In the exercise yard in Exeter Prison, there is no tree.
There is a grassy knoll.
There is a stump atop it. It is ring fenced with green grass and pathways of concentric concrete circles:
a labyrinth around the central point of raw wood. The core, a marrow bone in the amputated trunk:
a blunt stump with no prosthesis possible.
The root is as dead as the event which was the cause of the demise of the weeping tree.
Gone are the reasons why the thing was razed in the first place;
gone are the reasons for leaving the stump on top of the mound, where it stood as an unrecognised warning to rebellious inmates.
This was all back in ’98 of course: in the last century.
That would make this story five years old at this telling. For all its youth as truth,
it still sounds as old a tale as the Victorian brickwork that confines it.
“No mail today boss”?
“Yes but we haven’t had time to sort it yet:
It’s still with the censor”.
“Come on boss it’s three in the afternoon.
It’s supposed to be on the landing after breakfast. What’s going on?”
“Staff shortage”.
“Fuckin’ staff shortage: This is the daftest job you can get.
You need more about you to shovel shit than to do your job”.
“Watch it Grahame. I’ll have you on a charge”.
“What on: telling the truth to an apathetic screw about a dilapidated jail and a shite system that’s more like the Hitch-
hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than any reality on this planet”.
“Don’t go there; I’ll be on a charge next to you”.
“Eh”?
“There’s nothing Grahame, not even for us.
We are supposed to eat the same shit as you have to put up with. Why do you think I bring sandwiches for my dinner?
The staff, from the landing staff to the office…”
“Oh shut the fuck up. At least you go home at night. All we got is our visits and mail.
And the mail is always late. Last week I had a rule 39a opened. Now that is just plain wrong.
Mail from my brief is not supposed to be opened if it’s marked.
The sticker was half the size of the envelope. He sys he’s sorry: He didn’t see it; fuckin’ liar”.
“Are you on exercise or bang up”.
“Exercise”.
“Right: Fuck off out in the yard then and shut the fuck up”.
“Yes boss”.
Hot July sun beat down on the pasty prisoners below.
Most took the opportunity to catch some rays and lie on the cool grass bank,
rather than walk round in circles: anticlockwise only, no running.
They enjoyed the smells in the grass and the dozens of little wild flowers,
looked on only by those who would see them. There was even a wild strawberry plant,
just inside the wire fence. Despite the efforts of mankind to enslave it;
mould it to their more general requirements; not at all like their natural selves,
sharp secretive plants still live in the wild, as this one did,
wild and free within the prison walls. It lived defiantly,
six inches short of the regimental rows under the control of the PO Gardener,
recently retired from twenty years of square bashing duties.
This was the only chance to feel grass under your feet and talk with whom you wanted.
There were definite cliques, but they were not formal.
People kind of drifted from group to group.
It would be boring if you did not want to talk about drugs, but you can’t have everything.
The main point is to talk to someone that you don’t have to eat, sleep and shit with.
But today the talk was different. The missing mail stories were all round the yard.
There was a genuine undercurrent.
Especially for one bloke whose wife was nine months pregnant.
He had already been turned down for a compassionate release,
even though he had one week left to serve. The rules are of course nobody’s fault,
they are the law. They are totally rational and therefore inflexible.
Justice is blind to all except the facts as relevant to the case without exception;
which is why another product of the system developed into a hardened criminal,
bent on revenge which few disbelieved.
He was a creature of the system which blamed him for what he was.
After all he has a criminal record.
During the week the disgruntled complaints echoing round the yard, filled Grahame’s ears.
There was trouble in the air as sure as rain follows the cold breeze that precedes it.
That cold front was the decision that the governor had cancelled Monday visits forthwith.
Why Mondays? No one knew. Why stop visitors?
Because they are the easiest victims to cut from the staffing budget with the least political repercussions.
Also there were no avenues of complaint to object.
Sunday morning was a beautiful, sunny,
cloudless summer’s day. No one was looking forward to the overcooked chicken and cabbage,
with underdone potatoes. It was always chicken legs and lumpy mash.
It was as predictable as unlock and bang up. Chapel was followed by exercise.
Everyone went to chapel, mostly because it got you out of your cell: sorted.
What was unknown to the screws, much to their surprise,
but not unusually, was the fact that a peaceful protest of civil disobedience had been planned. This was a misguided action, if only on the grounds that the prisoners should think they are civilian. Even more so if any of the participants thought they would make an iota of difference. That was why most of the prisoners joined the protest. It was not against the loss of rights so much, as the fact that the food is crap and it is much better to lie in the sun on the grass than the prospect of any given Sunday. That involves sitting down to lunch on Sunday and staying banged up til eight the next morning: eighteen hours straight, with the exception of ninety minutes to watch an utterly bad film.
The protest carried on throughout the afternoon.
All fifty odd rioters created mayhem. Blades of grass were thrown at people.
If there was some soil mixed in with it there would be a demand to ‘fuck off’ and a chase round the yard.
Two prisoners used a stone to chalk a hopscotch pitch on the path.
