Written on: Monday 26th January 2009
Of all the sounds to echo through the halls of Craiginches, by far the most repetitive is the rattle of keys that heralds the opening and slamming of steel doors. All day, every day, screws jingle-jangle their way the length of A-Hall and back again, locking and unlocking, opening and closing, checking and rechecking numbers. They're not called turnkeys for nothing. So when my afternoon perusal of The Daily Telegraph was interrupted by the all-too-familiar scrape of metal on metal, I barely glanced up as the door swung open. The key-wielding screw thrust a skeletal figure into my cell and proffered it like a zoo-keeper feeding fresh meat to the lions before rapidly retreating behind the sanctuary of the metal door. I didn't even have time to appraise and reject this tasteless morsel before the zookeeper was gone, off to throw fish at the sea lions in B-Hall presumably. I put down my paper and studied the pitiful serving of yellowed skin and bones. Five foot nothing of black teeth and jail tats gawped up at me, smack oozing from every pore. Part of my five-a-day this most certainly wasn't. I'd seen more meat at a vegans convention. (Not that I made a point of frequenting vegans conventions. I was a carnivorous lion, remember?) This wasn't even a meal fit for a convict, never mind a tiger, or whatever animal it was I had appointed myself as for the purposes of this tenuous metaphor. If the junkie had noted the disgusted expression on my face, he might also have concluded that I was a cat of some description, albeit one who'd just finished grooming himself and couldn't abide the taste of his own genitals.
'Alright min,' slurred the tasteless titbit through a haze of methadone. 'Got any baccy?'
I took a deep breath and began to patiently explain to my new friend that no, I didn't have any tobacco, and moreover since this was a non-smoking cell, he'd have to move. Although no puritan when it comes to smoking, I've learned that a non-smoking cell has its advantages, not least in situations such as that in which I now found myself. Given the choice between being locked up with a chain-smoking, gear-chasing junkie or having a single cell in which to sleep, wank and control the TV, it was a no-brainer. Speaking of no brains, my guest was on the scrounge already, scavenging for dowts [fag-ends] to fashion into a rollie. Some people might argue that soft drugs don't necessarily lead onto harder ones, but you try finding a junkie who doesn't smoke. It's like the old cliché about Muslims being terrorist sympathisers. They're not, but who would you rather have sweating profusely next to you on your flight – Nigel Brown or Rachid Ismael Mahmood? No one ever tells you that stereotypes are often true.
Upon learning of the predicament he now found himself in and the lack of opportunities this would present for further blackening his charred lungs, the junkie took the hint and set about making an undignified exit from the cell. With the door locked however and the gap underneath it to small for even his sleight frame, outside assistance would be required. As luck would have it, the one time a turnkey was needed to turn keys, none were forthcoming. After five minutes of pressing the buzzer and booting the door in vain, the junkie began ranting at the screw who had locked him in this hell of clean air and no medication.
'I swear that screw done this just tae wind me up!' he raged. 'I swear I'll put him flat on his back when I see him!'
With no prison officers available to extricate us from our dagger-clenched embrace, we reluctantly stood down our weapons and observed an uneasy truce. Neither of us wanted to be here, and certainly not in the present company, but for now we had no choice. To kill time instead of his cellmate, the junkie began recounting the events that had led to his incarceration. On this occasion, he was remanded for a series of assault and robberies. The reasons for our enforced cohabitation soon became clear.
'I had to go on the bottom flat cos I'm disabled and they had to put me in with an Aberdeen lad cos o my previous,' he explained. Previous? 'When they was admitting me this time, they says tae us, 'Are you a racist?'' (On my own admission sheet I'd denied being racist, sectarian or homophobic, informing the screws that I hated everyone equally.) 'I says tae them, 'Fit dae ya think? Just look at my previous!' See I've got a few racial convictions so they cannae put me in wi any coloureds. And I hate Pakis too. Just the way they smell.'
He may not have been Asian, but my newly-adopted gear gremlin was not exactly redolent of roses either. As he explained, I would not enjoy being locked up with him because 'Junkies aiways smell funny when they're sweating oot the kit.'
'I hear the Scousers hiv plenty o gear tae sell in the hall,' he continued, 'an hash an a'. Here, ya see that hash is back up tae a Class C, is it?'
'Actually I think it's a Class B now,' I corrected.
'Is it?' The junkie looked shocked at this revelation, as if the reclassification of cannabis might force him to rethink his entire policy on recreational drug use. 'It wiz right doon tae a Class D for a while, wiz it nae?'
