Episode 27 - Two Minutes Of Madness

My closest friend thus far is in for manslaughter. He killed his wife in what he describes as two minutes of madness when he just flipped.

During the three and a half years I was in prison I wrote over a million words by hand. Tales From The Jails is a contemporaneous account of my life, and attempts to thrive rather than merely survive, whilst incarcerated.

Most names have been changed. The events have not.

This is a Jekyll & Pride production.

Producer: Trevessa Newton

Title Music taken from The Confession, on the album Crimes Against Poetry (written and performed by The Shadow Poet, produced by Lance Thomas)

Copyright Jekyll & Pride Ltd 2025

@jekyllandpride2023
@theshadowpoettsp

Transcript

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Episode 27 Two Minutes Of Madness. It's Tuesday the 9th of July, 2016. Who is this band of brothers? This brotherhood of men that share my hours and days who inhabit my life, but are never invited to witness my tears. Whether we are slung or flung by a series of unfortunate, desperate events, we spend our time together regardless of likes or dislikes. We must form friendships or become foes. We eat together, we sleep above and below each other, and we do time together. Each second the same in many ways, but so different in others. With our varying and contrasting personalities, faults and flaws and egos, which often fuel the vicious tantrums or tiaras that constantly unravel, we share it all in this lawless, often soulless place. And yet, this place forms the strangest of friendships. My closest so far being J, who was convicted of manslaughter. Day by day, a wild and hairy bunch clamour into my room to play cards and distract the slow oppressive time away. I could never have guessed that a convicted killer would sit to my right and make me laugh, and a drug dealer to my left who has the sharpest wit of all. Opposite was The Glumster whose favourite line is, I'm not happy. A giant of a man living in a constant state of turmoil between Cat D dreams infused with nightmares of his partner spending his money like she'd won the lottery. One moment they were madly in love, and the next arguing on a prison telephone. This is just a peek through the lens that is HMP Liverpool. A constant diet of beige carbs and chips with everything. Each morning I awake to the surreal life that is prison and night after night, I ascend the stairs to my cell, surrounded by my tired motley crew of co-workers. There is no good night. Instead it's wise cracks and windups. Every 24 hours is always 1,440 minutes, and although each day passes like Groundhog Day, no two minutes are ever the same as tension and drama are ever present. We are thrust together in this squalid hell, regardless of crimes, personality clashes, or unstable moods. The bullies look in every direction to bully and terrorize someone for some personal gain and their victims or prey hide in places that don't exist. The irony for me so far is that the M lads seem the calmest and most approachable, the classic two minutes of madness in what would've otherwise been a worthy, worthwhile life. The rest of the place is packed with rats, rogues and cowboys and wretched creatures. I feel alone in a pit of vicious wild animals fighting to prove themselves in an asylum of madness. One hundred per cent it is the blind leading the blind. But amongst the mayhem and toxic testosterone there are stories of men who once mattered, but here most, if not all, between these walls are scared individuals dripping with anger and anxieties and acting tough. I hear them in the dark hours of the night screaming in their sleep and listen to their bullshit the following day, when they profess to sleep like a baby. The seagulls sound as though they're laughing at us all, squalling in fits of giggles at our pain and terror. It feels like a Hitchcock movie at times. The mocking begins at 4.30 in the morning as they scavenge around the prison yard below our windows. They have the last laugh too, when they spread their wings after a feast on our misfortune and saw into the skies of freedom. No one and nothing in here is sacred and nothing separates the rich from the poor better than the quality of their trainers. It is comical to observe a gang of inmates talking about new trainers as if it was London Fashion Week. However, there is often a pervasive caustic tone lurking to bounce. Some inmates are permanently despicable or wretched creatures as I prefer to label them. They thrive on the misery and misfortune of others, or worse being the inflicters of that misery and pain. I'm surrounded by the Alpha Pack mentality. Men constantly trying to prove themselves, be tougher and harder than they really are, but in fear of becoming a target themselves. No one dares to say no or, you're wrong. There is no accountability, no responsibility, and basically it's survival by whatever means at your disposal. If you end up fighting or being jumped, no one is coming to your aid. Not even those who minutes earlier you thought of as friends. It's like falling down the rabbit hole on acid and returning to reality in a nightmare called purgatory. I'm a good man in a very bad place with the odds stacked against me. Walton has chewed men up and spat them out crying for over 150 years. Not many leave here without scars, whether they're visible or the ones inside that disfigure and traumatize a person for the rest of their lives. I chronicle as much as I can from these experiences with its comedic splashes of colour, and I observe everything from the small hints of body language to the characters and personalities that pass through this sewer