As the afternoon wore on, some delicate backs began to feel the lash of the sun.
They sat like lobsters under the shade of the willow tree, the only shade in the entire yard,
if you don’t count the toilet block and along the North facing wall.
The chosen shade was the cool green umbrella of willow.
At five they all gave up when it was decided to come in for tea.
Watching the purple clad gentlemen leave the field of play,
for all the world like a cricket side at the end of the match, was surreal.
The image was completed with the opposition lined up at the changing room doors to herd them in to A wing.
They spent the evening either watching TV if they were allowed one, or reading, lying on your bunk, waiting. You lay there until your arse is numb and then sit on the chair til your back hurts, then you go back to numb arse mode. Then you wait some more.
Eventually and inevitably the screw arrived with the clip board and appropriate forms.
He went into each cell, marking the cards of the guilty offenders for punishment.
Eventually Monday morning arrived and there was the loud sound of machinery working outside.
It sounded like a Stihl saw.
It would be most unlikely that repairs were being made was the general consensus,
but it sounded like a paving slab saw. The theory was right, but the identification wrong.
The chain saw was cutting down the tree so that prisoners could not protest under its shadow.
Perhaps it is a pity that the protest was not inside the jail.
The bulldozers might have turned up.
Overnight the administration and the establishment made frantic phone calls from department heads,
up to the gods at Whitehall and back down again. The Teflon epaulettes allowing no responsibility to stick.
In the end it was seceded that an example must be made.
Now as the prison riot that the tabloids reported,
(“Why do they let these bladdy prisoners loose with telephone cards”),
some prisoners could be charged. But it would have to be heard by a magistrate in open court.
So it would be all across the front pages that the governor had chopped down the only tree on the entire estate.
It would also come out that the rioters were guilty of sunbathing and hop scotch,
making the whole debacle nothing more than career suicide.
The only participant that could realistically be tried was the tree.
It is clear that the presence of the shade of the tree contributed to the length of the protest.
That is if you ignore the fact that ten percent of the yard is in shade all the time.
Therefore it must be held culpable.
At eight am the next morning, the executioner hired for the job was on site.
The Home Office Tree Surgeon would be present to pronounce;
and the governor was there as the final witness.
He gave the nod.
The chain saw was flailed into life with a single expert flick.
The woodsman dispatched it quickly and efficiently.
Its branches were shredded and its heart wood burned.
The ashes were scattered to the four winds as a warning to all in the land:
Sedition will be dealt with brutally and with the utmost severity.
Inmates on exercise in Exeter prison today,
are probably wondering why it is forbidden to sit on the grassy knoll with the dead stump in the middle of the yard.
The focal point of the art deco design,
built by a philanthropist for the relief of prisoners in 1935.
Nobody ever seemed to make a mistake about Billy Wentworth.
Jimmy Johnstone from number five was famed for standing with his elbow on the bar of the Spread Eagle,
drinking Banks’s Mild. He would pass judgement on the moral virtue or otherwise on all the passing trade.
This one was an accountant, that one was a housebreaker. The bloke in the bar last week,
with the pony tail and earring was without doubt a burglar.
How he ever managed to reach such certainties about people whom he had never met,
let alone ever spoken to, was a source of wry amusement to all and sundry of the regulars at the pub.
They missed Jimmy since he was jailed for fraudulently claiming unemployment benefit.
The fraud officers from social security had followed him for a couple of weeks apparently.
One even followed him into his local public house and noted how much he was spending.
Fred went with him to court and could not wait to bring back the news of his demise.
Fred was like that;
he would do anything for anyone as long as there was a juicy bit of gossip at the end of it for him to spread.
The only factor that qualified the gossip was that it had to be something negative and harmful.
Nothing positive ever seemed to come from his sources.
He described the man from social security to a tee.
The ponytail and earring were unmistakable.
Jimmy was adamant about Bill.
He always came into the pub at the same time on the same nights.
He always drank the same drink, and left after the same amount,
at the same time. His personal pot was hung over the bar.
It was a pint jug of reeded cast glass.
The faded transparency told of his trip to Butlins several years ago.
Most wondered if it was the only memento of the only holiday he’d ever had.
For the most part he was too tight to spare enough for his missus to go to the hairdressers.
So there may be some merit in the idea.
Jimmy said he was a man of habit and everyone knows that people of habit are reliable.
Bill knew all about this and held the opinion with the contempt that it deserved.
He would walk to the bar and look around to see who was there. When he turned his head,
it appeared as though there was a plank of wood down his back.
His neck never moved an inch as his shoulders turned with that red headed top to it.
His forehead was at the right angle to reflect the light of the ceiling rose right into people’s faces.
He sports a little moustache,
shaved to the outer edge of his nostrils and thick from the base of his nose to his top lip.
It was almost a square of hair in the middle of his face.
The result is an artificial scour echoed by his thin, pale lips,
pursed in an attitude of constipation.
In the seventies Bill Wentworth was known for his controversial attitude.
For a kick off he was a supporter of the Tories. As a working man that was unusual in his day,
especially when he expanded on the virtues of Margaret Thatcher.
