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long-term prisoners is the dead eyes. The dreams that have turned into nightmares, fantasy to reality, love to emptiness. Behind every door at Walton Jail there was misery. Blokes like me, newly sentenced, with the prospect of years inside. Wives and girlfriends isolated as much as us – at least at first. That gnawing, draining, feeling of hopelessness. The knowledge that your loved ones are left to fend for themselves. The numbed fear that you may never see them again.
    Some convicts, of course, never do. Some are destined to live and die behind bars. It’s never nice to see the old boys hobbling around the exercise yard, with their distant, watery eyes. Some of these old lags have been locked up for maybe 40 years. They know little else but prison life. Many actually don’t wish to be freed; most simply die in their sleep. No family, no home, no contact. Their whole world is prison, and prison is all they have for family. Institutionalised … beyond help. You might call it a living hell; dead men walking. Above all, it’s just very, very sad.
    H Wing at Walton was the long-term allocation wing. Below us was the punishment block. I was told I would be on the wing for six to nine months. I never liked this jail from the second I entered it. It was one of the old Victorian jails, in a suburb of Liverpool. Five storeys high, dirty, cockroach-infested, rat-infested, overcrowded, swill for food, rags for clothes. Everything was meant to bring a man down, degrade and humiliate him.
    With hindsight, I suppose we were lucky in one sense. On H Wing, it was all single cells. We were long-termers – five years and over. My seven years was a short stretch compared with most. It was depressing to read the cards showing the names and sentences of the other inmates outside their cell doors. It was even more depressing to see a man walk out of his cell with vacant eyes. We were all losers, failures. It’s bloody hard for a man to accept he’s a loser. It’s even tougher when you’re behind a locked door.
    Christmas was soon on us. In 1974, the Christmas Number 1 hit was ‘It Will Be Lonely This Christmas’ by Mud. I had a visit from Irene and my boy, but it never helped her at all. She was tearful and upset throughout it. An hour in six fucking months was all I spent with them! It was getting to me, and it wasbecoming harder to control my urges of violence. As lovely as Irene was and as sweet as she looked, I felt lost when I saw her. We were lost to each other. It was too much for her; she was slipping away from me. I could sense it.
    I can remember that day so clearly. I was seriously wound up; six months inside, and sixty minutes with my family!
    After the visit, I broke a con’s nose and smashed up his ribs. I left him on the floor of his cell. He was a lifer (he’d strangled his girlfriend and assaulted his kid). I took my frustration out on him. Right or wrong, I emptied myself of tension. I felt better. Fuck him! This toe-rag had snuffed his girl and smashed his kid – and I was being torn away from mine.
    A few days later, I smashed up a filthy grass in the recess. He was lucky, as I felt like cutting him up. That’s not my game, but I felt hate bubbling up inside me like never before. It was as if I was on a suicide mission. I hit him with hooks, crosses. Insanely, I even tried to gouge his eye out. I was so far gone I was actually enjoying it.
    Violence is an escape from reality. It can relieve tension. In prison, it’s like being in a pride of lions, or being a lone wolf; the law of the jungle prevails. The victor will be respected. It’s truly mad but it’s prison life. I left the filthy grass on the toilet floor in his own blood and dirt. I walked out to be escorted to the punishment block.
    This dungeon was a shit-tip, filthy, gloomy, no heating, damp – and the screws ran it with a fist of iron. There were a lot of unnecessary kickings going on down there. I was pushed into a cell, smashed up against a