History of a Drowning Boy by Nilsen Dennis

Author:Nilsen, Dennis [Nilsen, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RedDoor Press
Published: 2021-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

6

HMP Wormwood Scrubs | 1983

We soon approached the famously recognisable frontage of Wormwood Scrubs Prison and, after a relatively brief stay in the prison reception area, I was deposited in the hospital wing where a prison governor explained the existence of the ‘Rule 43’ Segregation Unit. He reminded me that I would be safe from attack by other inmates there, though I couldn’t imagine why any prisoner would have any cause to attack me. I told the governor that I had no intention of ever seeking protection and would take my chances with the rest of the imprisoned humanity.

I settled down for the night with a mug of diesel (prison tea) and pondered on the long, tiring course of recent events. I switched on my radio and the late news was full of the trial. It was a time to enjoy my last commercially made cigarettes because now that I was a convicted prisoner there would be no more of them. The hospital wing was blissfully quiet, after the constant noise of shouts and banging at Brixton, and I fell into the sleep of utter exhaustion.

It passed, dreamless, into the sudden activity of prison routine the next morning when I asked one of the orderlies why I was being kept in the hospital. ‘Until they decide what to do with you,’ he replied. They allowed me to watch some TV and I was amazed at the sight of full colour and movement on the screen after nine months in drab, colourless isolation. The world that I looked at on that TV was not the world I’d known before my first imprisonment on remand. Everything had changed drastically, and I now felt like a ghost looking at an alien world of flesh and blood people. With an endless sentence ahead of me, I felt that, in that moment of truth, I’d been expelled from society for evermore. I would have to adapt my sense of personal, moral and mental survival to the starkness of a totally new situation. All that mattered to me was that I could keep my individuality alive inside the machine.

After a couple of days, I was moved on to C wing awaiting allocation to another prison. In the exercise yard the throng parted like the Red Sea as I walked the crowded circuit on my own. There were a few mutterings from knots of prisoners standing around the margins but nobody did or said anything to me. In the seven months that I was kept at the Scrubs I had no friends and had scant communication with anyone.

The Sunday papers of 6 November were full of ‘revelations’ of a sensational nature. People from everywhere seemed to be queuing up to sell their stories for hard cash. The first ‘true’, ‘shock-horror’, ‘exclusive’ came sharp into the eyes of four million readers who were to learn of a love affair between myself and my office manageress, no less. I had only ever met Janet Leaman socially, on one or

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