parole Board hearing in June. This dossier should have been handed to me at the latest in February but, like everything the prison service does, they were late. The funny part - arrogant tragedy would be a better description - is that they have given me a deadline of five days to compose any response I might care to make and - this is the funny bit - they have allowed me a half page to do so. It's not happening of course - the solicitor will simply obtain an extension.

So, I've finally got the dossier and the contents are enough to cause a Tasmanian Devil to step up his aggressive demeanour by about three hundred percent. I'm not allowed such a luxury of course. It is against the rules for a prisoner to suffer from stress no matter what the provocation. The odd part is that the contents haven't annoyed me, because they are no more than I am used to and have come to expect. It is a rehash of all the same old, tired inaccuracies and downright mistakes, but I am used to that. They have even managed to give me two more names - Colin and Anthony. Well I shouldn't complain - I have always said that I wished I had a better name, although I wouldn't have selected Colin or Anthony. No, I'd have gone for something much more prosaic - like Aloysius. What a name THAT is!

However, I digress.

It's not all bad. Some of it is quite good in fact and in particular I want to mention The Wallace. She has done a decent and fair job with the garbage she has to work with - and some might say that I am the biggest bit of garbage in the heap, but let's not get personal.

I have been hard at work since I got the dossier and have written two documents. One is a direct representation by myself to the Parole Board which will be added to whatever representations my solicitor will make. The other is a response to the dossier itself.

I finished the work yesterday (Saturday) and it will all be in the post (with this) on Monday to Andrew who has agreed to computerise it all for the purposes of easier reading and better presentation. He will also edit it to remove the rudenesses which it may contain. I have to admit that while I don't allow these things to get me annoyed any more, I still make rude responses. Well, the way I see things is that an idiot should be informed that he (or she) IS an idiot - or worse. What can they do about it anyway - send me to prison?

I'll he honest, my gut reaction is to tell them, quite simply, what I think about them, but that would be entirely counter­-productive and would probably annoy those people who have gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf. I have learned how to control my natural urges. The fact that I shouldn't  be in prison at all should, and probably does, entitle me to a little rave now and then and some rude remarks from time to time - but I don't do it. The satisfaction of telling them to go and fuck a spider would be fleeting and I would regret it for a lot of years to come,

The prison service is an unforgiving creature, experience has shown me that, and is still showing me.

So I have completed my responses and will rely on Andrew to remove my more glaring rudenesses - there are certain to be more than a few. My trouble could well be that I have gone from a nasty, devious, criminal type to a nasty honest person who is probably too straight for his own good. So when we consider that, it seems that I can't hardly win, can I?

I wish my typewriter could do smiley faces. I write a lot of things with my tongue firmly in my cheek, and when I use a pen I can take the sting out of things with a little smiley face. Typewriters can't do that. Here is an idea - put the smiley faces in wherever you, the reader, think they should be. It would be interesting to see whether everybody would choose different places. It's all a matter of personal outlook really.

In the words of Frederick Langbridge (1849-1923):

Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees mud, and one sees the stars.

Silence, truth - and innocence

Silence is the virtue of fools (Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men (Matthew Arnold 1822-1888)
It is better that ten guilty men escape than one innocent suffer (Sir William Blackstone 1723-1780)

All three of these men must be turning and squirming in their graves now through shame and emharrassment at the way the legal system has been debased by a succession of Home Secretaries as they have eroded and trampled all over justice.

Silence is the virtue of fools
A great deal could be written on that sentence but I am merely going to suggest that when a person sees something that is so clearly wrong and does not speak out against it, does not rail against the injustice - then that person is as guilty as the one committing the outrage.

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men
Again, a lot can be written on this sentence but I will confine myself to just a few comments. When we get older and become aware of our own mortality, a great many things that we once saw as important suddenly become far less so. In fact they become quite pointless and we no longer care about them. Were we would once have gone to quite extreme lengths to hide something, once we are practically standing on the landing stage waiting for Charon and his ferry, we no longer give a toss. We tell the truth and the devil take the hindmost. There is no point in any other course at all.