One of the better parts of his argument was the one about the fact that everyone was working a three-day week.
He cited the piles of rubbish in the streets and rats nesting in the waste,
not being dealt with by striking council workers.
It was his opinion that they all needed another Winston Churchill to save the day for Britain,
which he was adamant he was backing.
His politics are more unusual when taken in context with his job.
As a line worker on British Leyland,
he was more used to avoiding employment than actively seeking it out.
That was not a conscious decision on his part probably,
but a response to the culture of the workplace.
The watchword of the day was demarcation of course.
Everyone knows that people who screw things in are not the same as people who screw things out.
One operation falls into the trade of engineering construction,
the other is obviously a maintenance matter.
So it cannot be the case that a manufacturing engineer should take the work off his brother by removing screws from things that need fixing.
This would be more important still if there was an electrical repair behind the removed screw.
It is obvious to anyone that to change for example, a fuse in a thirteen-amp plug,
requires the labour of three men to do the job.
It was true to say that the philosophy of management failed to see the virtue of this logic.
The idea that one man could do the job of three was a plot to reduce wages and the workforce into an overworked,
under qualified chain gang of wage slaves.
Bill would have none of it and worked against the grain of opinion to the point of splinter groups meeting in smoke filled rooms,
plotting to take his union card. That would be financial disaster of course.
The closed shop agreement would have resulted in instant dismissal.
As a fully paid up union member he was entitled to attend the meetings of course.
He did on a couple of occasions.
Both times the meeting was held in the back snug of a back street one ale bar.
The motions on the table were discussed at length.
The first time there was a three and one half-
hour discussion on whether or not the gents and women’s toilets should be stocked with white or pink paper.
Also of course the matter of sexual discrimination in the choice and imposition of colour coded tissue was the main item on the agenda.
At three a.m., he had to give up and leave,
as he was due on the production line on the day shift.
The next time he attended a more serious matter was under discussion.
The meeting was convened at seven p.m. and finished some twelve hours later.
Bill gave up at ten o’clock, because he failed to see the finer points of the discussion.
He could not see the erosion in workers rights in the bourbon biscuits that had replaced the chocolate wholemeals on sale at the tea station.
He should have stayed. At five past ten the matter was resolved and the motion to strike the next week was tabled,
seconded and passed in twenty minutes.
The meeting then tucked in to beer and sandwiches at the expense of the company for the rest of the night.
Bill was becoming depressed about it all. His self worth was going out of the widow.
At least it was going and he was wondering where it went.
One mystery that had puzzled him for months was the energy of the shop steward.
He seemed to be able to attend endless meetings in the day or night,
no matter what shift he worked.
He never missed a day of attendance and was always as fresh as a daisy.
Such energy he had heard was shared with Mrs. Thatcher,
who was said to be able to manage on five hours sleep.
The rest of the time she dedicated to work. He admired such virtues in people.
It was only when he spotted the camp bed and sleeping bag hidden behind the lockers on the shop floor that the truth was revealed and the dream shattered forever.
His discovery of the secret den was perhaps the catalyst to his downfall.
Within a few weeks he had been called in to an official union meeting where a group of his peers decided that he was no longer fit to be a member of the union.
Because of the closed shop agreement with the company that meant that he lost his job.
There was no compensation,
no tribunal of appeal and no opportunity to sue for wrongful dismissal.
There was just the dole.
It was probably at that point in his life that the bitterness set in as a permanent canker.
Bill vowed to get even. His first line of attack was to begin working as scab labour.
He started as a strikebreaker in the very factory that had dismissed him.
He was said to be first in and last out with the offending camp beds in the skip as the first job on the agenda.
The disability was just another blow. He was already dead inside.
It was in the welding shop.
The workers they brought in were not as experienced as they could have been.
Their work was up to scratch; they just did not pay attention to the safety of their workmates.
The arc from the welder pushed argon ionised light directly on Bill’s retina.
He thought it was just arc eye at first,
just a bit of sand in the eyes that will fix itself in a couple of days.
But when he started to take his sunglasses off he found the light too painful to look at.
Then the cloudy spots started. Then the vision shrank into a foggy tunnel.
He could not even read the paper anymore.
Even the pimples on page three were out of focus for him. He never saw his wife again either.
It was the stress that put him off they say. Time as they say is a great healer.
And so it was with Bill Wentworth.
He never gained his sight back. He mellowed over the years.
It was a dedication to his brother’s children that gave him his light.
In time he thought of his nephews as his own.
He abused their presence in the same way that his father had treated him with utter contempt.
His inherited parenting skills were sure to extend their social skills with the subtlety of a flying brick.
His brother’s eldest boy was hopeless at school.
He wasted his time there and ended up working at a third rate builder’s yard and on the back end of a shovel at that.
For all his shortcomings, Bill saw that he at least got a trade. The lad ended up as a first fix carpenter.
It was hardly cabinet making, but at least it was a living.
After a few years, Bill guided him into a small jobbing builder’s round.
He remembered the seventies so well,
and saw that the only way for the boy to make his way in life would be to depend on himself.
