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continue agitating until somebody does something for these people.
    The other important aspect of life in Sirius East was, of course, the screws. These officers tended to be the more experienced officers, placed into a unit which was highly volatile. There were a lot of old Pentridge screws there. Pentridge Prison was the now defunct maximum security prison in Coburg in Melbourne. It was a Dickensian prison, all bluestone, buggery and violence, and these officers had spent their working lives in that hardened environment. Not quite the appropriate qualification to bring new hope to prisoners in the modern-day prison. Old-fashioned screws set in their old-fashioned Dickensian violent and lazy ways … what hope rehabilitation?
    I look around the unit and wonder how the lunatics have been left in charge of the asylum. This is surely going to be an interesting time for young Andrew!

Chapter 3
    Lunatic Soup, “Sausagegate”
and Random Observations
    Grandpa pissed his pants again
He don’t give a damn
Brother Billy has both guns drawn.
He ain’t been right since Vietnam.
    â€“ WARREN ZEVON, PLAY IT ALL NIGHT LONG
    Toby Fraser (no relation) was considered by everybody in Sirius East to be nothing but a pest. Toby was about twenty when I met him and had been in and out of jail for drug- and alcohol-related offences for most of his adult life. He had been in boys’ homes before that. He was in jail because he had robbed a couple of teenagers on the beach at Frankston while in an alcohol- and drug-induced state. After the robbery he had poured some lighter fluid on one of the victims and stood there with a cigarette lighter threatening to ignite him. For that Toby received a sentence of imprisonment, which was subject to appeal at the time I met him.
    To date, Toby had received extraordinarily light sentences because – as is the way of the Children’s Court – he had been treated extremely leniently. He had serious problems in an adult jail, mainly because of his general demeanour. His trick, because he had no money, was to borrow from other prisoners with the promise that he would repay them on canteen day, which was once a week. Of course, when canteen day came, there was no repayment. Toby would then proceed to borrow from somebody else in the unit to square off with the previous week’s benefactor. Don’t forget that when the music stops there is always someone left without a chair, so the rort always came to an end when Toby ran out of creditors. The debt was always for White Ox roll-your-own tobacco, which is about as rough as Hessian underpants, and that is only to smell! Tobacco is real currency within the jail, even if you don’t smoke. Most things can be purchased for a small or large pouch of “Ox”. Once Toby had exhausted all means of rorting in that unit, he would “bail” to another unit. This meant he would say he was in danger in that particular unit and then be moved to another unit within the protection area. He would wait for the prisoners that he had short-changed to be sent to other units or jails, then he would go back to that unit and start his little scam all over again. Due to his notorious behaviour he had no friends and was constantly getting a smack in the mouth from older prisoners. As one bloke said to me, “It’s only a rort if you’re not in it!”
    Toby befriended me because he probably saw me as an easy touch. However, I was never sucked in to his little schemes and accordingly he would sit for some time talking to me about his problems and how he would be going home immediately after his appeal. He repeatedly stated he wouldn’t be drinking any more and that he was a reformed person. When you have these discussions in jail, which you do frequently, you always take them with a grain of salt. Most of it is crap and the blokes have absolutely no intention of reforming, let alone never offending again. As proof of