Having been out - and managed to stay out - of prison for a few weeks now, I feel the time is right for a blogged appraisal of my reintegration into mainstream society. ‘The real world’, as I used to refer to it while in jail, seems like a wondrous and mysterious place when you can only watch it from afar. Up close however, a less glamorous picture emerges. The granite buildings that sparkled in the sunlight when viewed from my cell window are in fact caked with carbon and guano, while the tiny specks I took to be people have turned out to be corpulent monstrosities, two pies and a heart attack away from being cremated into tiny specks once again. The city of Aberdeen is still laced with wonder and mystery if you know where to look, but for the most part it is clogged with the mundane and the banal, the humdrum and the pedestrian. The snatched glimpses of real people going about their business in the real world used to fascinate me, but now that I am a part of it and one of them, the novelty has worn off. That’s not to say the ennui has set in however, for I love life in the free world, even when it invariably fails to match my expectations. Admittedly, I sometimes wonder what I see in it, but like living with an abusive, philandering spouse, I try to focus on the good times, for I recognise that I am stuck with it for now. I had anticipated that rudimentary skills such as texting, driving and handling money would take some getting used to, but as it transpired, they presented no such problems. Indeed, on the day of my liberation, it felt as if it were only yesterday and not 13 months ago that I had last engaged in such tasks. Perhaps I wasn’t locked up for long enough to forget - and then rediscover - such things. I should imagine a five-year sentence would probably do the trick. Next time I get caught, I’ll make sure it’s for importing handguns. That way, when I finally emerge into the real world as a neophyte to everything and everyone, I’ll be armed to the teeth once again, only this time with nothing more lethal than a batch of bloggable topics. I just hope you’ll be able to forgive the five years of tedious prison blogs that must precede that happy day.
Upon traversing the centre of Aberdeen shortly after getting out, I found that nothing and no one had changed. A few shop frontages might have been updated (Manhattan Bagel Co, lamentably replaced by the naffly-titled The Buttery) and a few faces accrued extra chins (Scott from One-Up), but by and large everything was in its right place, just as I had left it. The only thing that seemed to have really changed in my absence was the flange-o-rama, as Christy would put it. It appeared as if Aberdeen had been overrun by an array of hot MILFs, yummy mummies and their even yummier Gordons’ daughters. However, I put this perceived smorgasbord of female flesh down to the fact that I hadn’t seen girls in so long, and concluded that the pussy quota was in fact the same as ever. One thing that did surprise me was the price of a pint of Tennant’s - £2.30 in Triple Kirk’s. Sorry for sounding like an old fogey, but I’m sure it didn’t cost anywhere near that amount back when I were an unconvicted lad. Mind you, I was so opulent back then I didn’t usually bother to collect my change, let alone inspect it, so it may be the case that Tennant’s has always cost £2.30. I am proud to report that I managed to last three days in the real world before succumbing to the lure of a cold beer. While I would be swift to cite this as proof that I don’t have an alcohol problem, in reality it was probably more a case of needing 72 hours to get all the sex out of my system before replenishing it with beer. In saying that, three weeks on and I have yet to get properly drunk. This may, however, have something to do with my curfew and the exorbitant price of alcohol.
There has only been one occasion on which I found myself overwhelmed by my new environment, and that was in the hairdressers, on the very same morning as my beer induction. The last time I had walked into Angels, my regular salon, it was to request that my straightened and sculpted locks be replaced by a skinhead in anticipation of my imminent incarceration. This time around, the experience was equally daunting, but not on account of what lay in wait across the River Dee. Rather, I was more concerned with the scene that met my eyes as I stepped into the salon. I had been expecting to be greeted by my regular stylist and offered a seat and a cold beer while I waited for my colour to take. Instead, I stepped straight into a bustling stock exchange trading floor, if Wall Street were run by bleach blonde dolly birds. The normally sedate salon was in pandemonium; inside a space just four times the size of the prison cell I had recently vacated I counted 36 women and one token gay, clustered around every available chair, basin and mirror. The smell of hair spray and perfume combined with enough peroxide to blow up 1,000 airliners was overpowering. As I surveyed the seething throng, the coat rack, protesting under the weight of its excess baggage, suddenly collapsed, tearing its fittings out of the wall and landing on the floor in a cloud of plaster dust. As I sat down and tried to take in the frantic scene unfolding around me (not least the 36 sets of breasts bobbing up and down as the girls went about their work), I recalled how women who share the same environment often end up ovulating at the same time because their bodies synchronise their menstruation cycles. If that were true, and the gaggle of hairdressers assembled before me were all currently on the rag, this room was bloodier than an abattoir. As these random thoughts criss-crossed through my head, I caught one of the junior stylists staring at me. I looked away, not wanting to embarrass her, but upon returning my gaze, she was still staring. It was clear that she wanted to fuck me. That in itself was not a problem, for many people desire to have their wicked way with me, and I with them, and yet we manage to go our separate ways without transgressing and interlocking. On this occasion however I had no desire to reciprocate the girl’s knowing glances, not because she was un-doable or because my girlfriend would chop my balls off, but because if she was on the rag, my dip-stick would end up stained with red diesel. Although no stranger to the sight of blood, having witnessed plenty of it spilt while in jail, I have never been fond of the menstrual variety. This may have more to do with the irrational mood swings and subsequent blue-ballings that accompany its appearance however.