The experiences of working for other people were nothing pleasant to remember.
Bill paid for the arm to guide him down the pub with tales of the past.
As the evenings wore on,
the stories became more embellished as they were oiled with Banks’s ale.
If there was one thing that ‘Blind’ Billy Wentworth wished,
it was that he had been more adamant over the tone of voice that he heard when that Jon spouted off.
There was something about it that he did not trust.
Even as a lad he didn’t like him:
Too much for himself and too much aware of his own back when he was with his mates.
Bill knew that he would come to no good.
He wished he had said something more before the disaster of his nephew’s bankruptcy.
The thing about signing on is that it is always the same.
Not the A5 clipboard held together with an elastic band, that’s always the same of course.
What is the same is the lack of difference.
The DSS and the job centre; the police station and the housing benefit office,
they are all the same.
At first I was convinced that it was the almost precisely offensive tint of green on the walls,
but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t the steel tube and pinewood Government Issue furniture either.
Although the décor is almost precisely similar in taste to the paintwork,
it is not that which causes mind-numbing dread.
The paranoid anticipation of imminent disappointment could not be credited to that.
Even the most fervent follower of J.S.Mill could not be that talented.
No, what the common denominator of gloom is, in these dens of antiquity,
is the formulated skill with which the reception staff pitch their answers to your queries.
They’re over friendly and all too helpful faces betray nothing of the talent they have for being as unhelpful as possible.
To this wholly negative attitude is added that body language and cast in the eye;
that millimetre small purse of the lips, which lets you know that you are a scrounger,
a thief and a liar.
It wasn’t always like this of course.
I had a good job before. In fact I was lucky that I knew the boss of the agency.
Jon and me were at school together. We were mates then.
I suppose that we were eleven or twelve when we became friends.
We went everywhere together.
We even got up to a few tricks that we were glad our parents did not find out about.
We even dated the same girls until we finally drifted apart and went our separate ways.
It was about four years or so after we left school that we met up.
He had just finished college and I my apprenticeship.
I was walking down the street in Darlaston.
I cannot for the life of me remember why I was in Darlaston,
but there he was in the road looking up at a building.
The strange thing is that when I called over to him, he was a bit offhand.
I think I just caught him by surprise. He must have been having a bad day at work or something.
After all we were best friends and hadn’t seen each other for years.
We didn’t meet again for maybe ten or fifteen years.
I went to this estate agent’s shop because I knew that they managed houses for landlords.
The people who live in our house pay their rent there.
It never occurred to me till I walked in the door that the name of one of the partners on the window was his.
I remember making a joke of it at the time, something about Con’em Bodgit and Scarper.
I seem to recall that it went down like a lead Zeppelin.
Jon never did have a very good sense of humour.
I always understood him even if the rest of the school thought he was just a little shit.
It’s funny really, Jon and me are like chalk and cheese.
At school he was a swot and I hated the place. He passed all his exams and went to college.
I never did want all that stuff. It’s a waste of time really isn’t it?
I mean look at the dip weeds that you get in the civil service. They need to get a life.
After I left school I did what anyone with a decent outlook would do.
I got a job with training for a trade. That’s real work,
not walking around an office with a clip board in your hand all day. That’s not work.
How do you get up a sweat doing that?
Anyway I finished at the Askins when I got my ticket.
They were not a bad firm but when you are qualified in your trade you expect more money.
I did four years and came out as a carpenter and joiner.
It was the evening classes at night school that I hated about it.
Still you had to do it to get your City & Guilds.
I asked for more money and they said they had invested enough time and money in my training.
They wanted another two years out of me as a gratitude for my training.
They were taking the piss of course.
I sweated on the back end of a shovel for them for long enough at half pay,
without doing more time for them.
It would have meant working next to other blokes on the same job with less money than them.
Sod that for a game of soldiers.
My Uncle Bill suggested that I go off and start as a jobbing builder. Now he was a one.
Uncle Bill came from a background of industrial strife.
And conflict with the police in the seventies.
Though it has to be said for the most part that his contributions to the causes of his brothers were more negative than positive.
He saw himself saving the day for the greater part of the Great in Britain.
He worked as a flying scab labourer and was one of the major reasons for the police having to be called in the first place.
His philosophy in life was bolstered by only two things: money and Norman Tebbitt.
His encouragement to get on my bike clangs on my conscience to this very day.
I went round door to door at first.
It was easy getting work on the cheap because I had my trade qualifications and no overheads.
I was fitting tap washers and fixing overflow pipes for a few years.
I never screwed the punters though.
The number of times that I could have sold a new water tank and just turned the screw on the ball cock instead is nobody’s business.
I can understand the con men that do it though.
I don’t suppose there have been more than two customers in ten years that actually checked to see that I had done the work that I said I would do.
People are so trusting; it’s no wonder they get conned. They practically ask for it.
Then the small sub-contract work started to come in and my little one-man band became bigger.
I never did take on proper employees as permanent fixtures.
You never can tell who you are dealing with.
