This is the 200th post on this website and serendipity has chosen a good gone! This week one of my articles won the ‘Milton Keynes College’s Flash Fiction Competition 2019’. The title of the article was, ‘My Mug’ and it originally appeared in the ‘Prison Objects’ section of this website. Click below to see a new PDF of the article or keep scrolling for a text only version.
My Mug – Text only version:
I was devastated. I was in my twenties and my ‘Fraggle Rock’ mug had been part of my life for more than a decade. Sporting the character ‘Uncle Travelling Matt’ it had moved up and down the length of the country with me, wrapped in newspaper; jostled and jolted while I bounced along Ireland’s B-roads as I moved between homes and workplaces. My mug had grown with me. In its infancy it held juice or milk, before we passed through caffeine fuelled teenage years. It grew old disgracefully whereupon my mug occasionally fell under the affluence of incahol. My mug was there to help me celebrate. It calmed, comforted and consoled me. My Uncle Travelling Matt was a constant companion.
I was sharing a house with two other lads. We had boundaries like toothbrushes, labelled
foodstuffs and designated seating positions in the living room. I had mistakenly assumed that mugs were also a protected category. I hadn’t seen it go. I had no sense of its passing. I opened the cupboard and it wasn’t there, nor was it on the drainer. The kettle clicked urgently so I grabbed one of Uncle Travelling Matt’s ‘ugly’ friends and made my tea. I still had no sense anything was amiss. I opened the bin to dispose of my wrung out tea-bag and my world was shattered as I saw the shards of my mug lying discarded amongst so much detritus.
In the twenty years after my loss I never really got close to another mug. I mean some became more familiar than others. Some were workplace colleagues, some shared flats with me, while I am have to admit that many were used just once – but none ever really took the place of Uncle Travelling Matt – until I came to prison.
On my first day in prison I was issued with a bed pack that included plastic dinnerware and cutlery. The injection moulded monstrosity of a mug had flaying tails and rough edges along the handle and rim – it was an abusive vessel – when I drank it drew blood from me. While I, like my peers, eventually managed to sand down the rough edges, prison mugs are a torment to use. The handle is tourniquet thin and cuts off circulation – too big for two fingers yet too small for three. There is no pleasure to be had in drinking from a prison mug.
I was about six months into my sentence when a neighbour prisoner knocked on my door. “I’m off tomorrow – going home. I thought you might like this.” he said, and offered me his mug. A tapered, thick ceramic masterpiece – utterly non-descript yet strangely unique. We have spent more than a decade together through moved cells, landings, wings and prisons.
We have travelled up and down the country together, an unremarkable man with a number and an equally unremarkable mug, this time both of us packaged up, jostled and jolted in a sweat-box. We share a Spartan existence. My mug only ever contains black coffee – a drink for every occasion. It’s choices are limited like my own. I love my prison mug.
I don’t think Uncle Travelling Matt would mind.
FLASH FICTION COMPETITION WINNER
‘My Mug’.
This entry, written by a resident from HMP Erlestoke, was the winner of the Milton
Keynes College’s Flash Fiction Competition 2019. Erlestoke can also boast having the
winner of the Peer Mentor of the Year! Keep reading the Manor for your next
chance to take part!
