'I did not have sex with that woman.'
I've had cause to issue that denial a few times before – we all have – not in reference to Monica Lewinsky necessarily, but certainly in denial of something we shouldn't have done with someone. Call it a little white lie; call it a big black lie; call it being economical with the truth, either way, rightly or wrongly, it's not entirely honest. At what point does equivocality turn into mendacity, sophistry into surreptitiousness? I am wondering this not because I have something to confess to my girlfriend (I didn't have sex with that woman, and she didn't suck me off either, in spite of my impassioned pleas for her to gobble my fat cigar), but because I have something to confess to my prospective new employers – or do I?
As some of you may know, I am a convicted criminal. A serially convicted criminal. Thus far in life, I have committed half a dozen offences for which I have been prosecuted, another 10,000 if you include every drug deal I've ever done, plus that time I thought it would be a laugh to kidnap Madaleine McCann until I sobered up and realised I'd forgotten where I put her. Although an inbred handful of offences isn't that many compared to my erstwhile colleagues, some of whom are into three figures, it's still probably six more than you've got. Indeed, if you wanted to be really harsh and write out my convictions in large letters using a thick black marker, you could probably go so far as to say I've got a charge sheet the length of my arm. There's the one for selling cannabis dating from 2005, and then the one for selling herbal cannabis in 2005. Getting caught twice in one year – how bad at dealing was I? Well, not quite that bad actually. The seemingly separate offences were actually the same crime listed twice; for some reason the filth saw fit to differentiate between herbal cannabis (weed to you or I) and cannabis (hash to you or I). Just as well they didn't sub-divide it any further or I'd also have convictions for selling red seal, pollen, white widow, sticky black, orange bud and purple haze.
Nestling snugly on my charge sheet with the foregoing crime(s) is a piffling possession charge for 0.1 grams of coke that the PF couldn't even put a value on, but could still prosecute me for. And then there's the additional offences that would show up on an enhanced disclosure, such as the £75 fixed penalty for getting caught with £75 worth of weed, and as for the driving convictions, well, let's not even go there. It would be fair to assume that there's not much chance of me becoming a Scout leader any time soon. If I want to molest young boys, it looks like I'll have to join the priesthood instead. They don't require full disclosure of anything, except to God, and he already knows that I'm a sick bastard.
Although none of my crimes are for offences that I consider to be offensive (in my warped mind, weed dealers are performing an essential public service by helping people chill out after a stressful week at work and should be knighted, not incarcerated), prospective employers may not be so kindly disposed to my selfless services to relaxation, and may even be so indisposed as to refuse me a job. No job equals no money, and no money equals going back to doing what I do best/worst, which invariably leads to going back inside and having to write more blogs about how no one will give me a job because I'm a multiply convicted drug dealer blah blah, and thus the vicious circle continues ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
How do I break this cycle of re-offending, of recidivism, or endless rejections from employers who can't see past my charge sheet? To them, I am essentially Adolf Hitler: yes, I may have some inspirational qualities, but no one is going to acknowledge them so long as they continue to be blinded by my own personal Holocaust that is to be known as an ex-dealer.
Of course one solution – one Final Solution – to this problem is to go down the Holocaust denial route: Convicted criminal? Who are you calling a convicted criminal? No boss, I'm a good boy, which is why there are no crimes listed in the Criminal Convictions section on my job application. I'm not averse to the odd lie – hell, the perjury conviction bundled in with all my drug convictions is testament to that – but in an ideal world, I'd like to be straight with people. I'd like to be able to look them in the eye and say 'My name is Kai, I'm an ex-dealer and I've spent two years of my life in prison plus another two on bail or on a curfew. Oh, and I like it when my girlfriend tickles my balls when we're fucking but if you give me this job I promise I'll be the best damn worker you've ever had, and moreover I'll never speak of my sexual predilections again.'
If the world we live in was like that depicted in the current Ricky Gervais film, The Invention Of Lying, perhaps I'd be able to get away with telling the truth. As it is, we inhabit a world of half-truths and white lies, of spin and distortion, of telling people what we think they want to hear instead of what we think. And so it is that I am supposed to pretend that I think drug-dealing is wrong, and that decent upright people like yourself don't like to get a little bit fucked up on a weekend. No, I'm supposed to tick the box that says Criminal Convictions and declare them in full and watch as someone with half my ability and half my personality gets the job instead, because my previous penchant for selling weed obviously impacts on my ability to sell tins of beans.
Of course, I appreciate that there is a recession on and nice guys who've never broken a law in their lives can't even find a job, so I should stop whining about my plight. The thing is, I'm not asking for special treatment; just a chance. When even bottom of the barrel employers won't take me on, the sort whose workforce is made up of incontinent geriatrics and the mentally handicapped (yes Asda and B&Q, I'm talking to you), what hope is there? And all the while, I know that I could make one phone call and be on my feet again with enough product to have the entire country calling in sick on Monday.
If lying on a job application to secure gainful employment would enable me to avoid relapsing into the only job I know, would that lie be justifiable, to serve the greater good? It's like that conundrum where a gunman takes your family hostage and orders you to fuck your mum or he'll shoot you all. (I often have that fantasy, though quite what it's got to do with this blog, I don't know.) Am I speaking any sense here, or am I just spouting disingenuous piffle, the equivalent of explaining that you were muffing a skank down the back stairs of Exodus so as to improve your cunnilingus technique and thus better pleasure your own girlfriend?
One place in which I have been economical with the truth – as we are entitled to be – is on my CV. This week I drew up a curriculum vitae that was probably more honest than most. It contained no lies, no embellishments and no fictitious qualifications. The only point at which the facts met with a concave mirror was when it came to explaining my whereabouts for the majority of 2009. After some consideration, I elected for the following summation: 'Earlier this year, I quit my job in order to travel the world and to devote time to writing a novel, a project I am on the verge of completing.' I didn't bother explaining that by 'the world' I meant the route between Craiginches and the Sheriff Court, but the statement was essentially true. When I phoned Careers Scotland to check that they'd received the CV I'd emailed them, the woman told me it was one of the best written CVs she'd ever seen and that I sounded like an interesting character to work with.
'Is this you just back from your travels then?' she asked breezily. At that point I broke down and confessed that the majority of my travels this year had taken place inside my 6 ft x 12ft cell.
When I was released from prison in 2006, I was frank about my convictions on every job I applied for, not out of an overriding obligation to tell the truth, but as an experiment to prove to myself that no one would have me. And I was right of course, and thus after a while I went back to working for myself, the only employer who doesn't discriminate against me. This time round, I've tried lying on a few job applications, also as an experiment to see if it will get me any further. It's what my fellow convicts – the few who have jobs – do, and they swear that no one ever checks up. Their employers may be gullible, but I imagine even they must get suspicious when their staff keep foning in sick for 12 months at a time. Thus far, lying on applications has gotten me as far as my previous post-prison experiment of telling the truth has – nowhere.
One of the other problems I face in getting a job is that were any prospective employer to Google my name, they would probably be brought straight to this page, and thus learn that not only do I have multiple convictions, but I lied on my job application and – most heinously of all – I like having my balls tickled during sex. They would also know that this lascivious, duplicitous reprobate has the potential to become the most eager, hard-working, lucid and erudite employee they have taken on, a credit to the company and to themselves. But what image do you think will be in their heads when they navigate away from The Trash Whore Diaries – me beaming as my Employee of the Month foto is taken, or me sniffing coke off my girlfriend's tits while screaming 'Oh that's it baby, tickle those cojones, tickle 'em real good!'
I guess, just as with Bill Clinton and all the other people out there who've ever found themselves in a sticky situation, I have only myself to blame. And if, when I tire of banging my head against brick walls, I go back to the job I know and love and get caught once more, I will also have only myself to blame. I like writing but I don't want to write about prison life any more. I like working but I don't want to work for anyone who is too prejudiced to give me a job anyway, so as Steve Stifler would say, 'Fuck those fuckers.'
I guess there's a third option that I have yet to explore: remain on the dole for the next seven years, by which time my convictions will have expired and I will no longer have to scribble porkies on job applications in a vain attempt to convince employers that I am the decent person that I actually am. Then there'll just be the small matter of explaining away the seven-year gap in my employment history. For now, while I ponder whether to lie or not to lie, to deal or not to deal, I will continue with my writing therapy, the blogging equivalent of attending Narcotics Anonymous and uttering the words 'My name is Kai and I'm an ex-drug dealer. I've been out of the game for 12 months now and god, I miss that bitch.'