You take someone on and they are as nice as pie for a year or so,
then they stab you in the back as soon as you want some commitment out of them.
I’ve seen it all before. There was that John Maddox, he was a plumber with me at Askins.
He started out on his own before I did. Full of big ideas he was.
Well what can you expect from him? He was a big overweight bloke who loved curry and beer more than people.
He took on loads of men and contracts, thought he was doing rather well for himself.
Then all that stuff from the main contractor started. You know the type of thing.
They wanted this and that doing before they would pay him. In the end he went broke.
It always annoyed me that you can never get a job with any of the big firms unless you have some college cerstifificate.
And you know as well as I do that the chinless wonder on the other side of the desk,
who is asking for it, cannot do the job as well or as quickly as you can.
That’s what I mean about Jon, he was different like that.
They all said he was as stiff-necked as the rest of them, but I knew different.
He would always offer people a chance.
If you fouled up he would come down like a ton of bricks of course,
but at least he gave you a chance.
I was working on a small job one day when I happened on something a bit bigger.
It seems that life is like that sometimes. That’s why I never turn anything down,
you never know where it will lead.
There I was messing about with a piece of wiring in the garden,
when the householder said that there was going to be a new estate built in the fields across the road from his house.
He was pleased because the locals had used the wasteland for fly tipping for years.
I agreed with him, but I never let on that I had lost the occasional van load there myself.
So I waited and watched the area until one day there were a bunch of white hats there with boning rods and theodolites.
When I asked who they were I got the main contractor.
That led to a chat with the quantity surveyor and I was offered a contract with them.
That job was the starting point for me,
and I made enough from it to invest in some more tools and a better van.
I had a bit of cred as it were now, and found work a lot easier to pick up than before.
It was shortly after that I came into contact with Jon.
I was thinking about maintenance work anyway, and had a contract with a local housing association.
That was the sort of work that you could fit in round other jobs,
especially if it was raining.
I mean the jobs were in occupied houses and were for the most part indoors.
It was usually a bit of painting when the tenancy changed,
or a radiator that some kid had pulled off the wall.
It’s good work for a cup of tea and sometimes a bacon sandwich too.
Strangely enough you never seem to get a cup of tea from the nobs.
Especially if they happen to be ex- council estate kids that made good.
They were usually the tightest and the most demanding of clients.
For some reason they have to make out that they have a quality about themselves that they think you don’t think they have.
The trouble is it always comes out wrong and they just come across as stuck up prats.
One of the problems was that it was good enough work to make it pay,
but too thin on the ground to take someone on for especially.
In the end it was meeting up with Jon that saved the day as it were.
He told me that he was into property management,
and I said that I thought we could help each other.
I put the idea to him and he came back with an offer a few weeks later.
Apparently he told absent landlords that not only could he collect their rents for them,
but also maintain their properties for them. This meant that if the bathroom leaked,
they would not have to leave the beach on Tenerife to fix it.
He would just call them and get approval on the phone. It suited everyone down to the ground.
Soon enough I was getting all sorts of work,
all over the place, from all sorts of people.
It turns out that Jon had started a business separate to the estate agency.
He was offering maintenance right across the Midlands conurbation for other agents.
He was sending me loads of work. In the end I had three teams of men and vans on the road.
And there was more work than they could handle.
Of course there was no way that he could run the maintenance as part of the agency.
He had to keep it separate. I remember he went to great lengths to explain to me that it had to be separate.
He said he had set up a limited company and as I was the main man,
he offered me a directorship. Well can you imagine that,
I was a director of a real business.
We were making loads of money at the time and everything went well for a year or so.
It was the private job that caused the trouble.
There was this contact that Jon had down the golf club. Of course I never met the bloke.
I wouldn’t be seen dead in a posh golf club.
There was this barn conversion that he wanted doing, and it was cash in hand.
I jumped at it of course.
There it was, tucked away from prying eyes in a little corner of the map.
If you were not an expert in map reading, you would miss it for sure.
At one time it had been the barn to a manor house.
I was talking to one of the brickies on the site when we were working there.
He said that there was nowhere in England that you could get a brick that size.
They did not make them anymore. It was just the size that they used in Elizabethan times.
Imagine that William Shakespeare might have seen it in his travels between London and his home in Stratford upon Avon.
Then again I said what if Francis Drake had hidden some of the gold that he looted from the Spanish when he was a pirate.
He said not to be so daft. Nobody was a pirate any longer.
There were laws and company rules against all that sort of thing.
The problems came to the surface the week after we had finished the barn.
It was a sad day for us all; Jon agreed it was sad too.
It was a lovely job and we were lucky I suppose that we had finished the job and handed over to the client before the firm was discovered to be insolvent.
I felt awful. I lost the house and everything.
Still at least the judge in the bankruptcy hearing was good enough to say that it was not my fault.
I was just glad for Jon in the end.
At least he had his other business to fall back on. I say fall back,
but the estate agency was doing extremely well.
The week after all the hearings were over he went to Italy for a holiday.
When he came back we met up. He knows I like my Formula One racing.
He was telling me that while he was in Milan, he visited the Ferrari factory.
