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.

Written on: Monday 16th February 2009

Monday morning, 9:00am. Rush hour. Cars snake slowly along Wellington Road, their drivers tooting and cursing at each other. Valentine’s Day has been and gone and any love engendered by it has swiftly melted with the snow. Rain falls horizontally, mixing with the slush and salt to form a dirty brown paste that clings to everything it touches, tarnishing alloys and destroying loafers. It is the most depressing day of the week in the greyest, dreichest city in Scotland in the most violent, murderous country in Western Europe. At this exact moment in time, no one wishes they were here, but they are, so collectively they grit their teeth and get on with it; the school run, the morning commute to work, the consignment of fish bound for the A90 and beyond.
I see none of this – the commuters, the slush, the rain and the traffic – but I know it’s all there, just on the other side of the perimeter wall. 30 feet the wrong side of it, in HMP Craiginches, there is no work to go to, no kids to drop off at school and no appointments to be late for. There is no reason for this day to be any more depressing than the 100 that preceded it. Each one is, after all, identical in every way. Yet even in here it is impossible to shake off that Monday morning feeling. Within seconds of being unlocked, 45 minutes earlier, one of the cons on the second flat [landing] dragged a Scouser into the shower area and laid into him. Perhaps their dispute was over drugs. Or perhaps he was just pissed off because it was Monday.
Inside cell 1-11 on the bottom flat, my pad-mate and I are oblivious to the stresses and strains of the outside world. Ours is a scene of domestic bliss. While Huxley boils the kettle, I am busy scrubbing my underwear in the sink, having left it to marinate for a while in Lynx shower gel. The kettle hisses and we prepare to make our respective breakfasts. For my co-pilot, this consists of cornflakes with sugar, milk and a drop of hot water. For me, Frosties, milk and sliced banana. From the stereo in the corner of the cell, generic ned beats pump out. It is the only CD we have and it has been played 100 times over; ‘Watching the sunshine, show me the sunshine, come on give me the sunshine.’ The chance would be a fine thing. Here, on the bottom flat, no sunlight ever pervades these walls to lighten up our day. All we can see – should we care to look – is razor wire, concrete and the occasional low-flying seagull. There is a click and our door unlocks. ‘Kit change’ shouts the screw. I gather up my dirty laundry – an Aberdeen Prison-stamped towel, a pair of Aberdeen Prison-stamped tracksuit bottoms, an Aberdeen Prison-stamped jumper and, yep, an Aberdeen Prison-stamped t-shirt. The items are deposited in a wheelie bin and I am issued with clean ones, like for like. We return to our cell and are promptly locked up again. I wring the water out of my Calvin Klein boxer shorts and hang them on the pipes to dry. Huxley sparks a rollie. Shortly, the door will unlock once again and I will be escorted to the education department. There, I will assemble the jail magazine for the reading pleasure of its illiterate population. After that, the rest of my day will be taken up with lunch, sleep, gym, dinner, sleep, visit, letter-writing, TV and yet more sleep in that order. It is not the most enthralling way to eke out one’s days, but at least mine’s is an existence free of stress and responsibility. No deadlines, nowhere to be, no obligation to get out of bed. If you want to escape from the pressures of everyday life, don’t book into an expensive spa – just go to jail.
On the other side of the wall, the morning rush hour is still in progress as the good people of the world crawl agonisingly closer to wherever it is they are going. As they inch their way slowly through Torry, they barely glance up at the imposing granite wall that shadows the road, or the CCTV cameras that monitor their steady progress. They are not to know that just a stone’s throw away lies Aberdeen’s best-kept secret; an exclusive gated community where living is free and responsibilities are left at the door. As the crow flies, my world is not a million miles away from theirs. In reality however, we are a million miles apart.