Complete the formula: ___________ + woman = _________.
Woman + woman = good time? Woman + dog = even better time?
Perhaps, but the truth is, there is no right answer because it's not an equation – it's a statement: Plus woman. Take a normal, healthy member of the female species, add on another eight stone of excess blubber and what do you get? Plus woman. I made this startling discovery while in TK Maxx, the Wal-Mart of discount designer stores. I shan't go into my reasons for being in such an odious emporium, but I'd like to state for my girlfriend's benefit that I wasn't trying to source her Christmas present on the cheap. Not in there, and certainly not in the Plus section. I might be on Jobseeker's Allowance, but I'd rather resort to selling drugs to avoid having to gift wrap something from TK Maxx, and not just because I enjoy selling drugs.
I was always taught at school that the opposite of plus was minus, but in TK Maxx it's small. Small woman then medium woman then plus woman. Why plus? Why not large or humongous or grossly obese? Why not so-fucking-fat-the-rail-is-bending-under-the-weight-of-their-oversized-clothes? There's nothing super about being supersized and there are no plus points to being plus. Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps there wouldn't be such an obesity epidemic in this country if we had the balls to tell it like it is; a spade a spade, a hoe a hoe and a fat fucking ho a fat fucking ho. Instead we deal in neutered, politically correct euphemisms like 'plus' or 'extra'. Such 'voluptuous' 'bubbly' people even get their own clothing catalogues with names like 'Just Be', an abbreviation, presumably, of Just Be A Big Fucking Heifer If You Like Then And See How Happy You Are Without Resorting To Comfort Eating. It may seem like I'm having a go at fat people because they're an easy target – a target that's impossible to miss in fact, like firing a tranquilliser dart into an elephant's arse at three paces – but I'm not the only one. 'I don't think there's enough stigma,' noted Ricky Gervais in a rare moment of solemnity. 'I laugh about being fat but I should be ashamed.' Even the fully formed members of the fat club are in agreement with me on this one it would seem.
Of course, if I were obese, I must concede that I would not be penning this impassioned piece. No, I'd probably be going for my fourth plateful at Jimmy Chung's right now, just as if I were black I'd be liberally dropping the nigga word into every sentence. But I'm not – fat or black – and thus I find myself railing against rotundness whilst double-checking that there are no African-Americans in the room before singing along to 2Pac's 'Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z' in an attempt at making me feel marginally less white.
I am currently a svelte 11½ stone, my girlfriend an even svelter 7½. Combined, we still weigh four stone less than my last cellmate. No prizes for guessing who slept on the top bunk. With the only fat component my girlfriend and I have between us consisting of my fat cock, weight isn't an issue that should be concerning us. And yet everywhere we've gone this week, Fat People have been following us. It's like we've been under surveillance by the Fat Police, although not very covert surveillance, admittedly. We walk into Starbucks and there is an enormous (and I mean enormous, not fat) bitch wedged into one of the armchairs next to us. Pizza Express? Some bingo-winged blubber-bum enveloping a chair at the adjacent table. The preponderance of lard has the effect of making me want to order a skinny latte or a healthy salad, but why? I'm not the one who needs to count my calories, and I'm certainly not gonna attempt to count theirs – not without an adding machine anyway.
The worst offender to insult my thin fascist ideals was encountered in the Job Centre. I might be unemployed, but we all have jobs to do in this world. She had a job getting into her chair while I had a job not collapsing on the floor in spasms of laughter. After spending eight months inside this year, I emerged into the free world to discover that not a whole lot had changed. The earth still orbited the sun, the Aberdeen team still couldn't score and Jordan was still regularly swallowing her bodyweight in sperm. The only thing that does seem to have changed during my hiatus is the fat quota – now there's more of it on everyone. Obesity is insidious. No one wakes up to discover that they've gained six stone in their sleep and their PJs now resemble cycling shorts. We were all thin once. A few of us still are. I might be at the wrong end of my twenties; I might even have a few grey hairs (but I wouldn't know as I shave my balls religiously to prevent the horror of ever having to find out), but at least I've still got my thinness. Mind you, if you'd spent the last eight months subsisting on Rice Crispies and whiling away your evenings doing sit-ups because there was nothing else to do, you probably wouldn't be looking so bad either.
Scientists have now pioneered a new type of surgery that takes all the excess fat from female hips and thighs and inserts it where it's needed most – the breasts. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but in practice if you tried that with some of the plus women I've seen lately, they'd end up with double Z-cups, tits that spanned time zones. There's stacked, and then there's top-heavy. All women would like to have bigger breasts, but not at the expense of having to wear a rucksack full of bricks to prevent themselves from toppling over.
You know, I could probably continue blogging in this vein for another 500 words, dropping in more fattist jokes about the fattest members of society, and yeah you might laugh as you read them, but what's the point? It's not you I'm addressing, it's you – yeah you, shovelling pizza into your fat face like an anaconda swallowing a stray African child. It's you I want to make laugh. I want to make you laugh so hard you puke; puke up all that calorific dough and cheese, laugh so hard you spew yourself bulimic. Perhaps then the next time I go for a Starbucks or Pizza Express, I'll be able to enjoy my victuals without having my view obscured or my conscience troubled by the thought that one day that might be me standing up to pay my bill and taking the chair with me.
Two minuses might make a plus, but two pluses certainly don't make a minus, no matter what TK Maxx might assert to the contrary. Or to put it in formulaic terms, plus woman plus plus woman = 2plus woman = too much woman by far.

This is the last prison blog you're ever ever gonna have to endure from me. No, really - don't roll your eyes. I'm serious about this, cos god forbid I should ever return to that place, there's no danger I'm documenting it again. If that happens, the only thing I'll be writing is a suicide note. Having perserved with The Trash Whore Diaries: The Prison Years for as long as I have, you're probably equally sick of Craiginches, even though you've never set foot in that cursed place. Although I was in prison until September, I stopped blogging about it in March, partly because I was bored of writing about prison life, and partly because I decided to focus my efforts on writing a novel instead, a project I am still working on. Assuming I can get a job and stay out of that big bad place on the hill, my book should be finished by Christmas. Then I guess I'll start looking for someone to take pity on me and publish it. In the meantime, I'll keep updating The Trash Whore Diaries a couple of times a week, blogging about everything and nothing, the way I tend to. If I stop updating, it's either because I've started dealing again or gone back inside. There, that should make the job of the CID a whole lot easier; you don't even need to leave your desks to keep an eye on me. Just keep munching on those Krispy Kremes and I'll do your job for you, just as I did back in January when I led you straight to my big bag of weed.

Although I'm not the most objective person to assess whether the words you're about to read are any good or not, I've saved this blog till last as it's my favourite prison one of all. If you don't know what it's like to be inside after reading this, you never will, short of taking that trip o'er the water to Craigie yourself.

Alright, enough preamble: Take a deep breath - but don't hold it - and enjoy the last and longest prison blog ever. Ever.

Written on: Tuesday 3rd March 2009

Thump. Thump. Thump. The dull rhythmical noise resounds around the hall. I look at the clock on the BBC News channel. 7:30 am. What is this idiot doing thumping his door so early in the morning? I don’t have to wait long to find out.

‘Boss! Boss! I need my methadone!’ it shouts.

Thump. Thump. Thump. 7:30 is the time when meds are served up in American jails, resulting in ‘7:30’ becoming a euphemism for insanity; ‘Stay away from that guy – he’s a 7:30.’ In Craiginches, the medication is served half an hour later. This guy isn’t a 7:30 - he’s an 8:00. Thump. Thump. Thump. The rest of the hall is stirring unhappily. It is bad enough waking to the realisation that you’re in jail without this migraine-inducing racket to contend with.

‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll fucking do ya!’ shouts someone commendably, issuing the standard jail threat for such situations. We thump our way through to eight when the doors are opened and the cons spill out into the hallway. The junkie dashes off to the front of the meth queue to take up his grievance with the nurse. The thumping might have stopped but another sound swiftly takes its place in assailing my senses, a single word that every prisoner dreads to hear.
‘Court’ says the screw curtly, sticking his head around my door. Court? Oh fuck. Prison is bad, but court? Court should be a joyous occasion, the opportunity to stand before one’s peers and clear one’s name of the unfounded allegations that have despoiled it. Court is where heavenly utterances such as ‘Not guilty’ and ‘Bail granted’ ring out; it is the place where men are set free to skip their way out of the dock and pull cartwheels along the corridors of justice. Not this court. This is the Sheriff Court, the court of broken dreams and punitive injustice. It is the place where hopes are dashed, families are separated and men are broken, condemned and set about by other broken condemned men.
I have only been in jail for six weeks but already I have lost count of the number of times I have been hauled up in court, only one of which was for the offence I am currently remanded for (being caught in possession of a rather large bag of weed). Once they have you under lock and key, the powers-that-be are prone to dredge up every other minor indiscretion, including non-payment of parking tickets and failure to put the toilet seat down after peeing. It is less about bringing an already condemned man to justice and more about administering a few gratuitous kicks to said man now that he is on his knees and begging for mercy. I have already been in court three times in as many weeks for the heinous crime of being caught in possession of 0.18 of a gram of cocaine some ten months previously, a quantity described by the PF as having ‘a nominal street value’. (I couldn’t bring myself to tell the justiciary that I wipe bigger amounts off my kitchen worktop the morning after a fun-filled nite before. But then they wouldn’t understand. After all, they work for a government that sincerely believes a gram of cocaine can yield as much as 50 lines. 50? They’re having a fucking giraffe. I make it two, and stingy ones at that.) After having the temerity to disport myself in a public place while in possession of microscopic quantities of fun dust, I remained at large for a further nine months. During that time, the police could have come and charged me, but they elected not to. Perhaps, understandably, because they had better things to do with their time, like snort all the drugs they'd seized and circle-jerk in the Masonic Lodge. Now that I am remanded in custody however, I am a sitting duck, on call 24/7 to boost their clear-up rate. It is not uncommon for offenders, once in prison, to be charged for additional analogous offences, even though the police know they were committed by someone else.

‘Got him in for HBs? Might as well tack on another dozen housebreakings while he’s here.’

Now that I am in jail, it is not just the police who are taking my previous misdemeanours seriously. The good sheriff of Aberdeen is also of the opinion that my crimes are of the gravest nature possible. So grave in fact that he has decided to refer the matter to the High Court that dealt out my three-year sentence for perjury in 20005 in the hope that they will recall me to serve the remainder of that term. (Although I was released from prison in 2006, technically I was still four months shy of completing my three-year sentence in 2008, when that whopping 0.18 of a gram weighed me down and rendered me incapable of running from the police.)

Today isn’t about the quark-sized sprinkling of coke however. Today is about an even more serious offence – failure to pay a speeding ticket. For this crime, I must be hauled before the District Court where the judge will hand me a £150 fine, converted to seven days imprisonment because I am already in prison and thus unable to pay it. The seven days run concurrently to the remand I am already serving, meaning that I will not even receive any additional time. The cost to the oft-cited taxpayer of all this hullabaloo? Thousands of pounds, including the fees for court officials, solicitors, judges and the Reliance turnkeys who have to transfer me back and forth to Craiginches every time the case is called. The cost to me? Fuck all, apart from another wasted day. Yes, even in prison it is possible to waste a day that could have been spent more productively, sleeping or wanking.

The holding cells within the Sheriff Courthouse are truly awful, even by prison standards. I know them affectionately as Hell On Earth. We have spent so long in each other’s company that we are on first name terms.

‘Hey Hell, how’s it hanging?’