Innocence
The Blackstone quotation - well, what does anyone need to say? The Prison Governors' Association has estimated that there are between 2 to 3 thousand innocent men and women in our prisons. That's a lot of innocents - more than the bible says Herod killed in his slaughter of the innocents.

Shouldn't we all be denouncing it?

Isn't it strange that a huge number of people will take to the streets to protest at not being allowed to butcher foxes and yet these same people are quite content to let thousands of their fellow human beans rot in prison, despite the fact that they are as innocent as the foxes!

Mind, why am I surprised? This country is renowned for caring more about animals than it does about children. How else do we explain that we have a ROYAL society for the prevention of cruelty to animals but only a NATIONAL society for the prevention of cruelty to children.

Shouldn't we be raging at the injustices evident in this little country? Shouldn't we be digging out those responsible and making them afford some form of restitution? Shouldn't we be grabbing them by the scruff of the neck, shaking them violently as a terrier shakes a rat and yelling into their collective face, "What the fuck are you playing at?"

I suspect that we should be doing all of those things - and a lot more - but we aren't.

Bear in mind that there is nothing personal in anything I have said. The "we" mentioned is the collective one and means the whole of society, not any particular section.

Personally, I have reached the stage where the boyhood fire that once coursed through my veins is now nothing more than a few emhers glowing softly, soon to turn to charcoal and finally to go out altogether.

Given that, all I can add - and what better - are the words of the nurse, Edith Cavell, executed during the First European War in 1915. These are the words she uttered, or wrote, the night before they executed her:

Standing as I do, in the view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

Grumpy Easter bunny
 
Must have got out of bed on the wrong side this morning because I woke up in a less than charitable mood. No idea why. In fact I didn't even realise until after we were unlocked and I was getting hot water to make a cuppa when one of the fellows said, "Morning Frank."

I just grunted and ignored him. That's the best part about getting old - nobody expects us to be nice any more. So, I wandered back to my kennel and no sooner had I got seated with my cuppa than a youngster appeared at my door and said, "Frank, can I have a word with you?"

That's when it hit me that I wasn't at my best because, usually a tolerant sort of cove, I wasn't.

I said, "If you have to. I'm having a cuppa and a fag. Come back later on. Go on, bugger off."

He ignored this of course and came inside.

"The thing is," said he, "I should have had a RAM board the other day and nobody knows anything about it. I keep asking but nobody does anything - they don't care!"

I retorted, "And to be quite frank, neither do I. What the fuck do you expect me to do about it? I have enough problems doing my own sentence, I can't do yours as well."

He ignored this as well - prisoners have got very selective hearing and memory when it suits them. "It's my girlfriend, see! She keeps getting on at me about getting a move to another jail and getting to open prison. I've told her, I've got twenty-three years left to do, they won't let me move! She's doing my head in. I feel like grabbing somehody and fucking his shit right up."

"Well," said I, "That'll certainly help you to get moved to a new jail, not to mention six months in the block when you get there - and a few slaps into the bargain. So that's a good idea. I wish I could think of things like that."

"Stop taking the piss," said he petulantly. "My girlfriend is doing my head in. I'd be better off down the block."

"Look," I said. "We all know that you are simple minded, there is no need to prove it. Let me tell you a little story, okay?"

"I like your stories," said he. As I have said, simple minded.

"Once upon a time," said I as a beginning, which is always a good place to start, "there was a little bunny rabbit playing in a meadow. At the bottom of the meadow ran a railway line. One day the bunny rabbit got too close to the line and a train came along and cut off the rabbit's fluffy tail. The rabbit ran home to its mother, crying that a train had cut its fluffy tail off. Its mother said, 'There there, don't cry. Go and get it and I'll sew it back on for you.' So the little bunny went back to the railway line and as it had its head over the line looking for its tail another train came along and chopped its fucking head off! There is a moral to this tale," I finished.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Don't lose your head over a little bit of fluff. Now bugger off while I have my tea."

See! I just wasn't feeling very charitable this morning.

The way we live now
 
As we shuffle our way along the dusty road of life we will, much as Bunyan's hero, Christian, meet many diverse and different characters along the way. I know, I've met a few.