Written on: Sunday 8th February 2009

It came, as these things always do, out of nowhere. It ended, 13 hours later, in a flurry of shouting and stomping, of broken glass and riot shields, of batons and razor blades. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.
Sunday February 8th, 15:05. It is rec time in Craiginches, that special time when all 200 inmates are afforded the privilege of recreating with one another. For some, this involves partaking in such wholesome activities as pool and snooker. For most, rec involves recreating the sort of chemical world they have become accustomed to, one in which life’s harsh realities are softened by the consumption of hard drugs. In ones and twos, cons scuttle across the walkways like cockroaches in a kebab house, scouring every available corner for proscribed morsels. Men duck furtively into cells and alcoves and hold whispered conversations in booths and shower areas. ‘Got any hash min?’ ‘Ken anybdae wi ony B’s [smack]?’ ‘Got a bag [smack] fer us? I’ll swap you for ma difs [DFs; prescribed medication].’ Conspiratorial whisperings aside, the hall is a sea of tranquillity. Only the clank of snooker balls and the loudmouthed Yardie patois emanating from the black quarter, where every conversation must be held at 100 decibels, belie the calmness. In a few seconds time however, a dorsal fin will break the surface, causing a wave of excitement that will ripple around the hall. As the narrator of America’s Toughest Jails is prone to warn, rec time, when the prison population are allowed to mingle freely, is the most dangerous time of day. If the shit’s gonna go down, you can bet it’s gonna go down here and with little warning. Without the element of surprise, violence rarely works. ‘Excuse me mate, mind if I stab you for your medication?’ ‘Actually I’m kinda busy just now pal, can you come back in an hour?’ This outbreak is no different.
Out of nowhere, a convict on the second floor grabs his startled cellmate off the landing and drags him into their cell. The door is then kicked shut and an almighty ruckus ensues. (When the incident is eventually dealt with in court, the PF will no doubt refer to it as ‘an altercation.’) The aggressor, an unassuming bespectacled man in his early thirties, is mightily pissed off. The reason for his pissed off-ness, as I understand, is the Prison Service’s decision to transfer him to Perth the following day. If it was me, I’d have been overjoyed; Craiginches is hardly the epitome of good living, even by jail standards. Although he doesn’t look menacing, the con boasts some heavy previous; as well as being on remand for attempted murder, he has formerly dodged a murder rap. What he is about to do, in comparison, is but a fly swot. Before the screws realise what’s happening, the door to the cell is slammed shut and its contents trashed; windows are broken and the TV is hurled to the floor, its cathode ray tube exploding into 1000 pieces. Glass shards litter the floor. Incandescent with rage, the transfer-listed con then produces not one, but two shanks and proceeds to take his cellmate hostage. The first weapon has been constructed out of a razor blade, the second from a tuna can lid. Used rightly in the wrong hands, they are both lethal. The con grabs hold of his cellmate and pushes the blades into his neck. The two men will remain in this awkward embrace for the next eight hours. As the commotion alerts the screws, staff are summoned from all corners of the jail. The rest of the cons are immediately ordered to ‘Check up!’; return to their cells for an early lock up. With a serious incident in progress, the screws don’t have time to police the rest of the prison population, even if they have been recreating peacefully. Rec time is over.
From behind our doors, it is hard to tell what is happening. In jail, rumours spread faster than hepatitis, but beyond the basics, no one is too sure if blood and guts will be making an appearance. We hope so. All we catch are snippets of shouted dialogue, the clatter of footsteps urgently ascending and descending the stairs and the incessant ringing of fones. The screws erect a large plastic canopy around the cell door to shield the proceedings from the prying eyes of the cons, who have been peering out through the cracks in their doors and shouting encouragement. After a while, the hall quietens down again. No one is sure if the incident is still in progress or if a truce has been secured. Eventually, we get bored of listening at our cell doors and return to our TV viewing. Then, at about midnight, we hear raised voices again followed by screaming. It would appear that there is life in this one yet. The level of activity is stepped up again; telefones ring off the hook, radios crackle into life and there is a constant to-ing-and-fro-ing of staff; prison officers, nurses, presiding officers. Then, as I watch through the crack in the door, I hear the entrance to A-Hall clatter open and the ominous sound of marching boots. An army of riot police (or maybe it is riot screws) trudge up the stairs, their protective gear rattling against the railings and echoing round the hall. Their faces are obscured by the protective masks that cover them, their bodies clad in stab-proof clothing. They look like cricketers sent out to the crease, only instead of bats they wield truncheons and shields. One of their number is videoing the show on a digital camera. I’d like to think it’s so he can show the highlights to his family later (‘Look what daddy did at work today – I bashed an idiot’s brains in!’) but the reality is more prosaic; if the hostage-taker later alleges rough treatment, the video should repudiate his claims. It is only once the camera has been turned off that the screws will administer the kicking he so richly deserves. No matter how justifiable their reasons for being here, there is something sinister about watching the full weight of governmental authority prepare to swing into action and crush the rebellion. The black-clad heavies could be straight out of a Robocop film.
The terrified inmate has now been held hostage for eight hours. His neck is marked by the pressure of the blades pushing against his throat. For the next two hours, the riot crew wait on standby as negotiations and ‘dialogue’ takes place. The turtle suits could just charge in and overwhelm the captor, but that would risk harming the ‘innocent’ victim. Eventually however, after much shouting and pleading, the exhausted con stands down his weapons. The riot crew enter and cuff him with zip ties. He is marched off to the digger [solitary confinement] to await his inevitable transfer to Perth. The hostage, remarkably, is also led away in cuffs and placed in one of the bare sui-cells in B-Hall. There are no warm blankets, cups of tea and cigarettes for him. This is not how freed hostages are treated in the movies. His ordeal is far from over; after all, he still has a three-year prison sentence to serve. In due course, he will probably launch a claim for compensation. In due course, his former cellmate will certainly appear in court and be charged for his aggression. He will probably end up serving an extra four years. With the riot crew gone, the rest of the staff gradually trickle out of the hall. Calm returns to the jail once more. I step away from the crack in the door and get into bed. The show is over. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.