two miles from the banks of the River Mersey. Yesterday, JK received 16 years. He left in the morning hoping, or should I say, praying for a 10. A tall, strong guy departed HMP at 7:30 am, but a shrunken broken boy returned by midday. He sat with the doctor, as many do to check he was okay. And by that I mean mentally and emotionally. The subject of suicide must be discussed. A sleeping tablet is prescribed and he'll be watched through the night. He's not alone in the horror that consumes a person after receiving a 16 year life bomb. In here, it's hard for the mind to process it all. Too much of a shock to the system, like being cattle, prodded and tasered at the same time. It's less the case of the day that you are living in that hurts or drains you the most, but the contemplation of the years ahead you will lose, and the impact and fallout on your loved ones. Hope carries a person a very long way. But when hope is lost and the dark, dramatic reality of life behind bars for a very long time kicks in, imagine the sense of hopelessness, lost dreams, and a family left in turmoil. What do you say to your loved ones, your partner, your children, maybe your parents? Years beyond your sentence expectations equals years lost in the life ahead of you. How does the mind process such a car crash of emotion? In the few brief moments I could share with JK, before he'd returned to the wing, I put my arm around him and offered him new hope and reassurances. He was on a Section 18. I believe he attempted to run a police officer over along with a bunch of drug offences thrown in. The lads had predicted he was in for a heavy slamming. I'm noticing more and more guys leaning on me in those desperate hours. On a daily basis I quietly go about my work, try to keep my head down and remain the voice of reason, even though it's unpopular. But that said, in moments of crisis, guys do open up to me. I remain true to myself doing the right thing for the right reasons. What is the use of me searching for answers over the years, if not to use everything I've learned and discovered and put it to good use in here? Amongst the turmoil, I find peace and calm and try to be with genuine thoughts and positive feelings. Of course, that are those who mock, but nowadays, I'm lucky that it only makes them look like fools. I accept I'm not everyone's bezzy and the lads comment regularly that I'm very different. But as time passes the guys who have grown to trust and respect me for who I am, ironically, after all the dramas, many of them, when they are low and sad and alone or unsettled, they often drift in and open up. I think they feel like it's a safe place and goes no further. I'm lucky, throughout the dark moments and unsettled feelings, there is T. She's an inspiration to me and a tower of strength, a guiding light in the dark, and yet still full of life and laughter, whether on a prison call or in a Walton visit room. Without her, I don't know how all of this experience would turn out. She believes in me unconditionally, and this powers me on when the batteries feel low. In this awful and dangerous existence, I'm lucky that I have a special kind of love. It doesn't have to be proved and it never falters. It just is. Not many people have what T and I share, and I've become very aware of the true power of this force called love. It's interesting, though, how the prison system and prisoners hate love as much as they hate happiness. When a man has meaning and purpose in his life and love, then he's the closest he'll ever feel to completeness. I'm lucky to be in a relationship with a woman who still wants to spend the rest of her life with me and share in the magic of our crazy love bubble. I've told the lads that T and I are still in the honeymoon period after nine and a half years. Oh, how I dream of the days when she will be back in my arms. Hour by hour, minute by minute, she travels with me in every thought, in every heartbeat. Thursday. It's lighter until later, and dawn is bright early. That may sound a little romantic, but the light was flooding the cell and turning a restless night into awake at sunrise and reading without having to switch the light on. Luckily, we had a spare couple of new sheets, courtesy of the day job. They were a depressing green, but perfect as blackout curtains. The hardest part is fixing them. Prison never ceases to amaze me how resourceful and ingenious it forces us to become. The window isn't big and it's in a concrete recess, and we couldn't jam a pole across and make a curtain rail, however matchsticks, glued together and glued to the wall gave us a strong enough hold. And after a couple of days of faffing around, it was strong enough to hold the pole and makeshift blackout curtains. It's bad enough the light through the night, when we're being headcounted, but the early morning sun was becoming a worse disruption to our sleep. My closest friend thus far is in for manslaughter. He killed his wife in what he describes as two minutes of madness when he just flipped. In his words, she ridiculed him and had become nastier over the years with it. He loved her, but she did not love him. One day she went too far and so did he as a result. I think he stabbed her 48 times and then tried to kill himself. They had two children. For as much as it sounds horrific, really, it is sad. A family once in love and full of laughter now was torn apart. There are days when J doesn't appear from his cell, such as the grip of regrets and sadness, which I assume is now depression. He confides to me that it haunts him as much as it tears him apart and a couple of years into his prison sentence, and he's still crying daily. If you want