There is no better place to meet the weird, wonderful, naughty and downright nasty than in a prison, and that isn't confined to the inmates. The industrious and idle, the sympathetic and selfish, the kind and the cruel - we meet them all. I've certainly met my share of miscreants over the years, some famous and of course the infamous. I don't wish to discuss any of them at all, but I do want to take a short look at the influences they all may or may not have exerted, either deliberately or unconsciously, on others and on the prison system as an entity. In particular, I want to mention the Irish.

Oh no! Not the bloody Irish again! Eight hundred years of aggro from that gang of hooligans and they are still at it! (Incidentally, the word hooliqan has its origins in the Irish.) If it hadn't been for the Irish incarcerated in this country's prisons in the seventies, eighties and nineties, the prison system would still be run on Victorian lines where prisoners were treated like scum - and a lot of folk would say, "Quite right too! Never mind the likes of Elizabeth Fry and her misguided ways and ideas, let's get them chained to the wall and throw a bucket of cold water on them once a month!"

The Irish changed all that because they taught the English prisoner the value of collective action and rebellion. Let's face it, if there is one nation on this planet which knows about and understands rebellion, it is the Irish, the Tea Caddies.

Rebellion is a disease, a virulent disease, and once contracted it quickly takes hold and spreads like wildfire. So the authorities got rid of the Irish - they sent the whole bally lot of them back home to the Emerald Isle.

Then, once the Irish were no longer with us, the authorities set about clawing back all concessions made to prisoners over the years of struggle. Bit by bit, the quality of life for the prisoner in British jails is being eroded, but nothing will be done about it because of course there are carrots dangling for the donkeys to chase.

Sad but true.

We can't bring the Irish back - they wouldn't come, and most of them have been released by a forgiving government anyway. The nearest we have got now to the Irish are the moslems - at least they seem to stick together, but they also seem to have their priorities wrong.

Where does that leave the carrot-chasing British prisoner? Like the sparrow which crashed to earth when its wings froze up - in the shit, mate.

The Voice In The Wilderness

A morality tale

I have been asked several times how I come up with the various subjects I write about each week. The answer to that is quite simple - I don't know. I never - well rarely - sit down to write about anything specific, I just start hitting the keys and see what comes out at the other end.

Usually something has been done or said at some point in the last seven days to pique my interest or attract my vitriolic comment - my sniping, as it was once called by the woman who encouraged me to write these things in the first place, although not specifically for a website. Her name was Hilary - as fine a person as ever walked on this sorry rock we call planet earth. Actually, there is nothing wrong with the planet, it's a wonderful place. It's the pricks who live on it who cause the difficulties, and I am probably one of them.

So, when asked how I come up with things, my answer is, "I don't know!" I don't plan anything and never rewrite anything. I do not fine-tune my words. (I don't think they are worth the effort of fine-tuning - they are generally the ramblings of a grumpy old man.)

From time to time that fickle ould whore Lady Luck takes a hand and gives me something to comment on but (and I tempt her by saying this) she seems to be having a bit of a break lately. Well, it's either that or she has found somebody else she likes to kick better than she likes kicking me. Maybe the fun has gone out of it for her seeing as it no longer hurts so much. I have become inured to her violent attacks. Where is the fun? When she puts on her best boots and kicks me as hard as she can in the testacularities, I just stand there, stoically hiding the pain, and say, "That didn't hurt." So perhaps she has buggered off to pick on someone else and if that is the case - good luck mate, whoever you are.

Another thing said to me this week was a sort of accusation, in its own way. I was told that I never give much of myself and I never tell anyone anything. There could be a certain amount of truth in that. However, in my own defence I would like to narrate a wee tale, a parable if you will, a morality tale similar to those of Chaucer, only not as clever.

Once upon a time, in the dead of a bitter winter, there was a little sparrow sitting on a twig and slowly freezing to death, shivering like a dog shitting bones. He had seen the adverts for Spain and sunny climes and he thought to himself, "Sod this, I've had enough. I'm going to a nicer place where the sun shines all day and my feet are not frozen to the bloody twigs!"

So off he set, little wings beating like the very clappers of the bells of hell, faster and faster as he flew enthusiastically south.