Written on: Wednesday 28th January 2009

Ever since finding enough crumbs in my pocket with which to fashion an SS [single-skinner] in the holding cells on Monday, the entire population of A-Hall has become convinced that I am the holder of all things THC-laced. If the rumours are to be believed, I am currently sitting on a stash of Marksist proportions. (That’s Howard Marks, not Karl Marx by the way.) Cons who had previously not given me the time of day – Yardies, junkies, YO’s [Young Offenders] – now made a beeline for me, to savour my delightful company, gaze upon my handsome features and, of course, to pester me for drugs. In exchange for furnishing them with the tiniest knot of hash, I was offered tobacco, a shot of a PS2 and – had I pushed my luck – quite possibly sexual favours.
‘Here min, you’ve got hash tae sell, hiv ya?’ exclaimed the squeaky-voiced YO’s.
‘A’right man, wots dis bout you avin sum ganja?’ lilted the Yardies. At one point I looked up from using the communal fone to see a con making a smoking gesture in my direction. He certainly wasn’t after a rollie. Everywhere I walked I found myself being summoned into peters [cells] for hush-hush conversations about hash. If I still had my big bag of weed that is currently under lock and key at Filth HQ (assuming the pigs haven’t smoked it), I could have become fabulously rich in GV [Golden Virginia], the standard jail currency. If smoking was my game, I could receive enough tobacco to puff my way to an early grave. If the custard cream cons don’t kill me, the baccy will. In the police interview following my arrest, I had done my utmost to convince them that I wasn’t a dealer and that I certainly didn’t possess any weed. Now that I was in jail, where I should be free from such aggressive interrogation, I found myself on the defensive again. A dealer with weed is wanted by everyone; customers, pigs, rival dealers and thieves. But a dealer without product? Who wants to know? I deal therefore I am. Without my raisson d’etre, I fear I’ve become obsolete.