Monday: Oh God how he hated Monday’s.
He thought of the song that Bob Geldof had come up with.
Now the words won’t stop going around in his head. He hated that too.
It always seemed to happen on bad days.
Or was it that when silly songs were going around in his mind, it turned out to be a bad day.
The words were still spinning ten minutes later,
even though he wanted to think of something else.
The downbeat of the news on the radio was supposed to distract the loud repetitious lyrics.
It didn’t work.
Instead he was asked to start the week with the thought that the government vets had slaughtered a hundred thousand animals:
Another cheerful Monday morning to look forward to.
He remembered that someone told him that when that music thing happened,
you have to sing the song out loud to stop it going round in your head.
“I don’t like Mondays
I don’t like Monday-ays
I don’t like, I don’t like
I don’t like -
Oh shit to it.
He thought of the nauseating idea of breakfast,
between the lines: imagining loads of schoolchildren being shot in the head with a handgun,
by their classmate. In the playground, behind a chain link fence so there is no escape.
Red brick walls and tarmac echoing the deafening explosions.
Not a blade of grass to soften the falls of the sound, or in the end, the children.
Ring-a-ring a-roses, a pocket full of BANG! I don’t like Mondays.
“Oh SHIT”.
The Laura Ashley print curtains sloughed back across the misted pane.
Their grey-blue colour wash, with pretty little pastel flower patterns almost precisely failed to please the eye.
He looked out over the vista of brick wall, across the alley from his one room flat.
Low cloud scudded in the gale like a bad trip.
His mind seemed to wonder why it only ever rained sideways and at full pelt.
Everything is in a maniacal rush to get there, even the rain.
The flash of lightening confirmed that the rain was speeding.
He wondered where it paid its fine. At least the music has stopped.
Having risen in the full joy of the moment,
he topped the start of the day with thoughts of work.
Every Monday was the same since the new gung-ho manager had arrived on the scene.
Filled with psychobabble and dolphin song tapes,
the new boss abused his position by insisting on everyone sitting in a circle on Monday morning.
It was bad enough having to lie about how enthusiastic he was without having to share all those bloodshot eyes and halitosis.
He wondered if you could sue for auricular harassment.
After an hour of that bestial marine wailing he was sympathetic to the campaign to nuke the whales.
It was also true that being late into the office was not excusable.
With that in mind he forced the last piece of cold toast, slicked with margarine,
down his gullet and drank his coffee. He reminded himself that the packet said ‘fresh ground’.
He was sure it might have been once, but now it just tasted like mud.
When he opened the front door,
the world struck him with the blast of a fire hose, propelled by a nuclear winter.
The prospect of having to listen to how positive everyone felt depressed him. How exactly do you feel positive?
He remembered that the last thing he had felt which was positive was a live wire.
He was also aware that when he had accidentally touched the other piece of cable,
the result was positively negative.
Flying in the face of certainty, the car started.
He thought that perhaps things would look up by the time he arrived at the office.
The windscreen wipers laboured resentfully in their repetitive drudge across the screen.
The weight of the other demands on the car’s electrics made them sluggish and reluctant.
He considered the possibility of relieving the pressure of the other demands,
but each task seemed equally important in the greater scheme of things.
Does he turn off the lights, heater, rear window de-mister, or the radio?
The radio was a possibility, but was the only welcome distraction.
Listening to it he realised that the news was still in tune with the weather,
so he turned to a light music station.
“I don’t like Mondays (tell me why)
I don’t like Monday-ays…”
“Oh Shit”.
It was then that the traffic started to build up and put him behind schedule.
If you don’t make the lights at the end of the high street by half past,
it is going to be difficult to arrive at the office by nine.
It is also impossible to park outside the office at that time in the morning,
so it becomes vital to get a spurt on to arrive on time.
It’s okay to speed up to the grid outside the football ground,
but at the same time vital to remember to go across it at thirty.
He realised that he felt angry and jittery for some reason.
Then he realised that he hadn’t had a cigarette yet.
Sticking to a steady forty-five he fumbled in the glove box and his pockets for his fags and lighter.
The lighter fell out of his fingers and landed between his legs.
It was dangerous to bend down to get it of course,
but he could not afford the time he would lose, at least thirty seconds,
to pull over and pick it up safely.
As he took his eyes and mind off the driving and pushed down between his legs,
his fingers pushed the lighter a little further away, another stretch and he got it.
As he brought his head up he was just in time to see the double flash of the speed camera as he went through the grid at fifty.
He knew where to go to pay his fine.
The office was a hive of activity and the new manager was being very nice.
He felt highly suspicious when people with middle class given names were very nice.
He always thought that if he was confronted face to face with a Great White shark,
it would smile just like that.
“Good morning Watson”.
Why did he use everyone’s family name first?
Perhaps he thought he was still at public school and all the others in the office were his fags.
“Mornin’ Jonno”.
Adding the working class abbreviation to Jonathan and not calling him Mr.Johnson was sure to raise Mr.Johnson’s hackles.
What was his mother thinking of when she gave him a handle like Jonathon Johnson?