Then disaster struck. He flew into a snow storm and no matter how hard he flapped his little wings he slowly froze up until finally he could barely move and came crashing down to the hard, frosty earth below. Fortunately he landed not on the hard ground but crashed into a pile of fresh, new-laid cow dung.

The little sparrow was delighted - nice and warm, lovely. He wiggled and squiggled and got really comfy in his new, hot little nest of wet crap. He felt so good that he started to whistle and sing.

At that very moment a farmyard cat was passing and it regarded the pile of whistling crap with interest. It had never heard a pile of crap whistle before. (Cats never listen to Roger Whittaker.) So, curiosity engaged, the cat began to dig about in the shit and found the little sparrow.

"Magic!" cried the cat. "Hot food!" - and promptly ate the bird.

So now we come to the morals of that story - not one, not two but three.

• Moral one - just because we are in the shit does not mean that someone doesn't like us.

• Moral two - just because somebody digs us out of the shit does not mean that they do like us.

• Moral three -when you are in the shit, keep your mouth shut.

The Voice In The Wilderness

Even the weariest river

A load of bulls

Why is it (and before I go any further, I'd better say that this is a rhetorical question), why is it that every Sunday morning, the second I sit down to my typewriter, my cell instantly turns into Euston Station? I get every oddment and weirdo at my door asking silly questions and generally getting on my wick!

Twiggy arrived - "Hey! Frank! I'm doing fish and chips later on for tea, no bones, they are fillets!"

"I don't care, go away, I'm busy."

Albert arrived - "Hey! Frank! Have you got any milk open?"

"Do I look like Tescos? Bugger off!"

Rob arrived - "Hey! Frank! Is it too early to play snooker?"

"Right!" said I, getting up and going to the door. "I'm locking the door now, goodbye."

So, now I am locked in my cell with the racket of the day going on outside on the wing and I have no idea what I intended to write about. The mind has gone blank - apart from well-filletted fish playing snooker and drinking semi-skimmed milk.

I had a letter from my solicitor yesterday and he seems to have missed the whole point of my attitude toward the CSCP course and the assessment for the same. Yes, I agreed to do it but I never said that I wanted to. I am doing it entirely unwillingly and under protest, but I will do it, much against my better judgement. I do no want to, I HAVE to, to get a tick in the right box - no other reason. Obviously the fact that I want no part of it clearly means that it is all a waste of time because all I will do is point out the stupidity of it all at every opportunity I get, and that won't help anyone. It is insanity to attempt to force any courses of any sort onto people because they will only see them from a resentful standpoint which means that it is all pointless.

Having made a few enquiries into the course (this CSCP lunacy), I can only say that I am not surprised at the high failure rate. As far as I can find out the only purpose served is to give some of the participants nightmares about the violence which the silly trainee psychologists encourage youngsters to boast about. These young men, segregated from female company, these young eagles, the macho crowd, think that they can impress the young women with their tales of heroic violence, most of them not even true! Why the hell would I want to be dragged so far backwards in my personal development? I left all that sort of thing behind me a long time ago. I won't go back for anyone and certainly not for a tick in a box. To be fair, it HAS been said that I will probably be found unsuitable for the CSCP course, because of my age if nothing else, but my general attitude and demeanour clearly demonstrate that I do not need anything like a CSCP course. I hear the participants laughing and joking about it, taking the piss out of the young girls whilst at the same time lusting after them. Why would I be seen as suitable for such insanity?

It's not a case of me being better than anyone else, nothing like that at all, but I do see things differently than the young men see them. Young men see things very differently than us old boys - I know, I used to be a young man and now I'm an old one. I KNOW how time changes things, which is more than the young psychologists can say. They ARE young, they DO still think as a young person and consequently can never understand the changes that time will bring. It's called experience.

I'll finish with a story:
Two bulls in a field, a young bull and an old bull. In the field next door are a herd of cows. One day the young bull says to the old bull, "Hey! Let's take a run at the fence, jump over it and have a bit of fun with one of the cows."
The old bull looks at him and says, "No. Let's take our time, walk round by the gate and have a bit of fun with all of them."

Ah! The wisdom which only comes with experience and age as opposed to the impetuosity of youth. Well, I'm too old and too tired to even walk round by the gate...