Upon traversing the centre of Aberdeen shortly after getting out, I found that nothing and no one had changed. A few shop frontages might have been updated (Manhattan Bagel Co, lamentably replaced by the naffly-titled The Buttery) and a few faces accrued extra chins (Scott from One-Up), but by and large everything was in its right place, just as I had left it. The only thing that seemed to have really changed in my absence was the flange-o-rama, as Christy would put it. It appeared as if Aberdeen had been overrun by an array of hot MILFs, yummy mummies and their even yummier Gordons’ daughters. However, I put this perceived smorgasbord of female flesh down to the fact that I hadn’t seen girls in so long, and concluded that the pussy quota was in fact the same as ever. One thing that did surprise me was the price of a pint of Tennant’s - £2.30 in Triple Kirk’s. Sorry for sounding like an old fogey, but I’m sure it didn’t cost anywhere near that amount back when I were an unconvicted lad. Mind you, I was so opulent back then I didn’t usually bother to collect my change, let alone inspect it, so it may be the case that Tennant’s has always cost £2.30. I am proud to report that I managed to last three days in the real world before succumbing to the lure of a cold beer. While I would be swift to cite this as proof that I don’t have an alcohol problem, in reality it was probably more a case of needing 72 hours to get all the sex out of my system before replenishing it with beer. In saying that, three weeks on and I have yet to get properly drunk. This may, however, have something to do with my curfew and the exorbitant price of alcohol.
There has only been one occasion on which I found myself overwhelmed by my new environment, and that was in the hairdressers, on the very same morning as my beer induction. The last time I had walked into Angels, my regular salon, it was to request that my straightened and sculpted locks be replaced by a skinhead in anticipation of my imminent incarceration. This time around, the experience was equally daunting, but not on account of what lay in wait across the River Dee. Rather, I was more concerned with the scene that met my eyes as I stepped into the salon. I had been expecting to be greeted by my regular stylist and offered a seat and a cold beer while I waited for my colour to take. Instead, I stepped straight into a bustling stock exchange trading floor, if Wall Street were run by bleach blonde dolly birds. The normally sedate salon was in pandemonium; inside a space just four times the size of the prison cell I had recently vacated I counted 36 women and one token gay, clustered around every available chair, basin and mirror. The smell of hair spray and perfume combined with enough peroxide to blow up 1,000 airliners was overpowering. As I surveyed the seething throng, the coat rack, protesting under the weight of its excess baggage, suddenly collapsed, tearing its fittings out of the wall and landing on the floor in a cloud of plaster dust. As I sat down and tried to take in the frantic scene unfolding around me (not least the 36 sets of breasts bobbing up and down as the girls went about their work), I recalled how women who share the same environment often end up ovulating at the same time because their bodies synchronise their menstruation cycles. If that were true, and the gaggle of hairdressers assembled before me were all currently on the rag, this room was bloodier than an abattoir. As these random thoughts criss-crossed through my head, I caught one of the junior stylists staring at me. I looked away, not wanting to embarrass her, but upon returning my gaze, she was still staring. It was clear that she wanted to fuck me. That in itself was not a problem, for many people desire to have their wicked way with me, and I with them, and yet we manage to go our separate ways without transgressing and interlocking. On this occasion however I had no desire to reciprocate the girl’s knowing glances, not because she was un-doable or because my girlfriend would chop my balls off, but because if she was on the rag, my dip-stick would end up stained with red diesel. Although no stranger to the sight of blood, having witnessed plenty of it spilt while in jail, I have never been fond of the menstrual variety. This may have more to do with the irrational mood swings and subsequent blue-ballings that accompany its appearance however.
Overcrowded hairdressers and overpriced beer aside, these last few weeks have passed smoothly. Apart from a couple of minor tag breaches, I have faced only one real crisis since getting home. Because my girlfriend favours sleeping late, to atone for having worked/drank late the nite before, I have found myself allocated the morning shift. Every day, I get up - or rather the bairn gets me up - and I set about changing, dressing and feeding her before taking her out in the pram to the shops and recycling facility. With my girlfriend otherwise indisposed, I have been left to my own devices when it comes to preparing the wean’s breakfast. I thought I had been doing a pretty good job of preparing and feeding her cereal to her, but I thought wrong. A couple of days ago, my girlfriend rose uncharacteristically early and walked through to the kitchen just in time to catch me making a potentially fatal mistake. Unaware of the danger I had been exposing our daughter to, I had been feeding her Oatibix instead of her prescribed organic baby Weetabix. The two cereals may look and taste the same, but apparently they’re not. After much frantic dialling of NHS 24, we were relieved to discover that the child should make a full recovery from the trauma of ingesting un-organic cereal that may have contained microscopic traces of pesticides that may in theory have caused damage if ingested neat and in large quantities. It was an easy mistake for a new father, only just released from prison and adjusting to his new life and responsibilities, to make. Nevertheless, had the error gone uncorrected and the bairn continued to eat unwholesome Oatibix, I dread to think what might have happened five years down the line. It was a sobering reminder that in spite of all the wonder and glamour, the real world can still be a real dangerous place sometimes.
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