‘Ah, back again Kai. What for this time?’

‘I’m fucked if I know, Hell.’

The moniker is appropriate, for it is quite possible that Satan’s spawn were conceived within one of these foetid pens. Indeed, look closely and you can still see traces of his iniquitous DNA splashed across the concrete floor. Or is it the saliva that has been spat out by a million chain-smoking convicts? It’s hard to tell. Either way, I know I’m going to heaven when I die because I’ve already spent eternity in this earthly hell. In the corners of each cursed cell, where the grimy walls meet the grimy floor, there are mounds of accumulated dirt – out of reach of the floor-scrubbing machines – laced with the excretions of every man every to have darkened their steel doors.
I alight in Hell at 8am. By lunchtime, thanks to the efforts of eight perma-smoking, perma-spitting men, the floor has assumed the consistency of a skating rink. Hell has frozen over. Bored YOs slide from one side to the other, grinding the saliva into the floor with their trainers. This claustrophobic coffin contains more germs than a chicken-pox party and is laced with the stale air of 100 long-haul flights. These horrid surroundings bring out the worst in the horrors who inhabit them, men who are not known for exhibiting their best qualities at the best of times. In the holding cells, it is the worst of times, it is always the worst of times. Countless years of countless lives have been wasted within these damp walls; wasted in waiting to be hauled up in court for spurious offences and then hauled back down to wait some more, and wasted in the years of punitive sentences handed down by grouchy judges, slapping on an extra year because that’s how long they spent queuing at the Haudagain roundabout on the way to work. In prison, inmates take reasonable care of their cells, sweeping and mopping them out. The holding cells make prison seem like a luxury resort however. The men caged inside them are transient, passing through on their way to marginally better things, and couldn’t care less about a building whose masters couldn’t give a damn about them. The detainees save their worst behaviour for this, the worst of all supposedly civilised establishments. Upstairs is all red carpets and elaborately-carved coats of arms; downstairs, out of sight, it’s Hell On Earth. Bored prisoners burn their nicknames onto the ceiling with lighters (‘Skosha’, ‘Toshy’, ‘Jamie 4 Stacy’), they vandalise the CCTV camera, they smear their lunch across the walls, they chase gear and puke all over the floor and they smash the supposedly unsmashable window in the legal representatives room. They verbally and physically abuse the Reliance guards, hurling insults, hot tea and cups of urine. They fight in court; with the turnkeys, with their co-accused in the dock and with the police trying to prevent them from receiving parcels from their mates in the public gallery.
Further along the hallway from my designated dungeon du jour, there comes the incessant banging and shrieking of the women, trapped inside their very own concrete cell. They are, to a skank, junkies and whores. Rattling from heroin withdrawal, they take to rattling their door in a vain attempt to inveigle the turnkeys into supplying them with medication. The only attention they can attract however comes from the bored and horny men in the cell across the hallway. These sex-starved reprobates encourage the whores to flash their tits through the peephole, promising snout [tobacco] in return. When the emaciated breasts are proffered to the peephole to sate each gender’s respective cravings, the promised snout then fails to materialise. Bumped again.
I could tell a million stories about the seemingly million-strong army of men I have shared cell number eight with. Run a swab across the clammy, condensation-laced walls and you’d probably get a match for every suspect on the national crime database. Each one is a walking, gouching tragi-comedy. If these walls had ears, they’d have long since been plugged up with dowts and bodily excretions. With the aid of an industrial-sized box of cotton buds, however, they’d have been privy to some extraordinary confessions. There is the guy who removes his t-shirt to reveal the tattoo that stretches across his back – LeeAnne. Two weeks after the ink had dried, they broke off their engagement when he found out that LeeAnne had been shagging his best mate. The relationship might be over, but the scars will remain forever. His tat’s too large for a cover-up; the only hope is to find another girl called LeeAnne and settle down with her. And possibly to ditch the best mate too, if he wants to avoid history repeating itself. There is the junkie who is sat in the corner of the cell snoring. He is off his face on methadone and is looking forward to going to jail to remove the bag of smack he stuffed up his arse before attending court. I had hitherto considered it impossible to fall asleep on the hard bench seat, but today I have learned that where there’s a will to imbibe enough opiates, there’s a way to lapse into a coma. There is the hyperactive YO, charged with 200 separate offences, mostly involving theft of cars, motorbikes and anything else that can be hot-wired. The charges fall broadly under the category of theft, although ‘charged with being a little shit’ would be a more appropriate summation. In court, he talks back to the judge, calls the police witnesses grasses and loudly acknowledges his mates in the public gallery, much to the chagrin of the sheriff. The sheriffs, who hate every ne’er-do-well who passes in front of them, reserve particular loathing for this young offender. This may have something to do with the fact that a few months previously, he stole one of the sheriff’s cars, drove it to Perth and flogged it for drug money. Also joining this merry band of renegades in holding cell number eight is the alkie who stopped necking tins of special brew, not to cut down on his drinking, but because his body has developed an immunity to them. Every day he wakes up with the shakes and by lunchtime has succeeded in shaking them away with the aid of a litre of vodka. To pay for his habit, he and his mate do a nice line in stolen vehicles. Using a pick-up truck, they drive about looking for cars to tow away for scrap. Their selection criteria are remarkably relaxed; if it’s parked on the street and there’s no one about, it’s there for the taking. Smash the window, remove the handbrake and hitch it up. Once furnished with the £60 that each vehicle brings, it’s back to the offie again. The alkie also does a nice sideline in witness intimidation, having gotten off with eight attempted murders to date. Today, this motley crew of alkies, junkies and thieving YO’s are supplemented by the obligatory Weegie, who’s in for ‘bottling some cunt’. The deed was performed, predictably, with a broken bottle of Buckfast in his local kebab house. After busting the man’s head open, the Weegie fled still clutching the weapon in one hand and his chicken pakora in the other. And finally, today’s cheery intake is completed by a mad old bastard who whiles away the hours pacing the cell and conversing with himself. He should clearly be in a mental institution, although given the number of loonies to have been temporarily binned in cell number eight, it is an asylum in all but name. The YO’s spend the next four hours teasing the old boy mercilessly, trying to convince him that he is off to Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution.
At I sit, head in hands, on the bum-numbing bench, hemmed in by bodies on both sides, I reach into my pocket and pull out a small speck of dirt. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a tiny crumb of weed. It was given to me in the holding cells some weeks previously by an inmate who was feeling unusually charitable as he had just been granted bail. The crumb had probably been wedged between his toes or worse, up his arse, but I was in no position to refuse his fragrant morsel. ‘Here, anyone fancy a joint?’ In that moment, I know how it must feel to be a genie, smug with the satisfaction that comes from seeing faces light up as prayers are answered. Unusually for a genie, I appear before the puff of smoke and have only the power to grant one wish, but once stoned, all other wishes will be swiftly forgotten about anyway. One of the Aladdins takes out his papers and quickly fashions a single-skinner. It is inhaled deeply and passed around. We spend the next hour giggling at the proclamations of the mad old head-case, who curiously hadn’t seemed that funny up until now.
‘Kai, pull your trousers up’ chides the Reliance guard escorting me along the subterranean corridors towards the bus that will transport me back to prison proper.

‘You pull them up,’ I reply. ‘My hands are kind of tied.’

I am double-cuffed, my hands bound together and then separately handcuffed to my designated prisoner escort. In the absence of a belt (prohibited lest I attempt to strangle myself or any one of my odious cellmates), my trousers are snaking slowly south.

‘Here, pull your trousers up!’ shouts a pig as I am marched past the adjoining reception area of Grampian Police’s custody cells.

‘I can't,’ I retort. ‘Besides, with an ass this beautiful, it would be a crime not to show it off.’

The filth return to their duties; detaining a forlorn man whose nose has been burst open, most likely by a well-placed porcine fist. He mops at his beak with blue roll as the blood seeps through.
Inside the Reliance van that will take me on the short journey back o’er the water, I undergo the usual de-cuffing procedure. First, the set of handcuffs shackling my wrists together are removed. Then I step into one of the booths while the turnkey I am attached to stands in the gangway and latches the door. It will now open only a few inches, just far enough for him to reach in and remove the final restraint. The door to my booth slams shut and is double-locked. If the holding cells are tiny, the booths on the bus are minute, each one no bigger than a toilet. My knees are crushed against the far wall and my lungs are filled with the scent of stale tobacco, vented by the previous inhabitant of this hobbit-sized hovel. If you suffer from claustrophobia, it is not a good place to be. And if you don’t, ditto. I peer through the scratched window, engraved with the sentiments of condemned convicts; ‘Nine moon for a poxy breach.’ [Nine months imprisonment for a poxy breach of probation.] The engine roars into life and the turnkey turns up the radio. As we crawl along Union Street in the rush hour traffic, a Transit van draws level at the lights. I press my face to the tinted glass window and smile at the female passenger who momentarily finds herself sat two feet away from me. She waves. Then the lights turn to green and we are off again on our separate journeys. The Reliance van rattles over the River Dee and the jail looms into view. As the shutters roll up and we enter the belly of the beast, Primal Scream sing us through the last leg of the journey. ‘Thieves keep thieving, dealers keep dealing, junkies keep scoring, whores keep whoring.’ The van shudders to a halt and, together with my fellow thieves, dealers and junkies, I alight once again, back where I started.

Written on: Wednesday 21st January 2009

This is the first blog I penned upon my arrival in Craiginches this year. Now that you've read the tales of my first few months inside, it's time to go back to the start and describe the events that led to my incarceration there. Having written and typed this blog, I have vowed never to read it again, as the day it details was quite possibly the worst in my entire life. Nevertheless, hopefully you'll be able to read it and have a good laugh at my expense. With my reputed way with words, it should feel like you were there yourself, experiencing the action as it went down, the only difference being that you won't get a two-year prison sentence for your troubles.