The weary river

Charles Swinburne once wrote:

...even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea

It is part of a poem of course - and I'll just mention the fact that Charles wasn't Swinburne's first name, his first name being Algernon. Mind, if my name had been Algernon I might have refused to use it too.

It must be great to have a good name. Why do parents never seem to give any thought to what they saddle infants with as a name? Mr and Mrs Gordon called their son Michael Unwin and wondered why their little boy never had any friends or had difficulty with girls when puberty arrived.

I have always wanted a good name, something interesting like... Rudyard. That's a great name. Or Aloysius. How can anyone fail with a name like Aloysius? Having said that, you wouldn't want either of them if your surname was Taylor - Rudyard Aloysius Taylor, better known as The Rat.

Names have a lot to do with our progress and success or failure in life. I am a firm believer in that.

So, now we come to name selection. Personally I think that each child should, at birth, merely be given an interim name, a sort of family nickname, much like the Russians with their patronym. Then at a certain age, say sixteen, the child should be able to pick the name they want to go through life with.

This brings me to the current practice amongst the youth of today to take on what they call their "street" name, and there are a few beauties amongst them. We see a lot of them in jail, names like "Killer" or "Sniper" or "Nat West" (an interesting one - he got that because he robbed the Nat West Bank - all I can say is that it's a good job he didn't rob Mother Care), "Danger", "Nuke" , "Bullet", and so on - all interesting, I suppose.

However, all of that is completely beside the point. Once again I have let myself get sidetracked. To get back to my original theme - that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. It sort of connects with an Arthur Clough sentiment about the tired waves vainly breaking. Well, I am tired, there can be no doubt about that, I am totally and completely dog-tired. I am, in the words of the great philosopher, cream-crackered. A man can only beat his head against a brick wall a finite number of times before he has had enough of the pain. 

When I say I am tired I don't mean that I need a good night's sleep. Oh no, I am not that sort of tired. The weariness I am feeling is that which impregnates deep into our very souls and bones - the tiredness Hercules must have felt at the end of the seven little jobs the Gods sent him to do. But I am still breathing so I am not quite ready to hand in my locker room key, not just yet. I've said it before, they can knock me down but they'll never get me to stay down.

I've just passed my twenty-fourth anniversary in jail - one more to go for the quarter-century, and not a day justified. I wonder how far from the sea my weary river is.

The Voice In The Wilderness

A stoic leper coping with stress

Anyone who is familiar with the ramblings of my diseased mind, and who reads this blog every week, will be aware that I am to go before the Parole Board (yet again) in June of this year. That was made clear to me in a letter sent by the Parole Board to both myself and my solicitor some time around the end of last year. I was assured in writing in that self-same letter that I would be supplied with a copy of my parole dossier by February 27th 2010 at the very latest. Not only would I get a copy, so would my solicitor.

Well, knowing how the prison service works, in all their hubris, it will come as no surprise whatever that the promised dossier failed to materialise! A few days ago I happened to come into contact with my new Personal Officer, so I took the opportunity to bring up the subject.

"Have you written the report for the Parole Board yet?" says I.

"Eh?" says he, clearly a man with a great future ahead of him as an after-dinner speaker.

"Parole report," says I. "For the Parole Board. It is in June and I haven't had a copy of it yet."

Says he, "I don't know anything about it! All I've been asked to do was one for the Sentence Planning and X [my previous personal warder, Miss Concerned] did it. I will be away until April starting next week."

So, they haven't even had the bloody reports done yet. No wonder I haven't had a copy of the dossier - it quite simply doesn't exist yet!

"Should I phone them up?" he asked.

"No," said I, "let them alone. They can explain it to higher authority when the time comes."

Now - and pay attention, I might say something amusing - now, where does that leave me?

• I am sure (almost) that The Wallace has done a report because she told me so on a video link last month, or it may have been the month before.
• There is no medical report because I refused to allow the medical gossips to tell anyone anything personal.
• No psychology report because they haven't been anywhere near me since I came to this prison last March!
• The security report will say that there are no security concerns - if they say anything at all!

It doesn't leave much, does it?