to know what a head fuck feels like, then spending time behind the door living with regrets is as close as it gets. All bar the murder, he's a completely normal guy who loves the football, a game of cards and is not a criminal. In fact, he's a straight member. We're close. Interestingly, I now work with another M lad. He's only young 26, strangled his best friend to death while they were fishing. He strangled him with his bare hands in the water high on Spice. Philly, his pad mate, said he was scared to run the tap when he was cleaning his teeth, just in case it gave him ideas. We all laughed at that, even though it seems inappropriate. But with Philly, nothing is sacred. On the topic of Spice, I'm not sure the public and our loved ones are aware of what goes on behind these walls with the mind and mood altering substance, which is wreaking havoc in prisons up and down the country. It's an epidemic that has turned prisons into asylums. Even now as I write up on top bunk, the sounds of monkeys banging on windows and steel doors echoes through the wing. This is HMP. If I didn't know I was here, then I could close my eyes and it sounds like a frenzied zoo. I think about the law of cause and effect. For every action there is an equal reaction sort of thing, and two sides of the same coin. I think we all have a side that the rest of the world never sees. There are often two sides to every story, but in here, no one wants to listen. It's a place of punishment, not listening or caring. I thought I'd experienced enough of life to prepare me for this, but sadly, nothing prepares any of us. I've been to places most people don't make it back from, many times. I've experienced being poor, being isolated and surviving, the type of stuff that usually crushes a person mentally as much as emotionally, but here the violence, duplicity and lack of fairness is draining as much as it is suffocating. Behind this steel door that separates us from the violence I contemplate quietly this fuckup of a situation. Where does all of the anger come from? What is the source that fuels so much evil? Whether you work here or are a guest of HMP, we are all prisoners of one kind or another. Staff must be affected by the environment as much as we are. Day after day, I observe men struggling, even the tough leaders of gangs struggle with the dark clouds of depression. Don't get me wrong, most are still horrible, but there aren't many in this building, staff or inmates, who do not struggle with the oppressive atmosphere that chokes our lungs constantly. There is no respite from it. Lads can be horrible to each other and staff, but equally, staff can be horrible to the lads and their fellow workers. People are people everywhere you go. Except here. It's lawless. And so crime and criminals are not contained to the point they cannot commit further crimes. No. In here prison is a crime accelerator and add Spice into the mayhem and the legal high ravages men's lives to the point of being out of control and into a crazed psychotic zombie that is sport and entertainment to many of the lads in here. I'm lucky. I am loved and still feel love. I can't imagine life in here without love in my life. I can only assume it is one of the fundamentals that keeps me going, keeps me sane, and keeps me from the baseness that consumes the prison population. I've worked in a multimillion pound business, enjoyed success with the movers and shakers. I've mingled and partied with the beautiful, the rich and the wild, and I've done the same with the notorious criminal fraternity. I'm from Liverpool. Try not having friends or associates who aren't criminal or have been to prison. The line that sums it up perfectly is, I've swum with the sharks. By the time I reached 40, I began to make choices and commitments that moved away from that side of life. This evening, here in HMP, men are petrified, scared out of their minds, lost, alone, and full of fear. Their only chance of relief is from a Listener with an inmate who may have the best of intentions but is more interested in watching the football or Britain's Got Talent. K Wing, they have their own Listeners. Two were on the course. The lads weren't happy, but if we didn't soak it up, believe it or not, we were out and they would remain. If you were sat in my position right now, you may ask yourself, does a VP, a vulnerable prisoner, deserve a Listener or compassion? They're segregated from the main prison population for a reason. The irony is that the VPs receive more perks and benefits than the rest of us, and you can imagine how that is received amongst the rest of the lads. I try not to judge, but even the Samaritans say, some people and some topics are potentially too difficult even for them. I've been running the football sweep for the last few weeks picking the scores from the matches in the Premier League. We all put in a pound item off our canteen. Preferably something edible. A tin of tuna is a right result, although number one presently is a bar of chocolate. Second week, I won. You can imagine the shouts. Fix. You're up to your old fraud tricks already. Well, you can imagine who made that latter remark. That aside, the pot and prize was eight bars of chocolate, a packet of biscuits and two shampoos. The latter being a terrible shout, but the lads cried it in. I gave Reeve two bars of chocolate and swapped the other six for a tin of coffee. The curtains are working a treat. Mr. S, well, his first words when he opened us up this morning was, looks like you've been watching too many 60 Minute Makeovers lads. It's like a show apartment with curtains, not a cell. Thankfully they were still up when we returned from work.