'Alright mate, worra you in for?' enquires the Scouser, pushing his face against the peep-hole in the cell door.
'Con-sairn n' supply,' replies the Scouser on the other side of the steel divide.
'Wo' were you caught with?' asks the first Scouser in his sing-song refrain.
'Box an' a 'alf o limo,' [1.5kilos of cocaine] replies his fellow displaced scally.
It reads like something out of The Trash Whore Diaries: The Prison Years, only this isn't 2005. Four years have passed since my notorious prison blogs came to the attention of the police, the justiciary and the national media. I'm older and wiser now, and certainly not stupid enough to wind up in Craiginches again.
The two Mickey Mousers finish their conversation and the one locked inside the cell turns and grins to his pad-mate. 'You hear that? We can gerra fone off that lad for a monkey [£500]. Fucking boss lad!'
I nod. 'Nice one.'
Oh dear. I may indeed be older, but wiser? Wise up, you're having a giraffe. Where did it all go wrong (again)? Allow me to rewind one week and indulge you with a tale that includes all the essential elements of a ripping good yarn; big bags of weed, a perilous rope ladder descent and a pile of pigeon shit. It's like The Trash Whore Diaries never went away.
Thursday 15th January, 15:00. It is a typically dreich day in Aberdeen and the heavens are trying their hardest to hold off the inevitable downpour, like a kid bursting for the toilet who keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs. The skies might be grey but the sun is still shining in my world. Work is over and the only appointment in my otherwise empty schedule is dinner at 8:45 with my favourite girlfriend in The Silver Darling, my favourite restaurant. Speaking of favourites, in the oversized boutique bag clutched against my chest are two more of my favourite things: my latest purchase from my favourite clothes shop – a Giancarlo Rossi trenchcoat – and a big bag of weed. The weed, I should point out, was not purchased in the clothes shop, but from one of the many Vietnamese whose cannabis cultivation keeps me in such fine apparel. Upon reaching Chapel Street, I jump into a taxi and ask the driver to head to my mate's flat, whereupon I intend to dispense with £1000 worth of my Viet-Cong friend's green goodness. When I get to the flat however, my mate informs me that he doesn't have any scales suitable for weighing up a bar of weed. His only go up to 50grams, and to dispense a quarter of a kilo in such increments would take ages. It is here that I make the first of what will prove to be several fateful decisions, culminating in my arrest, eight hours hence.
'Let's just go to mine and weigh it,' I suggest. 'I've got proper digis there.'
My mate agrees and we set off to my flat nearby to take care of business. Ten minutes later, the deal is done and I show my mate out, locking the door behind him. I am just about to pack away my shit and stash it when there is a knock at the door and I hear the two words that every drug dealer fears: 'Grampian Police!'
I freeze. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Had they chosen any other moment in which to come calling, I would have answered the door with a smile and obsequiously enquired as to how I could be of assistance. But right now, with ten grand's worth of Class B drugs sitting on my kitchen counter, not to mention digis, baggies and a potent odour of eau d'marijuana wafting through the flat? No danger. I can only assume that the scum must have detained my mate leaving my flat with the bar on him, and now they've come to claim the rest of the two kilos. Fearing that my door is about to be put in by the drugs squad, I do the only thing that any quick-thinking dealer in my situation would do: I grab my shit and lob it out the bathroom window. Weed, baggies, scales; the lot. Even my mobi goes plummeting two storeys to its death. If the flat's about to get busted, I'm not taking any chances.
With the premises purged of all incriminating items, the only thing left to do is sit and wait. Five minutes pass and I hear nothing. I put my eye to the spyhole but there appear to be none of Grampian Police's unfinest clogging up my stairwell. They must be waiting for me downstairs, I reason. Well, if they want a piece of me, they might as well have me now. Waiting will only prolong the inevitable and besides, with my handset scattered to the four winds, it's not as if I can call my mate to determine whether or not he has been lifted. I cautiously make my way downstairs and open the communal door a crack. There are no meat wagons, squad cars or Ford Focuses parked outside. No uniforms wielding battering rams and no balding men in suits whispering into walkie-talkies. The coast appears to be clear. I make a break for it, and set off at a brisk pace to my mate's flat. If he's made it back to his without being intercepted by the filth then perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps the police were calling round to attend to an entirely unrelated matter. If that is the case then the good news is it looks like I'll live to fight another day. The bad news is I've needlessly chucked ten large of product into the close behind my flat. Still, the weed can be recovered. First though, I need to find out what exactly has just happened.
My mate looks surprised to see me. He is sitting in his flat calmly smoking a joint and I am not quite sure how to explain my sudden reappearance.
'Um, see when you were leaving my flat just now, did you see any pigs hovering about outside the building?'
My mate shakes his head. 'No, nothing like that at all.'
I briefly explain to him what's just happened, without divulging the bit about me jettisoning all my G. The last thing I want is for anyone to know that there's a veritable gold mine waiting to be discovered behind my flat. I take the joint proffered to me and inhale.
My mate frowns, momentarily lost in thought, and strokes his chin. 'The only thing I did see when I left your flat was [X] pulling up outside in his girlfriend's car and going up the stairs.'
X is an acquaintance of mine and fellow dealer who has been crashing at my flat for the past few weeks. If the police were nowhere to be seen at the time of the incident and X was the only person in the vicinity, it can only mean one thing – it must have been he who uttered that fateful shout. No doubt he meant it as a joke, but nevertheless, as a fellow disciple of the game he should have known better and, as a supposed mate, he has needlessly landed me in the shit, quite literally as I am soon to find out.
I return to the scene of the crime and try to figure out what to do next. The good news is that my weed has landed in an inaccessible close, hemmed in on all sides by lofty granite walls. No one is getting in there easily to retrieve my sticky green. The bad news is that includes me. My mood is rapidly starting to assume the same complexion as the darkening sky.
I am in a bind, but I know this problem can be solved if I think it through logically. I need to get my precious cargo back, of that there is no doubt. Thankfully, due to the dinginess and inaccessibility of the close, neither my neighbours nor the police are aware of its current location. Unfortunately, due to the construction of the adjacent flats, I am unsure which of the surrounding buildings – if any – have back doors that exit onto the decaying close.
My first port of call is to an industrial premises two doors up from my flat. It is a sprawling warehouse that sells wholesale electrical goods.
'Excuse me,' I begin, 'I wonder if you can help me. I live just round the back of your premises and earlier I stupidly left my shopping bag on the open window ledge and it's blown into the close out the back. Is there a door in your warehouse that leads onto there?'
'I don't think so,' replies the boy, 'but we can have a look.'
I follow him up a staircase and along a metal gantry into the bowels of the warehouse. He stops at a rack of dusty shelves laden with light bulbs and ducks underneath. We squeeze ourselves into the tight space between shelf and wall and peer through the cobweb-festooned window. My destination, the cunting close, is visible but there is no way of getting to it from here. I dust myself down and exit the warehouse. Plan A might not have come to fruition but am not deterred and will plan my way from Alpha to Omega if that's what it takes to get my treasure back.
My next stop is the pub around the corner, my local, and the next most likely building to exit onto the close. I walk in and give the same spiel to the woman at the bar. To my delight, I learn that the pub does indeed have the door I am looking for. Unfortunately, the keys to it are held by the landlord, who won't be there until 11am the following morning. If I can hang tight until then, the weed will be returned to its rightful owner. The trouble is, I don't know if I can wait that long. It has started to rain and in the uncovered close, my weed is getting wetter by the second. Moreover, what's to stop the pub landlord from arriving early and deciding to inspect the contents of my goody-bag? The last thing I want is a bacon-scented welcoming committee waiting for me when I roll into the bar. I will resort to this option if I have to, but right now it's time to explore more immediate avenues of entry. I exit the bar and turn left onto the street adjacent to mine. I am pretty certain that the first block of flats here must also back onto this cursed close. All I need is to get my foot in the door. I try a few buzzers and after a while someone reluctantly lets me in. Inside the dimly-lit hallway I see exactly what I am looking for: a small door that undoubtedly leads onto the close. All I gotta do is open it and follow the yellow brick road. Unfortunately, it is bound with a chunky padlock. The only way that's coming off is with a crowbar. I jump in a taxi and head to B&Q. It's time to purchase a crowbar. While I'm there, I also acquire an icepick, for extra leverage if required, and a rope ladder in case I have to resort to Plan Z. I also pop past John Lewis and pick up a serrated knife. If I get into the close, I will need the knife to hack through the anti-pigeon netting that encloses the dank, cess-filled corner into which my personal supply of cannabis was hurled. It occurs to me that if I am interrupted while trying to force open a padlock in someone else's block of flats while armed with a crowbar, ice pick and bread knife, I will have some explaining to do. I buzz my way into the block again, only this time the occupants descend the stairs to determine exactly who the hell I am. I reel off the same story as before, and the couple eyeing me suspiciously appear to relax. Unfortunately, with them standing right in front of me, I can't exactly wap out the crowbar and start chipping away. I retreat to my flat and reluctantly begin to ponder Plan Z.
Plan Z is the most dangerous proposal of all. It involves hanging a rope ladder out the bathroom window and descending into the murky, pigeon-infested depths of hell. Upon opening the bathroom window and peering tentatively over the edge, one thing becomes immediately apparent: one rope ladder won't be enough. It's gonna take two of these babies tied together plus a whole lotta luck, bravery and stupidity to pull this one off. I've got the latter two in spades, but the luck? Only time will tell. First, I need to return to B&Q for another rope ladder and then I need to recruit a willing helper. A couple of hours later and I am back at the flat armed with everything I need for a quiet nite out, dangling from my bathroom window. By now the combined taxi and DIY bill has ran to £150, but if this works, it will all have been worth it. And if it doesn't work, well, I don't even wanna think about that right now.
After a couple of stiff drinks to quell the mounting sense of trepidation, I attach the two ladders and lower them slowly out the window. Combined, they stretch to 26 feet, but even that isn't long enough to reach the bottom of the scummy close. Still, it looks close enough and I'll mind the gap when – or if – I get there. With my girlfriend pleading with me not to proceed with this harebrained scheme, I grab hold of the window ledge and lower myself onto the first rung. It rattles uneasily. Inches away from my face, pigeons take flight in all directions. Feathers mingle with the rainwater that cascades from the broken guttering. The air is thick with the stench of bird shit and piss. I begin my descent. Far below me lies the object of my desire – a carrier bag of weed, torn open at the seams like a haggis, its contents mingling with the elements. As I reach the bottom of the first ladder, I encounter my first problem; the rails clasped onto the window ledge above me are starting to slip.
'Kai!' screams my anguished girlfriend, 'I can't hold it. Get off the ladder, you're going to fall!'
Quick as a flash, I grab hold of the adjacent drainpipe and shift my weight onto it. It is coated with moss and pigeon shit and I struggle to maintain a grip. If any of my neighbours were to poke their heads out their bathroom windows right now, they would be treated to a truly bizarre sight. As it is, the neighbours are currently the last of my concerns for all my faculties are focussed on keeping me attached to my precarious perch while my girlfriend repositions the ladder. With the clattering of the metal rungs against the granite wall and the increasingly agonised shouts emanating from my girlfriend echoing around the close, I am aware that our covert operation is about as inconspicuous as a boner in a set of Speedos. Still, I'm too close now to contemplate turning back. I quickly descend the final rungs and land on terra-almost-firma with a squelch. I am up to my ankles in a thick carpet of pigeon poop but I don't care – I've made it and my coveted treasure is finally within arm's reach. I grab hold of the carrier bag and begin scooping up the sodden buds. With most of the weed salvaged, I tie the bag in a knot and prepare to ascend the north face of Kilimanjaro. Just as I am grasping hold of the bottom rungs of the ladder however, I hear the clatter of bolts and the sound of a door opening. Voices spill out of the bar.
'..heard a commotion...was a lad in here today with a blonde streak in his hair, said he'd dropped something out the back...'.
I duck down behind the anti-pigeon netting and begin sinking deeper into the shit. The darkness is broken by the strobe of flashlights, scouring every corner in search of the prowler. The rope ladder dangles incriminatingly out of the window, silently screaming, 'He's over here, come get him!' The flashlights move closer and a shadowy presence looms over me, parting the tattered netting. An arm reaches out and grabs hold of the bedraggled figure lurking within its folds. I stand up and stare into the eyes of PC Plod.
'What're you doing in here?' he demands.
'My jacket fell out of the window, I was trying to retrieve it,' I vainly proffer.
His colleague pushes past me and – to my satisfaction – wades ankle-deep into the pigeon poop soup. To my intense dissatisfaction, he spots the carrier bag and, after examining its contents, begins shouting into his radio, 'I need more units down here, and send forensics and a photographic unit. We'll need to capture this one in situ!'
I forlornly extend my arms and the cuffs snap on. I am well and truly busted.