I duly learned that my new co-pilot was 30 years old, had been in and out of jail since he was 16, had two kids – one of whom was in high school – and had 'been in every peter [cell] in the jail'. Oh, and he hailed from Northfield, but you assumed that already, didn't you?
'Do you take any pills or anything?' he enquired, clearly concerned for my well-being. Or possibly just to see if he could tap any vallies off me. After ascertaining that there would be no drugs forthcoming from my clean-living self, the junkie settled for the next best thing – a cup of tea and a rollie. From the plastic bag containing his jail-allocated possessions, he removed a heap of sugar sachets that looked suspiciously more than the standard weekly ration. 'I chored em at my induction,' he explained. 'Just kept sticking em up the sleeve of my jumper.'
I made a mental note to keep an eye on my possessions for the remainder of our uneasy cell-sharing arrangement. While the kettle was boiling, the junkie took out an apple and began carving it into small pieces with a plastic knife. What used to be a set of teeth were too knackered to bite into anything. Now all he could do was gum his food; death by a thousand mastications.
'Aw, this is a tune!' The 4Music channel was playing in the background and as his favourite song came on, the junkie cranked the TV up to distortion-inducing levels. The self-declared racist then proceeded to happily duet with the blacker-than-black Akon.
For all my smug stereotyping, my room-mate turned out to have a few surprises – as well as sugar sachets – up his sleeve. I discovered that he used to be a boxer with an impressive array of amateur titles to his name. 'What caused you to give it up?' I asked, waiting for the predictable response about gear habits and jail time.
'I had to gie it up when I had my heid burst in by a paving slab and a nail-gun,' he explained bluntly. 'Here – feel.'
He pressed my hand against his scalp and forced me to caress his lumpy scar tissue. 'Who did that to you?'
'My cousin. I was owe him a tenner,' came the reply.
There wasn't really much I could say to that. 'There's an Evening Express here if you wanna read it,' I noted, pointing towards the newspaper on the desk.
'I ca' read,' said the junkie. 'I wisnae in school much, I wiz aiways getting expelled for fighting. Only school I niver went to wiz Harlaw.'
'Here, how old do ya think I am?' he asked suddenly.
I stared at him for a second before replying. '30.'
He recoiled in surprise. 'Here min, at's spot on. How did you ken?'
I smiled. 'You told me five minutes ago.'
Of all the sounds to echo through the halls of Craiginches, by far the most repetitive is the rattle of keys that heralds the opening and slamming of steel doors. All day, every day, screws jingle-jangle their way the length of A-Hall and back again, locking and unlocking, opening and closing, checking and rechecking numbers. They're not called turnkeys for nothing. So when my afternoon perusal of The Daily Telegraph was interrupted by the all-too-familiar scrape of metal on metal, I barely glanced up as the door swung open. The key-wielding screw thrust a skeletal figure into my cell and proffered it like a zoo-keeper feeding fresh meat to the lions before rapidly retreating behind the sanctuary of the metal door. I didn't even have time to appraise and reject this tasteless morsel before the zookeeper was gone, off to throw fish at the sea lions in B-Hall presumably. I put down my paper and studied the pitiful serving of yellowed skin and bones. Five foot nothing of black teeth and jail tats gawped up at me, smack oozing from every pore. Part of my five-a-day this most certainly wasn't. I'd seen more meat at a vegans convention. (Not that I made a point of frequenting vegans conventions. I was a carnivorous lion, remember?) This wasn't even a meal fit for a convict, never mind a tiger, or whatever animal it was I had appointed myself as for the purposes of this tenuous metaphor. If the junkie had noted the disgusted expression on my face, he might also have concluded that I was a cat of some description, albeit one who'd just finished grooming himself and couldn't abide the taste of his own genitals.
'Alright min,' slurred the tasteless titbit through a haze of methadone. 'Got any baccy?'
I took a deep breath and began to patiently explain to my new friend that no, I didn't have any tobacco, and moreover since this was a non-smoking cell, he'd have to move. Although no puritan when it comes to smoking, I've learned that a non-smoking cell has its advantages, not least in situations such as that in which I now found myself. Given the choice between being locked up with a chain-smoking, gear-chasing junkie or having a single cell in which to sleep, wank and control the TV, it was a no-brainer. Speaking of no brains, my guest was on the scrounge already, scavenging for dowts [fag-ends] to fashion into a rollie. Some people might argue that soft drugs don't necessarily lead onto harder ones, but you try finding a junkie who doesn't smoke. It's like the old cliché about Muslims being terrorist sympathisers. They're not, but who would you rather have sweating profusely next to you on your flight – Nigel Brown or Rachid Ismael Mahmood? No one ever tells you that stereotypes are often true.