And how could she have missed the double barrel?
The centre of the office was laid out with all the chairs placed in a circle.
He wondered is this how condemned men felt at the first sight of the gallows.
It had been a bad week last week. It just didn’t get started.
Somehow Friday afternoon felt just like Monday morning.
He remembered that he was not terribly fond of Monday mornings.
“ ‘I don’t like Mondays’ - Oh shit”
Jonno’s voice was asking him if there was something wrong and his replied why don’t you get a life and piss off.
“Nothing Mr Johnson. I just spilled my coffee. I will be there in a minute”.
The agenda was no different to the anticipation.
The wail music was on the C.D. player and the job was lower than whale shit.
It was suddenly apparent to him that the reason why his week was so bad and why he was so reluctant to come in to the office was that today was the day that the results of the training programme would be announced this morning.
The promotion depended on who came top.
What was worrying was the fact that he had spent most of the time at the hotel at the bar,
running up the company bill to an inch of asking questions.
As the meeting droned on and he became more bored as everyone else’s results were announced first,
it occurred to him that he was being ignored completely. It could not have been that bad,
even if he was either tipsy or hung over for most of the week. He knew that he had made an impression on the regional manager. After all he was drinking with him all week.
The promotion was such a surprise.
He remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday. Four years of life at the top.
It was true that over the last three years the annual results were poor.
The shares in the company had fallen and Jonno had to be fired. But that was not his fault.
He had done the training and deserved the promotion.
He was very good at his last post and it was true that things had been difficult to handle at this level.
What was somewhat irksome was the fact that he had been overlooked for promotion last week.
Blue was out: In last week but out now.
When he was in he was in, but now he’s out. He is concerned! Passed the discharge board,
but there was always the fear. Two months; halftime; twenty-seven and a wake up:
Does his fuckin’ head in. Home Detention Curfew: Tagging. That’s the best laugh of all.
Blue knew that he was eligible after two weeks.
The only requirement was to have the monitoring equipment installed at his address.
They would even fit a phone line to take the modem. That’s fuckin’ great.
What are they going to say when they see he got two months for theft? -
A French stick and a lump of cheese to be precise He wondered why they bothered when they knew he was N.F.A.
Perhaps if he had an F.A., he would be able to settle down and get a job.
As it is all he got was sweet F.A. So after the wind up, you always try not to raise your hopes.
You know you are going to get knocked back, but your head still does it: so it’s twenty-
seven and a wake up.
Gate happy week starts when you stop the daily count down.
Then it’s twenty-one gone; seven and a wake up, but it’s counted for most of the day,
every day. Gate happy: That’s when you try to find a bird killer.
Anything to take your mind off it:
Does your fuckin’ ‘ead in.
Two days and a wake up: Tannoy squawks unintelligible joinedupdrawl.
Unintelligible noise pollutes each wall. A squash ball of gobbledygook.
Rattling keys click at the door of his peter. Steel pricks the brass labia.
Now you know you’re fucked.
Discharge board: There may be a gate arrest in the offing.
They are supposed to tell you these days, but they don’t. Now that does do your head in.
One and a wake up. Not going to work today: Fuck ‘em. They can keep their fifty pence.
In the governor’s office to give your name and number. That’s the last day for numbers.
Tomorrow I’ll have my nickname back again, he thought he hoped.
Breakfast is a reminder of the bland repetitivity of prison life:
Cornflakes with no sugar and just enough milk to make them too dry to enjoy.
You can always have the porridge. No, I have no wallpaper to hang today.
Then there is the rubber toast and packet of jam. After opening the plastic pack,
(which is almost impossible to rip without wearing the contents):
There is a choice of red or purple. Spread it on the rubber then throw it in the bin.
So there he was, leaving the safety of the cell.
Three square meals a day laid on and no responsibilities to anyone, even himself.
So the alpha of punishment is the omega womb. And now the fear of release gripped him.
There’s always the chance of a gate arrest. Through reception to the gate with forty-
three quid discharge grant. No travel warrant was asked for, neither was one offered.
There is only one pace home: Inside to out: The massive wooden gates are like the cattle keep,
but not to keep the invader out of course.
The wicket gate is a missing tooth in the armour of walls and razor wire.
The hair stands up on the back of his neck as he
gingerly places a foot on the out. Testing the water,
convinced the path will be too hot to bear. No fingers gripping his shoulder.
No coppers on the gate, awaiting his arrest. Every nerve tells him to run,
but he knows he will look stupid.
His head is bursting with the effort of not turning back to look: Too afraid that if he does,
he will be sucked back by some immutable unmoved force. If I don’t look at them,
they can’t see me. The oil in his belly made the panic attack inevitable. Run. Don’t run.
It’s not a sunny day, but the light is too bright.
Why are all the cars and busses going so fast? Why is everything so noisy?
Why is everyone staring at me? They know. I know they know and they know I know they know.
Even though I know they don’t:
How can they know? There is something different about the world and it’s not that I missed a month of it.
The Tannoy at the railway station announces unintelligible joinedupdrawl:
A squash ball of gobbledygook.