Next week: My final - and finest - prison blog, then we're back in the present day. Woo-hoo.

Written on: Tuesday 24th March 2009

Thanks to Operation Lochnagar, Grampian Police’s campaign to arrest anyone who has so much as smoked a joint - even if it was in a previous life - the jail has been rapidly filling up like an incontinent granny’s nappy. Now, overloaded with pish-scented junkies and dealers, it has reached bursting point. Prisoners are being shipped out left, right and centre to any jail that will suffer them, while the remaining many are left to fight it out for what little drugs, visit space and bedding can be found swilling around inside granny’s sodden pish flaps. Even the cell I share with no one but my miscreant self has fallen victim to overcrowding, accumulating bodies at an alarming rate. Unlike the junkies to have recently alighted at Craiginches from the ghettoes whence they came, my own gaggle of gouching minkers were here all along; I just hadn’t noticed them before. By day, they make themselves scarce, but by nite, once the sun has gone down and the door to my tiny cell slammed shut, they come out to play, piling out of a hole in the floor and flitting across my cell like remote control cars being operated by Parkinson’s sufferers. I am referring to The Others who inhabit Craiginches, making full use of the facilities as they coexist with the cons – the silverfish. These silvery moons previously raised their tiny heads during my last prison sentence, when, as I blogged at the time, my cellmate proclaimed them to be dirty wee beasties that could give you ‘a dose o the shites.’ Although blessed with wings, these little fuckers have no idea how to use them and are as ungainly as Bambi on ice. They multiply like Karen Matthews’ offspring and, like my two favourite fingers, are happiest when embedded somewhere damp and warm. I have taken to squashing the silverfish into oblivion with the sole of my trainers, but for every one whose innards Artex the floor, another 10 join the party. According to the maintenance man I summoned to lay sticky strips for them to witlessly affix their spazzy wings onto, the silverfish are harmless. Nevertheless, I refuse to accept uninvited visitors in my cell; the jail is overcrowded enough without these asylum seeking bastards turning up on my doorstep and protesting that they would be tortured if I returned them to their own despotic country. Torture? I’d give them torture. I took a cup of washing up liquid and poured it down the hole, followed by a kettle of boiling water and some sterilising tablets. That shut them up for a few days. I couldn’t get the silver-backed beasties out of my head however, and when issued with a literacy test paper, used to assess the lack of educational ability within the jail, I felt obliged to slip in a dedication to my erstwhile pad-mates. The test included such brainteasers as ‘Make a sentence using the following words: chips, food, favourite, is, fish, my, and.’ After some consideration, I finally managed to crack the code, and smugly jotted down the correct answer: ‘Is chips and fish my favourite food?’ Next, the worksheet notably upped the ante, amicably requesting: ‘Tell me something you are interested in using two or more sentences.’ As readers of this weblog will attest, I am not accustomed to stringing multiple sentences together. Nevertheless, I was determined to pass the test with flying colours, and, after much huffing and puffing, was able to construct the following two-sentence dedication to my uninvited co-pilots: ‘I am interested in capturing the silverfish that flit across my cell at nite and pulling their wings off. I boil their tiny corpses in the kettle to form an elixir that has aphrodisiacal properties.’
While I have been busy strengthening my erection with a little help from the silvery moons, those filthy swines at Grampian Police HQ have also been springing a collective boner over the seeming success of Operation Lochnagar. The force boast to have performed over 100 drug raids and arrested 150 people during the three-week blitz. A resounding success then, surely? Actually, no. If you examine the small print, it is plain to see that Operation Lochnagar has been an abject failure. In spite of pouring tens of thousands of pounds and hours into ridding the streets of the scourge of modern society (that’s drugs to you or I), the pigs have thus far only recovered a paltry £80,000 worth of product. To put that into perspective, the bag of weed I was found with at the bottom of that pigeon-infested close was worth £30,000 in pig prices. And it didn’t take the entire drug squad from Grampian, Tayside and Strathclyde Police to get that result – I handed it to them on a pigeon-shitty plate, because I’m nice like that. The £80,000 of goodies Grampian Police smugly boast to have taken off the streets equates to about a kilo of smack, aka fuck all. Aberdeen gets through 20 clicks of nasty a week, plus all the crack, coke, weed, pills and whatever else it can shovel into its collective system. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t do to admit to the failure of such an ill-thought out scattershot operation, so instead the police must work with what little they’ve got, demonising petty users and small-time dealers. Among the Mr Bigs to fall victim to Lochnagar were a man who was remanded in prison for passing a dealer’s number onto an undercover cop and a guy who was locked up simply because there was a text on his fone from a mate looking for pills. Scroll through your inbox and you’ll probably find a similar text somewhere from one of your mates. Best delete it quick – in fact that won’t work, will it, cos now they’ve got technology to read your deleted messages. In that case, the only thing for it is to throw your fone away, buy a new one and shop your mate to Crimestoppers. That way, you’ll be doing your bit to help rid our community of the drugs that blight civilised society. Cos drugs are BAD, remember? Sure, drugs might have played a major role in your conception (cos your folks sure as hell weren’t sober that one time they did the funky dance), and they might be the reason you found the courage to approach your future girlfriend in the club and they might also have made for some of the best nites out, festivals and lazy Sundays of your life, but if the police say that drugs are bad, we’d better believe them cos they know what’s best for us.
The few successes that the police have had in their drugs blitzkreig have been the result of ‘intelligence-led policing’, also known as grassing. The police wouldn’t know shit if it shat on them from a great height were it not for grasses singing like karaoke canaries. Junkies, strung out to fuck, dropping names so they’ll be released from custody to go and score. The jail is full of them now; junkies and grasses and grassing junkies and junked-up grasses. The pishy nappy that is Craiginches is swimming with back-stabbers, traitors and double-crossers who’ll ask their fellow con for a shot of his fone and then, when he’s not looking, stick him in to the screws for having a mobile. Among the victims of such ‘intelligence-led’ policing was a junkie who was detained even though he had no drugs on his possession. Due to ‘information received’ however – that other great euphemism for doing the dirty on your mates – the police knew he had a half ounce of smack up his arse. Determined not to let this one get away, they decided to play a game of pass the parcel; the junkie was locked in a special cell where two pigs sat with him, monitoring his every move, until, three days in, he finally relented and passed the parcel. Just think of that scene in American Pie: The Wedding where Stiffler follows the dog about for days until it excretes the ring it has swallowed. Although I have never been one for podging things up my backside (I don’t think my carrier bag of weed would have fitted in any case), I must confess that the idea of clenching one off into the waiting hand of the law amuses me greatly. The police got their shit-stained parcel but they never got the man who'd kindly excreted it for them - the judge threw the case out because they had broken the law in detaining him for three days without charge in the cells.
For all my denigrations of Grampian Police, I have no objection to them taking smack and crack off the streets, as these are the drugs that deserve to be dressed up in hyperbolic labels. They are the nasty ones that old ladies are mugged for. In my opinion, everyone should have the right to shovel whatever they like into their bodies in the privacy of their own homes, be it speedballs or Space Raiders. Nevertheless, given the thieving, granny-bashing tendencies of those with a proclivity for ingesting the white and broon, it is understandable why such substances are illegal. After years of thinking that to go undercover required simply donning a Nevica ski jacket and approaching junkies to ask if they knew anywhere they could ‘chase the dragon’, the CID are finally starting to wise up. One of the gaggle of junkies I have shared the holding cells with during my many appearances in the Sheriff Court told of passing a dirty, smelly junkie in Tillydrone who was bent double, spewing their ringer. Upon closer inspection, however, the marginally less dirty, smelly junkie relating this story to me discovered that it was one of Grampian Police’s unfinest, going incognito. You could call it dedicated police work, masquerading as one of them in an effort to inveigle users into taking pity on their ‘habit’ and passing on their dealer’s number. I call it entrapment. Another junkie recently sent one of his runners out with a quarter of smack and a dagger concealed about his person, as is standard procedure in such transactions, to sell to a couple of Irish punters. The runner came running back a few minutes later exclaiming ‘They’re fucking polis! They wis asking me who I got my stuff fae and all sorts!’ It would appear that the CID still have some learning to do. In their haste to lock up anything and anyone who’s dabbled with the D word, there have been plenty of fuck-ups along the way. With court papers, dossiers of evidence and citations flying in every direction, the overworked Procurator Fiscal’s office has misplaced warrants and mislaid evidence. Charges have been mixed up, with the wrong men taken to court for the wrong offences. A few weeks ago, a Scouser caught with nine ounces of each (smack and crack) walked free from court after his papers were lost. I wouldn’t want his squeaky voice or diminutive stature for the world, but I wouldn’t say no to some of his jammy Liverpudlian luck.
Incidentally, it is not just the police who have been looking for drugs in all the wrong places. Last week, one of the screws walked into a cell in A-Hall to be greeted by the disturbing sight of a convict bent double with his trousers pulled down. His cellmate had a Moray Cup bottle with the bottom sliced off pressed against the boy’s arse and was attempting to use it as a plunger, only instead of a sink, it was his pad-mate’s arse he was trying to unblock to remove the two ounces of smack contained therein. With friends like that, who needs enemas?

