<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember the Brummie. He was miles from home, thanks to his local jail being \u2018locked out\u2019 the day he was remanded. That meant he was a guest with us in Walton until his next court appearance for trial – 6 months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stayed on the first night wing with us as a wing cleaner and seemed an all round decent sort – as happens in prison, there was an exchange of vernacular – we picked up some Brummie phrases to add to the mismash of Welsh, Scouse, Macam (NOT a Geordie!) and the Irish that I brought to the party, to be sure to be sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The night before his court appearance the Brummie said his goodbyes – he would be leaving the wing at 6.30am – long before the rest of us were unlocked. He borrowed Johnnies\u2019 clippers so he could shave his head neatly for court and that was about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At unlock the following day, while I was headed for the urn to fill my morning coffee, I picked up the commotion that was growing 4 landings and 30 feet above me. Phrases like \u2018Rat bastard\u2019 and \u2018Dirty nonce thief\u2019 were echoing out as a number of lads realised they had been ripped off. It transpired that our Brummie pal had spent his last couple of days with us borrowing stuff and rather than leave it in his cell as promised, he had mistakenly packed it all up and taken it with him when he left the prison. Suffice to say that terse words and short tempers were the order of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At around 3pm I was called to the Kanga\u2019s office – nothing unusual there, it would be an update on how many new friends were coming to play with us that night. It was my job to ensure that we had enough bedrolls and induction packs prepared for their arrival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLooks like 20 plus tonight. Winston Green is locked out again.\u201d Mr H informed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah right,\u201d said I, \u201cNice one Mr H.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs there something I should know?\u201d he persisted, immediately concerned – why are Kanga\u2019s always so suspicious anyway?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re serious that Winston is locked out?\u201d I asked. He was sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBetter leave it with me.\u201d I decided to have a cleaners\u2019 meeting so I called the lads together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cH has just told me that Winston Green is locked out, so as we speak, I reckon our Brummie friend is sat on a sweat box shitting bricks.\u201d Fists were being pounded into palms and many mutterings were being a-muttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow bear in mind that giving him a slap might be a short thrill, but you will end up in the jungle on G-wing riding serious bang up. So what do we do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCoventry is right near Birmingham – send him there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStitch the tosser up with his diet too\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWafer thin mattress in the cell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo furniture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSnap off the toilet seat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBust the TV socket – leave him in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo him up with Psycho McDonald.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was surprised and a little alarmed at the depth of suggestions that came promptly back from the lads. How long had they been thinking about these things – and thank god I wasn\u2019t on the wrong side of them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At around 5pm, while the lads were doling out diets on the servery our Brummie friend appeared back on the wing. As he appeared in the door of the servery all of the joking and banter stopped – there was a menacing silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLiver\u201d said Vinney, the man who ordered the food. Brummie hated liver and said so. Mr H was not stupid, he knew something was up but I think he hoped it would be resolved without violence, so he asked Vinney, \u201cIs there another option he could have?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh aye!\u201d said Vinney, \u201cThere\u2019s a special<\/em> cheese roll left. Last one.\u201d The Brummie took a faltering step then fair play to him, he spoke to all of the lads. \u201cI was still half asleep this morning lads, so if I picked up some of your stuff by mistake I\u2019ll sort it right now and get it back to you.\u201d He walked to the end of the servery and held up his plate, one of the lads winked at him and handed over the cheese roll and told him that he had prepared it specially for him as he moistened his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Brummie left the servery and I could see on Mr. H\u2019s face that he now knew exactly what had gone on. \u201cTell me that you didn\u2019t spit on his roll lads.\u201d In fact nobody had touched his food – but he didn\u2019t know that. The Brummie returned all of the stolen gear and got locked in his shitty cell overnight. The following morning when we were unlocked the Brummie was gone again. It took all of 26 seconds to find out he had moved to F-Wing because his position on our unit was untenable which was probably for the best. But it only took around ten minutes for a cleaner on our wing to get word to F-wing (via a B-wing intermediary that he met on the medication run) and the Brummie\u2019s position on there was untenable too. By the end of the day the whole prison knew the story of the thieving Brummie. I sometimes wonder if he would have chosen a few slaps and a line in the sand to being a social pariah – which was the crueller punishment?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember the Brummie. He was miles from home, thanks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,234,417,429,433,490],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brummie","tag-kanga","tag-sent-to-coventry","tag-social-pariah","tag-special-cheese-roll","tag-untenable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}