“Of course I’m not an alcoholic, not really.
I know I like a drink, but I’m not an alcoholic.
Alcoholics sit on park benches in dirty raincoats,
leching at the little girls playing on the swings. I sit here in the bus station.
I’m only here because it’s raining. Anyway it’s too far to walk,
besides there is no off license near the park. My anorak is a bit grubby,
well it’s dirty I suppose, but if they hadn’t thrown me out I’d have somewhere to stay.
So it’s not my fault that I’m homeless it’s theirs. Anyway alchy’s are dirty perverts.
I don’t lech after little girls. I like to look at women mind you and imagine them with no clothes on,
but that’s just looking, not like them. Anyway I could give up anytime I want,
I just don’t want to. I think I’ll give up in the morning.
I had a drink this morning and once you’ve got the taste you want to carry on don’t you?
God I’m dying for a drink.
I’ve no money left and I can’t be bothered panhandling today.
I think I’ll just pop in Tesco’s and nick a bottle of scotch. There; that was easy,
a piece of cake. I’ll enjoy this one.
Better take the price tag off and take the neck out of the bottle,
then they can’t prove I nicked it. Well just one more nip, then I’ll save the rest ‘til later.
I’ll need this tonight. My that’s nice Scotch.
I’ll just take a quarter of it and save the rest,
Bastards - Why am I in here?
They must have picked me up while I was having a nap.
Why is it that I always seem to end up in the cells? I haven’t actually done anything.
At least I hope I haven’t I can’t remember being brought in here. They must have drugged me,
that’s it. It’s all a plot. They waited until I was asleep and then drugged me and brought me here.
Why won’t they leave me alone? All I want to do is just sit and have a drink and to be left alone.
But they won’t let me.
Look at last week;
there I was just sitting on the bench in the churchyard.
As I say, I don’t sit on the benches in the park that’s where the alchy’s sit and as I say I am definitely not an alcoholic.
Anyway there I was and this copper came up to me.
He didn’t waste his time on anyone else; he just singled me out and walked straight up.
I was lying across the bench just resting my eyes.
He said that I could not sleep on the park bench.
Well I knew I was dealing with a bigoted idiot now.
Could he not tell the difference between a park and a churchyard?
He made me get up and said that if I didn’t leave the area immediately he would arrest me.
So I began to walk off and he just arrested me anyway.
I sat in the police cells all that afternoon and night,
and had to go in front of the beak the next morning.
The magistrate said that he was going to fine me £50,
but as he knew I couldn’t pay he said I could have one day in jail instead.
So they made me sit at the back of the court until they had finished for the morning.
They let me go at lunchtime.
I was so pleased to get out of that damned courthouse.
I was gagging for a drink. I always have a pint around opening time.
Well it’s O.K at eleven o’clock. They are open. I didn’t have any money,
and they were certainly not going to deprive me of my morning tipple,
so went to Tesco again and had another bottle of Scotch off the shelf.
It was getting a bit dodgy though, the whisky shelf was looking decidedly empty.
It stuck out like a missing front tooth.
Outside I ripped the price tag off and opened the bottle.
That felt much better after I had the first hit out of the top.
The rest of it was (well I cannot quite recall how the rest of it was),
but the point of the story is the fact that the same vindictive copper arrested me in the same place that afternoon.
Now I had all the evidence that I needed that there was a plot against me.
I bet my family had paid him off
The next morning I was in the same courthouse,
and it was a bit embarrassing really, because the same magistrates were on duty.
The chief magistrate just threw up his arms in some attitude of despair,
probably at the conduct of the police officer I should think. He knew there was a plot too,
because he just said that I was to get out of the court because there was nothing that he could do.
He handed me over to a probation officer to see if there was anything that he could do.
He was non-too pleased I don’t think. Perhaps he already had a heavy workload that day,
because he didn’t seem to want to have me in his office.
He even offered that I could go and have a bath first, but I didn’t feel like it.
I wonder what I’m charged with. I’ll have to ask to find out.
I bet they say I was drunk and disorderly and they’ll throw an A.B.H. on the top just for fun.
They never go for G.B.H., because they know you’ll plead and they can’t prove it.
But A.B.H. they will get away with. It doesn’t matter what I say to the beak,
because they will believe the bloody police. No matter how much they lie. Why?
Because I happen to be homeless and that means I can’t tell the truth. God this is a crock.
I suppose it’ll be the same as last week. If I plead guilty they will let me off. If not,
I’ll be thrown in jail to await trial. And however that ends,
I’ll sit in prison for six months, guilty or not. So it’s better to play the game,
and then I should be out by midday. I’ll have me a drink then.
If I hit the D.S.S. they will pay me a giro for the day. It’s a pain in the arse,
but if you sign on as homeless they give you enough money for a meal.
It’s only a few quid, but at least it’s something. I’ll go in the pub for a posh pint.
After all I deserve one after all this don’t I.
Well if you had to put up with all this nonsense and if you had the problems and harassment that I have,
you’d drink too, wouldn’t you”?
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