Written on: Friday 27th February 2009

I wrote this piece in the style of a serious journalistic article, so if it reads more like something out of The Guardian than The Trash Whore Diaries, you'll know why. Don't worry, normal puerile service will be resumed with my next update.

‘Who’s got a blade?’ The inquisitor glares accusingly at the men gathered around him. They look at each other nervously. No one answers. ‘Who’s got a blade?’ he repeats, the inflection rising angrily this time. He eyeballs each one in turn, silently demanding that his request be met. Eventually, the awkward silence is broken and a blade is produced, a disposable plastic razor. For the next 60 seconds, the aggressor is placated. That is how long it takes him to wrap the implement into the folds of his t-shirt and expertly snap off the plastic casing, exposing its razor sharp workings. Suitably tooled-up, he promptly sets about finding an unwilling recipient upon whom to model his makeshift shank. The first man to look at him the wrong way or say the wrong word will be swift to feel his wrath. ‘If I don’t get my meth now I’m gonna do someone!’ he screams. His colleagues stare awkwardly at their feet, not daring to make eye contact with the agitated complainant. No one doubts that he is deadly serious about making good on his threat. The deep scar etched into his left cheek is testament that he is accustomed to getting just as good as he gives. ‘C’mon then,’ he spits, his knuckles tightening on the plastic handle. ‘Who wants some?’
It could be a scene from any troubled housing estate in Western Scotland, but in fact this is Aberdeen and the action has just played out inside the walls of Craiginches Prison. The blade-wielding menace has already been removed from society, but that hasn’t removed his willingness to lash out at everyone and everything that affronts him. According to a recent United Nations report, Scotland boasts the highest murder rate in Western Europe. Between 2007 and 2008, half of all Scottish murders were committed using a blade. John Muir, whose 34-year-old son was stabbed to death in Greenock in 2007, has led a campaign calling for anyone convicted of carrying a knife to receive a mandatory jail term. In spite of delivering a 15,000-strong petition to the Scottish Parliament however, his proposal has yet to be adopted by Holyrood. But even when those convicted of carrying – and using – a knife are jailed, the problem doesn’t end there. Prison merely contains the threat, like trapping a wasp in a jam jar. Once released, the aggressor emerges into the world madder than ever, hell-bent on retribution and revenge. Indeed, although prison may succeed in temporarily separating assailant from assailee, it is not even an effective means of separating the former from their weapon of choice. The plastic knives issued to inmates at mealtimes might be about as lethal as water pistols but there are plenty of other devices that the enterprising criminal can fashion into a shank. Where there’s a will, there’s a way to sharpen any number of innocuous items into lethal weapons. Surrounded by their disgruntled peers, many of whom are also in jail for being too quick on the draw, they soon resort to taking their grievances out on each other using an array of improvised invasive devices.
The razor blade-wielding convict who was incensed at the lack of methadone didn’t get a chance to carry out his threat on this occasion. The disturbance was spotted by the prison officers, who promptly locked up all the inmates, thereby separating the wolf from the rest of the pack. Other targets of knife rage in Craiginches haven’t been so lucky. Last week, another incensed inmate took his cellmate hostage using two improvised shanks fashioned out of a razor blade and a tuna can lid. It sparked a 13-hour siege that only ended after a lengthy stand-off with 20 prison officers, negotiators and riot police wielding shields and batons. The next day, in the holding cells at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, the victim showed me the marks on his neck where the blades had been held to his throat. ‘I thought he was gonna kill me,’ he confessed.
The holding cells are a series of squalid concrete rooms, each barely bigger than a domestic bathroom. Inside them, up to ten prisoners at a time are crammed together to await their court appearances. In these grim, squalid dungeons, the talk is of slashings, beatings and stabbings. Young Offenders, whom violence excites even more than their passion for sex, drugs and stolen cars, re-enact their previous skirmishes in high definition for the benefit of the assembled throng: ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! I just kept plugging my cellmate, did the boy 17 times through the leg with a biro. He was screaming for me to stop!’ In prison, the pen is often mightier than the sword.
Although Aberdeen’s inmates are not afraid to dispense summary justice with a few fell strokes, it is Glasgow that excels at this form of ultra-violence. Known as the murder capital of Europe, it has more deaths per capita than such cities as Minsk in Belarus and Istanbul. One visitor to the Sheriff Court holding cells was a Birmingham man, awaiting sentencing for drug offences. He had spent the last three months on remand in Glasgow’s Barlinnie, an experience he was not anxious to repeat. ‘All they speak about is stabbing there,’ he told me. ‘It’s all slash this, slash that. It’s mad; they’re in jail, they ain’t even got nothing worth slashing each other for.’ One particularly unpleasant technique favoured by Glaswegian gangs is the double-cut; two razor blades bound together, a few millimetres apart. Slash your victim across the face with such a device and you will create an unstitchable scar that causes hideous disfiguration.
In spite of the lawless nature of prison life, there is still some honour among thieves and slashers. Sex offenders and ‘granny bashers’ [muggers who prey on the elderly] are universally derided within the penal system and prone to being viciously attacked (with shanks, of course). And yet, paradoxically, the same convicts who will decry such ‘beasts and cowards’ feel no compunction in stabbing an unarmed opponent. Not having been raised a street-fighting man, I cannot muster the same enthusiasm as my peers for slicing and dicing anyone who crosses my path. Call me old-fashioned, but I am of the opinion that bread knives are best suited to slicing bread. With such a pacifist philosophy, one would think I shouldn’t have too many enemies in prison. However, one thing I have learned from my time inside is that it’s not only violence that begets violence; words too can have the undesired effect. Following my release from prison in 2006, extracts from an online weblog that I had secretly maintained while inside were published in The News Of The World under the headline ‘Stabbed In The Neck Three Times…Over A Packet Of Custard Creams.’ As I was walking through the jail last week, following my re-incarceration, a familiar face caught my eye. ‘Here, you’re that lad that wrote about me!’ exclaimed the inmate, the look of recognition slowly turning to anger. ‘I should fucking do you!’ His threat appeared to be in jest, but given that he had previously plugged a fellow prisoner in an argument about a packet of biscuits, I couldn’t be too sure. Even if I was given to fighting, I wouldn’t have squared up to him though. Not in here, where the philosophy I have adopted to stay alive is one of the oldest in the book: Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.