Written on: Tuesday 27th January

‘Fit did ya go to the Evening Express for the last time you was in?’
The voice whined through a crack in the door, flooding my cell with indignation and ire, while an eyeball eyeballed me through the peephole, demanding that I account for my previous sins. From the restricted view afforded me, I couldn’t put a face to the pinned pupil, but I didn’t doubt that it was toothless, scarred and emaciated.
‘I didn’t,’ I replied to the disgruntled stranger. ‘It was the Press & Journal.’ My accuser, who could have been any one of a hundred identikit junkies, dwelt on this for a moment.
‘Fit did ya dae ‘at for, saying a’ the cons wis junkies?’ continued the junkie, who clearly had a bone to chew – or rather gum – on.
‘Because most of them are,’ I replied truthfully. At present, two thirds of the inmates in Craiginches are on methadone. That means two thirds of them are junkies. I was never any good at fractions, but by my reckoning, two thirds could safely be classified as most of the sum total.
‘Yer a fucking bam,’ grunted the junkie, unimpressed with my reasoning, and sloped off in search of some foil with which to chase his pain away.
The next day at rec, another junkie approached me in the hall. (Or perhaps it was the same one, who knows?) ‘Here – you’re the boy that wrote that stuff aboot the custard creams!’ he shouted. (The headline in the News of The World article that had published my weblog was ‘Stabbed In The Neck Three Times…Over A Packet Of Custard Creams’.)
‘Yeah. And?’ I shrugged insolently.
‘I’m gonna fucking do you,’ came the swift reply.
Retribution and Revenge? Ah, do come in, I’ve been expecting you. To be honest, I’d been anticipating those two rearing their ugly heads for some time. Ever since The Boy Who Wrote That Jail Weblog got the jail again, it was only a matter of time before the inhabitants of said jail confronted him about his previous thought crimes. Why anyone in Craigie should give so much weight to my thoughts on prison life as opposed to those of my fellow cons baffled me. Still, it was strangely flattering to learn that they had been hanging on my every poisonous word. I had thought that three years of hard drugs and hard jail living would have blunted their memories (and that’s just the screws I’m talking about), but I was clearly wrong. Clearly, Custardgate (as the News Of The World article shall henceforth be dubbed) was still A Big Fucking Deal. The way things were going, I was in serious danger of being stabbed in the neck three times over a blog about being stabbed in the neck three times. It was enough to make anyone want to reach for the custard creams and indulge in some comfort munching.
‘Fuck it,’ I shrugged to myself. If I’d intended to spend my whole life looking over my shoulder, I’d have asked the Good Lord to reincarnate me as an owl. As I was thinking these resolute thoughts, another con approached and proceeded to quiz me about Custardgate. He wanted to know how much I’d gotten for selling my story. I explained to him that I hadn’t sought any money for it. ‘Fuck sake, ya coulda got two grand for that!’ he exclaimed, mentally trying to work out how many tenner bags that would buy.
I could understand a few of the cons being pissed off if it was their personal indiscretions that had been daubed across the The Press & Journal and News Of The World. What I couldn’t quite comprehend was their anger at my portrayal of the prison in general. It wasn’t as if I’d dissed their own homes and families, although to many, Craigie was a home from home and its inhabitants were their family. All I’d done was tell it like it was. What were they expecting, a narrative in which Craiginches was like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, with chocolate rivers and glass elevators whisking the cons o’er the water to court every morning? Junkies, dressed like Oompa-Loompas, dancing arm-in-arm down the hall to collect their meth?
And it wasn’t just the cons who were queuing up to have words with me about my words. The screws were also eager to find out if The Trash Whore Diaries would be making a reappearance, no doubt anxious to see what dirt I would be dishing on them and what jail scams I would uncover. Sadly both groups are out of luck. Do they really think I’d be stupid enough to start my jail blogs again, with the entire prison population looking over my shoulder? Actually, yes, I am that stupid. Only this time round, I’ll be publishing my blogs in time delay, using the same technique they employ to bleep out the swearing when the Oscars are screened live. I’m writing these words in January 2009 but if it’s still January when you’re reading them, it’s more likely to be 2010. Hopefully by then my neck will be sufficiently far from jail to avoid being breached thrice over on account of a story about a story about a packet of custard creams.
Although it feels like the entire jail intake is out to get me over perceived slights to their fine, upstanding reputation, thankfully I still have one ace to call upon at the turn. In the Sheriff Court holding cells on Monday, one of the cons from B-Hall started mouthing off about me being ‘a bam’, quite possibly on account of a weblog I once wrote about…yeah, you get the picture. Although I wasn’t there to hear his denigrations, unfortunately for him, someone much scarier was; an acquaintance of mine whose reputation precedes him in jails the length of the country. Upon overhearing the mouthy con’s diatribe, my boy swiftly covered the CCTV camera with his left hand and hooked the complainer with his right. ‘Sorry,’ sputtered the busted coupon, ‘I didnae ken you knew Kai.’ Sometimes it’s good to have high friends in low places like these.