Upon learning of the predicament he now found himself in and the lack of opportunities this would present for further blackening his charred lungs, the junkie took the hint and set about making an undignified exit from the cell. With the door locked however and the gap underneath it to small for even his sleight frame, outside assistance would be required. As luck would have it, the one time a turnkey was needed to turn keys, none were forthcoming. After five minutes of pressing the buzzer and booting the door in vain, the junkie began ranting at the screw who had locked him in this hell of clean air and no medication.
'I swear that screw done this just tae wind me up!' he raged. 'I swear I'll put him flat on his back when I see him!'
With no prison officers available to extricate us from our dagger-clenched embrace, we reluctantly stood down our weapons and observed an uneasy truce. Neither of us wanted to be here, and certainly not in the present company, but for now we had no choice. To kill time instead of his cellmate, the junkie began recounting the events that had led to his incarceration. On this occasion, he was remanded for a series of assault and robberies. The reasons for our enforced cohabitation soon became clear.
'I had to go on the bottom flat cos I'm disabled and they had to put me in with an Aberdeen lad cos o my previous,' he explained. Previous? 'When they was admitting me this time, they says tae us, 'Are you a racist?'' (On my own admission sheet I'd denied being racist, sectarian or homophobic, informing the screws that I hated everyone equally.) 'I says tae them, 'Fit dae ya think? Just look at my previous!' See I've got a few racial convictions so they cannae put me in wi any coloureds. And I hate Pakis too. Just the way they smell.'
He may not have been Asian, but my newly-adopted gear gremlin was not exactly redolent of roses either. As he explained, I would not enjoy being locked up with him because 'Junkies aiways smell funny when they're sweating oot the kit.'
'I hear the Scousers hiv plenty o gear tae sell in the hall,' he continued, 'an hash an a'. Here, ya see that hash is back up tae a Class C, is it?'
'Actually I think it's a Class B now,' I corrected.
'Is it?' The junkie looked shocked at this revelation, as if the reclassification of cannabis might force him to rethink his entire policy on recreational drug use. 'It wiz right doon tae a Class D for a while, wiz it nae?'
I duly learned that my new co-pilot was 30 years old, had been in and out of jail since he was 16, had two kids – one of whom was in high school – and had 'been in every peter [cell] in the jail'. Oh, and he hailed from Northfield, but you assumed that already, didn't you?
'Do you take any pills or anything?' he enquired, clearly concerned for my well-being. Or possibly just to see if he could tap any vallies off me. After ascertaining that there would be no drugs forthcoming from my clean-living self, the junkie settled for the next best thing – a cup of tea and a rollie. From the plastic bag containing his jail-allocated possessions, he removed a heap of sugar sachets that looked suspiciously more than the standard weekly ration. 'I chored em at my induction,' he explained. 'Just kept sticking em up the sleeve of my jumper.'
I made a mental note to keep an eye on my possessions for the remainder of our uneasy cell-sharing arrangement. While the kettle was boiling, the junkie took out an apple and began carving it into small pieces with a plastic knife. What used to be a set of teeth were too knackered to bite into anything. Now all he could do was gum his food; death by a thousand mastications.
'Aw, this is a tune!' The 4Music channel was playing in the background and as his favourite song came on, the junkie cranked the TV up to distortion-inducing levels. The self-declared racist then proceeded to happily duet with the blacker-than-black Akon.
For all my smug stereotyping, my room-mate turned out to have a few surprises – as well as sugar sachets – up his sleeve. I discovered that he used to be a boxer with an impressive array of amateur titles to his name. 'What caused you to give it up?' I asked, waiting for the predictable response about gear habits and jail time.
'I had to gie it up when I had my heid burst in by a paving slab and a nail-gun,' he explained bluntly. 'Here – feel.'
He pressed my hand against his scalp and forced me to caress his lumpy scar tissue. 'Who did that to you?'
'My cousin. I was owe him a tenner,' came the reply.
There wasn't really much I could say to that. 'There's an Evening Express here if you wanna read it,' I noted, pointing towards the newspaper on the desk.
'I ca' read,' said the junkie. 'I wisnae in school much, I wiz aiways getting expelled for fighting. Only school I niver went to wiz Harlaw.'
'Here, how old do ya think I am?' he asked suddenly.
I stared at him for a second before replying. '30.'
He recoiled in surprise. 'Here min, at's spot on. How did you ken?'
I smiled. 'You told me five minutes ago.'