Written on: Wednesday 25th February 2009

Spring arrives in Craiginches, bringing with it birdsong and sunshine. And violence too of course, that age-old harbinger of seasons changed as fists are raised to commemorate the lengthening of days and strengthening of golden rays. Out in the fields, March hares box, snowdrops blossom and lambs frolic. Inside the prison walls, however, springtime is observed in time-honoured tradition, with the spilling of sacrificial blood.
The planet is a single organism with a delicately linked ecosystem in which every action has a knock-on effect, causing seemingly isolated incidents to invoke unforeseen chain reactions, the implications of which can be felt on the other side of the world. The scientist James Lovelock named this Gaia: ‘An ecological hypothesis proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are biogeochemical conditions in a preferred homeostasis.’ In the Pacific, a butterfly flaps its wings, causing a current of air that slowly grows to become a breeze, then a gale and then a fully-fledged hurricane. As Pacific weather systems change, this in turn causes an area of low pressure to spread across the Atlantic, sending clouds scurrying to the south. While a storm rages on the other side of the world, the low pressure reaches Europe, bringing with it more clement conditions. In Scotland, rain and snow is finally dispersed, making way for longer, brighter days. As sunshine increases, so do temperatures and tempers too. Every time the mercury rises by another degree, so too does the disquiet of the men trapped inside Craiginches. Its state-of-the-art air conditioning system (a few foam blocks plugged into gaping holes in the windows) is no match for the warm weather, and before long, warm has begat hot which in turn has boiled over until some poor cunt’s been smashed in the coupon, all because a butterfly in Hawaii had the temerity to emit one flutter too many.
Ostensibly, the fight was over a game of pool, but it could have been any one of 100 insignificant events that acted as the catalyst. Once sparked, it duly exploded in the faces of those involved and from its point of origin exsanguinated over the entire hall. It started at the pool table, discolouring the green baize as spattered droplets rained down upon it. From there, it spilt onto the protagonists’ clothes and then onto the floor, leaving a crimson trail that ran the length of A-Hall. The dispute started in the black quarter, the end of A-Hall that was long since appropriated by the Yardies and designated their unofficial headquarters, the place to hang out and trade tales of guns, bitches and food [drugs] in high-speed patois. The only requirements for admission onto their turf are a sufficient amount of pigmentation and the ability to exchange clenched fist greetings with shouts of ‘Bumber clart!’ and ‘A’ight blood, wag wan?’ Wag wan? It was going fine actually, or at least it was until all the talk of blood clots gave way to the real thing. Black-on-black violence is generally unheard of in the jail; the Yardies have no desire to engage in internecine conflict, for there are more than enough white guys willing to do the honours. On this occasion, however, even the solidarity of the Jamaican diaspora was not strong enough to resist the power of Gaia.
One of the Yardies, EZ, had developed a habit of interrupting the pool playing of his fellow bloods by stealing the balls and running off upstairs, refusing to return them until they reluctantly abandoned their game and let him play. If anyone – white, black or yellow – had tried to do this at the other table in the hall, they would instantly have been on the wrong end of a pool cue. Because the Yardies club together for solidarity however, EZ’s spirited actions were tolerated. Besides, he is only 20, still technically a Young Offender; a young blood, not that he would have been seen associating with the skinny white boys who make up the rest of the jail’s YO contingent. After weeks of hijacking pool games, to the chagrin of the players, EZ finally tried his luck once too many and was taught a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Having gone through his usual ball-stealing routine, much to the annoyance of his fellow blood, Mach, EZ decided to introduce a new trick and began dropping the pool balls onto Mach’s toes. Given that Mach was only wearing flip-flops at the time, this was understandably painful. Not as painful, however, as the tit that was about to follow his tat. Eventually tiring of having his toes used for target practice, Mach grabbed hold of EZ’s shirt and the two Yardies squared up to one another. Before their startled blood brothers lounging around the table could pull them apart, Mach lashed out and landed a direct hit on his fellow countryman. Boom! EZ’s nose busted open, exploding in a shower of blood. It rained down around him, spattering the pool table and all those in attendance with wanton disregard for rank or reputation. By the time the screws had rushed to the scene (foregoing the gang salutes in their haste to enter the black quarter), it was all over bar the shouting. All they could do was lead the disconsolate EZ away, his nose in bits, blood pishing down his face and drip-dripping all over the polished linoleum. As the cons were swiftly checked up, Mach was carted off to the digger, EZ to the doctor and the jail’s designated blood cleaner to the scene of the crime. ‘That’ll spill over onto the street’ warned Huxley, my cellmate and senior member of the black quarter. ‘EZ’s a gun man, he might seem like a boisterous YO in here, but out in the real world he’s deadly. This one ain’t over.’ It may not have been over, but our rec time certainly was. From behind our door, we watched as the crimson trail was painstakingly wiped away. Such is the frequency of scarlet spillages in the jail, each hall has a designated inmate who has taken the course, received the certificate and been given the go-ahead to don the blue latex gloves and mop up his colleagues’ hep-ridden lifeblood. It’s a shit job, but it pays handsomely by jail standards; £4 per call-out, the equivalent of two days’ wages. No sooner had the Wet Floor cones been put away however when the blood cleaner was summoned yet again to work his magic.
At lunchtime today, the morning after the carnage of the nite before, there was no sign of EZ. By all accounts his nose was looking fat, even by black standards. His job, serving lunch at the hotplate, had been taken by another. In EZ’s absence, however, the hotplate was still a source of hot gossip and hot-headed action. To prevent the entire hall from descending upon the hotplate at once and causing chaos, the screws unlock a few doors at a time, first one side of the bottom flat, then the opposite, then, once they’re safely fed and back behind their doors, they move onto the second and third flats. Situated in the centre of A-Hall, on the bottom flat, my cell is directly beside the hotplate. While being on the bottom floor has its disadvantages (it is the noisiest part of the jail), it does mean I get served first at mealtimes. After queuing up for lunch (a polystyrene salad box consisting of half a tomato, some cucumber slices, coleslaw, lettuce and a slice of inscrutable luncheon meat), I made the short walk back to my pad and was swiftly locked up with my co-pilot. Just as I had finished demolishing my gourmet grub, there was an almighty bang as something – or rather someone – cannoned against the cell door. Huxley and I rushed over and peered through the gaps in the door, where we were treated to a smorgasbord of sights and sounds that instantly made us forget about the meal we had just eaten. Who needs limp lettuce when your appetite has been whetted by a healthy dose of ultra-violence? The first thing to assail our senses was sound; the sound of a body hitting the floor via our cell door swiftly followed by the protagonist’s shouts of ‘He tried to slash me, boss! He tried to fucking slash me!’ Outside, just inches away from my eyeballs, it was chaos; plates, food, cons, screws and blood scattered everywhere. It wouldn’t take Grissam to solve this crime scene. As they queued for lunch, one of the cons had indeed threatened to slash someone. The would-be-slasher had his very own slash mark running the length of his face, proof – if it were needed – that he’d seen a few blades in his time. The subject of his threat was Scotty, a burly Cockney geezer with hands like wrecking balls. Faced with such sharpened hostility, Scotty sensibly decided to act first and put his god-given weapons of mass destruction to good use. In one lightning-fast blow, he smashed into the scarred coupon, knocking it and the body attached to it floorwards. The punched reverberated around the hall, and could even be heard by the cons behind their doors on the top floor. The recipient of the percussive punch was out cold, his jaw broken and blood, once again, spattered over the A-Hall linoleum. The geezer hadn’t even had to deploy a swift one-two to ground his opponent; just as with EZ, the one was all it took. Although both fights were settled with a single punch, it was unanimously agreed that Scotty had landed the killer blow. After hitting the deck in a heap of scattered plates, splattered blood and splatted food, the victim lay there for a few seconds, out cold. (‘He looked like he’d been hit by a shovel’ noted one con later. ‘Sparkled’ was how Scotty went on to proudly describe it.)
As one of the screws firmly marched the irate Englishman back to his cell, the victim steadied himself and tried to get to his feet. Still in a daze, he stumbled and fell headfirst into the hot plate. It was a final flourish that would have done any spasticated ballerina proud. Taking pity on the prone prisoner, two screws hauled him up and off to hospital. The shout to ‘Check up!’ went out and the cons were duly checked up while the blood cleaner returned once again to perform his duties. I watched through the crack in the door as, on bent knee, the cleaner painstakingly mopped up the blood from the floor, the adjacent table and the hotplate. Had the blood splashed any higher, the rack of pepperoni pizzas that were waiting to be served up would have been turned into black puddings.
After lunch, Scotty was led off to the digger to spend a few days in solitary confinement, but within shouting distance of his temporary neighbour, Mach. Although the screws are officially obliged to take jaw and nose-breaking incidents seriously, unofficially they were swift to congratulate Scotty for disposing of an inmate that no one in the jail cared for. One screw shook the victor’s hand. Another greeted him ‘Scotty! Or should we call you Rocky?’ Even the Reliance turnkeys who run the Sheriff Court holding cells, two miles away from Craiginches, were talking about That Punch the next day. When an inmate falls in the forest that is A-Hall, everyone hears them make a sound.
With ill fortune’s penchant for tripartite pacts, the jail waits with bated breath to see who will be next to hit the floor in a shower of blood. All it takes is the wrong word said at the wrong time, or a flutter too many on the other side of the world. That is the power of Gaia.