Once again, I have become the invisible man, the leper, the man nobody wants to admit is even here! I think I'll get a bell to hang around my neck to warn folk when I am in the vicinity, just to give them the opportunity to run away.

Some people say that it must all be very frustrating for me - and at times it is - but I have to live with it. No choice in the matter really. They also say that it would drive them mad... However, the rules dictate that, no matter how much there is to get stressed about, I am not allowed to suffer from stress.

Fortunately I seem to have become quite pragmatic about it all as I grow progressively older, and I can sort of look on from a distance with a certain amount of equanimity - some might even call it stoicism.

Ah! But what is going on inside my heart, you may ask How do I manage to keep it all so strong? "You are old Father William," the young man said, etc. etc. Yes, old I may be, but my mind is active - which is more than can be said for my body - and prison is no place for active minds. At the minute I am keeping it active with the assistance of a PlayStation, a very wise purchase on my part two or three years ago. I have run out of books to read temporarily. I've read all I have, several of them several times in fact. However, I'll put that right soon enough, with a bit of good fortune.

So, I shall continue to answer each and every letter which crosses my threshold, read everything I can get my grubby little mitts on and play games on my PlayStation, even though I only ever play on my own. Still, I've heard that playing with yourself is often good for easing stress...

The Voice In The Wilderness

Groundhog Day - again!

This week has been yet another week when absolutely nothing worth mentioning has happened. Every day is Groundhog Day here.

However, another old friend came from Whitemoor and lives quite close to me again, much like at Whitemoor. I can't name him so he will have to be given a code-name and, seeing as he weighs about three stones more than a somnolent rhino, I will call him Twiggy - it seems appropriate somehow.

Yesterday Twiggy was in my cell, and it occurred to me that my comfortable little kennel had been set out much the same as at Whitemoor. Just then another old friend from Whitemoor went past the cell door yelling at his pal, who was ignoring him. The old pal was from Whitemoor too!

I then yelled at the yeller, "SHUT UP! STOP SHOUTING!"

Of course we then realised that I used to yell exactly the same thing at the same person for the same reason at Whitemoor. Nothing has changed apart from the postal address.

This morning when I went into the kitchen to talk bollocks to Twiggy, there were five men in there - each and every one of them an old Whitemoor graduate. What is the point of just moving people around from arse-hole to breakfast time when it simply means that it is all the same people and just the locations change. Still, I suppose a move gives us all a chance to see the new cars on the roads.

As I said earlier , every day is Groundhog Day in the prison system and not one of those days has any point to it other than keeping hooligans away from their families and off the streets. What a wonderful policy!

Ah! But the prison system has been charged with rehabilitating its guests too! They can't do it of course, never could and never will. Rehabilitation can only come from one source and that is inside each and eyery one of us. It has to be something the prisoner desires him or herself, and it certainly cannot be imposed.

That is the error heing made by the prison system. They only have one answer to every problem - force. Force does not bring about change - never has. Oh it may bring about changes in the short term, but these changes will be entirely superficial and only maintained until such time as they are no longer needed to fool the overlords.

I had a chat the other day to a fellow taking part in the CSCP programme [Cognitive Self-Change Programme - ed.] and he told me that in the sessions everyone was telling horror stories of violence and mayhem and the young psychologists were loving it all. The cons were actually making stories up just to titillate the silly young women. My pal said that he had started to have bad dreams because of the rubbish being spouted - the violence and bragging. It was affecting his mind, and not in a good way.

This is the same CSCP programme which almost every prisoner is being forced to take part in these days to get the right ticks in the right boxes. It's a farce, a joke. It even borders on fraud as far as the public are concerned because they think that prisoners are being honestly and genuinely rehabilitated. If they were, why would the figures for re-offending be rising steadily? Ask the Howard League for Penal Reform about the figures, don't take my word for it. The re-offending rates are actually higher amongst those who have done the courses than amongst those who haven't.

All that notwithstanding, let's get back to what started this diatribe in the first place - Groundhog Day. I've just had Twiggy at my door asking me if I wanted any cheese on toast! It's just like being back in Whitemoor - and everywhere else I've been over the years.

It's Groundhog Day - again.

The Voice In The Wilderness

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.