Written on: Wednesday 19th February 2009

Out of sight, out of mind. It is a phrase that could have been invented to describe prison life. Once that steel door has slammed shut for the first time, you may as well no longer exist as far as the civilised world is concerned. Friends, family, girlfriends and business acquaintances; through every man’s life these come and go to a varying degree. Upon his incarceration, however, they mostly go. Such companions, hangers-on and well-wishers may start off with good intentions, but by the time a few weeks or months have elapsed, the letters, visits and fonecalls start to dry up. It was thus with great surprise that the inhabitants of Craiginches woke up this morning to discover that the entire country was suddenly fixated on their plight and that for one day only, The Lost Boys were very much in sight and in mind.
The first signs that someone – other than the screws – was watching our every move appeared in The Daily Record, which ran a story about the poor standard of laundry service provided by the jail. Apparently, this resulted in prisoners’ boxer shorts being lost in the wash, forcing them to have to wear their fellow cons’ kecks instead. It was flattering to know that the nation was choking on its cornflakes in righteous indignation over the whereabouts of my cum-stained CKs. It was also baffling however to think that The Daily Record was more concerned about my dirty underwear than my mum had ever been. Why had the national press taken it upon themselves to highlight this previously undocumented prison phenomenon? As a page-turner, the story must be right up there with The Plight Of Endangered Water Voles and Revised Wheelie Bin Collection Days.
But it wasn’t just the Record who wished to go on the record regarding the welfare of us poor prisoners. The Daily Telegraph had a similar tale of woe, focussing on the shocking standard of jail food. Coming from a broadsheet whose readers’ idea of slumming it is downgrading from Marks & Spencer to Waitrose, I found it comforting to know that they were thinking of me as they nibbled on their pain aux chocolates. What issue of prison life would the press decide to document next I wondered - the lack of conjugal visits? The paucity of silver cutlery and china teacups at mealtimes? The reason for the glut of seemingly random jail stories finally became apparent when I picked up The Press & Journal to be greeted by the headline ‘Inspector issues a damning verdict on Aberdeen Prison’. To celebrate the publication of the Prison Inspector’s report on Craiginches, the paper had devoted two pages to cataloguing the many woes to have afflicted what was apparently Scotland’s Shittest Jail.
It began: ‘The people of the north-east have been let down by “dreadful” conditions inside Aberdeen Prison – leading to more crime on the streets… Andrew McLellan found it was badly overcrowded, short of staff, had a “shocking” drugs problem, a building not fit for purpose, and “no chance” of any improvements being made…Conditions at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, meanwhile, were also criticised by Mr McLellan… “The conditions at Aberdeen Sheriff Court are disgraceful. Dramatic improvement is needed immediately.”’
Fair point, Mr McLellan, although it doesn’t require the title of Chief Prison Inspector to deduce that the Sheriff Court is a bit poopy. I was not exaggerating in a recent blog when I observed ‘The holding cells are a series of squalid concrete rooms, each barely bigger than a domestic bathroom. Inside them, up to ten prisoners at a time are crammed together to await their court appearances. In these grim, squalid dungeons, the talk is of slashings, beatings and stabbings.’ If the inspector had only bothered to read The Trash Whore Diaries like the rest of the SPS staff, he need never have set foot inside that filthy, not-fit-for-purpose prison.
The intense scrutiny of Craiginches wasn’t just contained to the print media. On the way to the Education Department after lunch, we passed two Scottish Television trucks in the yard, one fitted with a giant satellite dish for live broadcasts. At six o’clock, STV would be presenting a half hour news special from the beleaguered jail, boasting ‘unprecedented access’ to the prison that everyone was dissing. It was officially open season on Craiginches.
Although the bewildering barrage of media attention gave the cons something to speak about other than the usual drugs/violence/more drugs, we all knew that the ‘damning’ findings would not serve to better our existence. Even if the public were able to muster some sympathy for the inmates in Scotland’s worst jail, we would be out of mind (or maybe just off our minds) by the time the broadcast had ended. It was Comic Relief Day but without the red noses. Does anyone really think about those poor African villagers with no running water on the other 364 days of the year?
For the live broadcast, the STV anchorman was to be positioned in one of the prison halls, where he would link between pre-recorded sequences and live interviews with the governor and the Scottish Justice Secretary. Thankfully for them, the cons would be locked up at this time, thus preventing the show from degenerating into a raucous, expletive-laden PR disaster. Those gouching, gurning faces would be safely out of sight behind their doors. Of course, containing the threat provided no guarantees that the show would go off without a hitch. If there is one thing prisoners are good at, it’s being heard when not seen. To prevent a barrage of abuse from flooding through the cracks in the cell doors and drowning out the anchorman, the governor had sensibly opted to film the event in B-Hall, the smaller, more civilised of the two halls. B-Hall is where old lags who can’t stand the hustle and bustle of jail life go to die. Unlike its rowdy neighbour, A, B is devoid of hyperactive Young Offenders and newly-admitted junkies intent on booting in their doors as they sweat out the gear. To err on the side of caution, the governor also visited each cell in B-Hall at lunchtime and warned the inhabitants to behave. Nothing was being left to chance.
At six o’clock, as the cameras cut to the intrepid STV anchorman embedded deep in the bowels of Craiginches, the A-Hall cons cheered and booted their doors, the traditional way of acknowledging any shared TV moment such as a goal being scored in a live football match. For the next 30 minutes, we were treated to footage of prisoners fighting and getting caught passing drugs in the visit room. One of the screws showed off a cardboard box full of contraband that had found its way into the jail – mobile fones, syringes, screwdrivers and of course drugs. Much to the relief of the governor, the live sections passed without incident. The B-Hall cons, who had the power to sabotage the show, were as good as bad men can be. Just as I was starting to think they’d been spiked with double methadone and had all fallen asleep, the inmates finally found their voices as the anchorman was signing off, emitting a few belated whoops and cheers. Children and animals are regarded as the two biggest liabilities on live television. Convicts can safely be added as the third.
After the show had finished and we were unlocked for rec, I stepped out into the main hall of a jail that, according to the Prison Inspector, had a ‘shocking drug problem’. To the casual observer, surveying A-Hall, it would be easy to conclude that the Inspector had perhaps been egging it a bit when he made this claim. As far as the eye could see, there were no drugs or drug-related activity taking place, just a load of convicts running about and playing pool. Was it really that bad? ‘Here, Kai.’ A voice beckoned to me and I turned round to see a familiar jail face. ‘Kai, do you want a line of coke?’ I didn’t need to question the pope’s Catholicism or the bowel movements of bears in woods. If the Chief Prison Inspector had decreed this establishment to have a shocking drugs problem, then I would take it upon myself to clean the place up… by taking all the drugs myself. I followed the boy upstairs and we ducked into his cell. Inside, it was a veritable cave of iniquity. Coke, smack and hash lay on the worktop, as did the tools of the trade; clingfilm, tooters and scorched foil. The con tipped some light brown powder onto a Caramel wrapper and, clenching the tooter between his teeth, lay back on his bunk and lit it from underneath. He inhaled deeply. His padmate, who was already wasted, rummaged about in his socks for a while before eventually producing a knot of hash, which I gratefully accepted. I then proceeded to rack up two lines of ching, one for each of us. After polishing off the white powdery goodness, I thanked the pair for their hospitality and left them to polish off their brown powdery badness. Drug problem, what drug problem? Everything your habit needs can be found under one roof here at HMP Craiginches. No problem at all.
Of the many Craigie-centric reports to have surfaced in today’s press, the best one of all was not actually about drugs. Like all things concerned with Craigie, however, it came back to drugs in the end. Under the heading ‘Inmates vanish with savings scheme cash’, the Press & Journal reported: ‘Crafty prisoners signed up for savings accounts behind bars – then vanished when they were granted loans on the outside…Bill Harkis, of the North East Scotland Credit Union, said: “One or two of the prisoners ripped us off. They came out, got a loan and didn’t pay us back. It’s frustrating, but part of the credit union is dealing with financially excluded people. There’s a bit of a risk involved sometimes.”’ Bit of a risk? Lending money to prisoners in the expectation that they will pay it back is a banking decision that even the much-maligned Sir Fred Goodwin would baulk at. The folly of issuing sub-prime mortgages seems like a good bit of business compared to issuing credit to Craigie’s sub-primates. The report concluded ‘Some of the prisoners who took advantage of the system borrowed loans of up to £200 for white goods then failed to pay them back.’ White goods? So that’s what they’re calling crack cocaine these days.

Who lives here? Ooh I guess that'll be me then. Yep, that cosy top bunk was mine for the majority of 2009. But how on earth did I manage to take a picture of my homely prison cell? Surely that would have required access to some sort of camera device and a means to transmit the image wirelessly to a third party outside the jail. Perhaps something like... a camera phone? Contraband items such as cellular telephones in Scottish prisons? Surely not! Next thing you know they'll be smuggling drugs in as well.

Written on: Friday 13th February 2009

‘Here.’ I proffer the tooter to Huxley who looks up from the book he is reading. (Guns & Gangs, a history of black gun crime in Britain.) ‘Nah dude, you go first,’ he insists. I lean over the worktop and demolish a fat slug. Standing upright, I push a finger against my right nostril and snort, waiting for the cocaine hit to kick in. ‘Mash up, mash up!’ exclaims the stereo. I instinctively turn up Annie Mac and wait for the tune to drop. It builds up slowly, the beat repeating over and over as it builds towards the climax that is preceded by the inevitable pause. And then it drops. ‘Dun-du-du-du-du-dun’ goes the phat bassline. Fucking tune. Huxley reaches over and demolishes his rail. He is feeling good. So am I. The tunes are banging. It’s Friday nite, which can only mean one thing – Snafu. Knock back some Havana, straighten my hair, have another liney for the road and get ready to rock and roll. There is just one hitch; the front door is locked and I don’t have the keys. Neither does Huxley. As it stands, we ain’t going nowhere. Not tonite, not tomorrow, not even this month. Jail really fucks up your social life.
I jump onto my berth on the top bunk and glare at the resolute cell door, willing it to open. It doesn’t. It is of little consolation to know that we are not alone in our frustration. In cells the length and breadth of A-Hall, the cons are in a similar predicament. Only not all of them are as keen to leave as we are. It all depends on what they’ve been taking really – uppers or downers. On the second flat, a ghetto blaster has been cranked to the max and the bass is pumping out at ASBO-invoking levels. It shudders through the hall before escaping through the gaps in the window bars and out into the yard. That will be the Yardies, bringing the party as usual. One of them sourced some bicarb earlier and, after obtaining an eighth of Huxley’s powdery white goodness, set about trying to rock it up. By the sounds of it, his chemistry practical has been a success. They must be climbing the walls in there. In the adjacent cell, the neighbours are more placid. Indeed, they don’t seem remotely perturbed by the hard house vibrating through the bricks that separate them from the blacks on crack. That’s because they are smacked off their tits thanks to the parcel that one of them took in earlier at a visit. One swift kiss from his blonde, one almighty swallow and, back at the hall, one bout of induced vomiting. On the bottom flat, the YO’s are stoned as usual. But because the Young Offenders are young and offensive, they can’t just chill and enjoy the vibe like self-respecting potheads. No, they have to jump about like toddlers who’ve necked too much Sunny D, making animal sounds through the crack in the door, vandalising the window panes and shouting obscenities through the resulting holes. From the cell across the hallway, there comes a dull thumping. This is not another competing bassline but the sound of someone desperately trying to summon the screws. The thumper’s cellmate has spewed everywhere and then passed out. It transpires that the boy has lapsed into a coma after nailing his week’s allocation of vallies in a oner. Holding back one’s medication is a common jail practice that involves pretending to swallow your tablets in front of the nurse, only to spit them back up once out of sight. Save up a few days’ worth, bosh them all at once and you’ll get a proper dunt. That or just lapse into a coma. On the top flat, a similar incident is taking place. In the end cell, an inmate is convulsing, rolling about on the floor in a series of violent spasms. His cellmate presumes that the boy is just strung out and leaves him to rattle off the worst of the gear. The next morning, he learns that heroin had nothing to do with it for once; the guy was actually having a series of epileptic fits.
Back in cell 1-11, there is still no sign of the keys. Not only that, but I can’t seem to find the Havana or my straighteners. Oh well, I guess another liney will have to suffice. ‘Ready or not, here I come.’ The Fugees mash-up kicks in and I crank it up. It’s a tune. They all are. Perhaps I’ll just stay in after all and listen to the show. I can easily go clubbing some other time. I run my tongue across my teeth. My mouth is numb.