I Think I'm OK

  I Think I’m OK.

  C S Kenny

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  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2013 C S Kenny

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  For Sue and Steve.

  Just for putting up with me.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER.8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

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  Chapter 1

  I arrived at Strangeways Prison Manchester on the 8th of November 1974, I was 15 years old. The twenty or so other prisoners and I saw the tall brick tower of the prison long before we saw the prison itself. As the coach we were on drew closer a number of things were going through my mind. ‘Are they really going to put me in there or are they just trying to scare me?’

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ they were going to put me in there and I would stay there until they found a place for me to carry out the sentence of Borstal Training I had been handed.

  Another thought I had was, ‘Why the hell is everyone on the coach singing?’ The driver had put the radio on and as one every bugger on board, apart from me it seemed, joined in to sing along with Ms Grace.

  My head was screaming, ‘What’s the matter with you people? Look at this place it’s a shit hole. It’s full of murderers, rapists and violent thugs and they are putting us in there to live with them.’ It then fell silent. The silence had nothing to do with my mental shouting, the driver had turned off the radio and the coach had pulled up at the prison gates. That was my introduction to a real prison. I had earlier in the year done a sentence at a Detention Centre which was nothing compared to this shit tip.

  It dawned on me that I was going to have to toughen up, or at least act the part, if I was going to get through my stay in Strangeways without getting my head kicked in. I was a big lad for my age and athletically built. This, combined with the gob I had, meant most of my peers avoided confrontation with me, which to be honest was a blessing. Fighting to me was a little like football, I enjoyed taking part occasionally but I wasn’t particularly good at it.

  As it turned out Strangeways was a doddle. I knew, and was friends with, quite a few of the other lads on the YP landing. YPs were Young Prisoners and we were kept apart from the Cons who were prisoners over the age of 21.

  The week before Christmas all the YPs waiting to be allocated a Borstal were hoping their name would be on the list. It was the last allocation of the year and if your name was not on the list it meant you would be spending Christmas in Strangeways. There was not a single one of us who wanted that. It may not be something people often hear but on the day of the final transfers I was amongst around twenty boys who were chuffed to bits to be going to Borstal.

  An aerial view of the main prison block would look similar to a six spoked cartwheel with the outer rim removed. Each of the spokes being a Wing and each Wing having four or five landings. All the Wings spread out from a central hub known, because of its shape, as the ‘Thru penny bit’.

  It was whilst we were stood around the Thru penny bit we were to be told which Borstal we had been allocated, however before the prison officer told us where we were going he took great pleasure in informing us that two inmates would not be transferred that day and would have to return to their cells. I knew it, I just bloody knew I was going to be one of the two and I was right. I have to admit I wanted to cry though I knew I couldn’t; a show of weakness was a no-no so I kept up the act. By the time I was locked up in my cell the need to cry had disappeared and had been replaced by anger.

  Out of frustration I kicked out at the small triangular table in the corner of the cell. The plastic (empty) piss pot it held went flying into the air and one of the three table legs snapped off. At that moment I was well aware I was going to be placed on report for damaging prison property. What I should have done was left it at that and taken whatever punishment I was given. What I did was lose the plot completely and I began smashing up the rest of the table. Not content with just wrecking the table, I began to break it into small enough pieces to throw it out of the six inch square prison cell windows. Once the table had gone I turned my attention to the wooden chair. I didn’t get chance to throw out the remains of the broken chair.

  The Governor’s office was two landings below and slightly to the left of my cell. As I was demolishing my cell he was having a meeting, a meeting which was rudely interrupted by bits of prison furniture flying past his window.

  Just as I was about to throw a chair leg through the window the door to my cell burst open, I spun around and froze. A prison officer filled the doorway and behind him I could see the heads of at least another four.

  “Put that down Kenny,” the officer said calmly.

  It took only a few seconds for me to go from thinking, ‘Put what down?’ to realising I was standing in a threatening manner with a chair leg raised to the side of my head. My next thought was, ‘Oh shit.’

  Slowly and deliberately I bent forward and placed the chair leg on the floor; what happened next is a bit of a blur.

  I remember feeling as though I was being crushed to death and no matter which way I turned my head all I could see was the blackness of the prison officer’s uniforms. I knew I had been hit a few times but don’t remember feeling any pain. The next thing I remember is looking up at the inside of the main prison ceiling. It was a perspective I had never had before, I was out on the landing and I felt as though I was floating, was I dead?

  I finally got my bearings and realised that half a dozen officers had lifted me off the floor and were carrying me above their heads. I could hear some of the inmates shouting my name but I couldn’t make out what they were saying over the racket the officers were making. I began to put up a half-hearted struggle and the officers were telling me I could struggle all I wanted, it was pointless.

  No it wasn’t pointless, well not as far as I was concerned, at least some of the inmates watching would think I was a complete nutter which in turn meant they would leave me well alone. Every cloud has a silver lining.

  The next day I was up in front of the Governor and given five days in the punishment block. The block was basically a prison within a prison with no privileges whatsoever. Unless you class a piss pot, a plastic jug of water and a Bible as privileges. During the day a table and chair furnished the cell, at 6pm they went out and your bed came in.

  Some may say it was quite fitting that I spent Christmas day 1974, sitting in Strangeways punishment block reading a Bible.

  Chapter 2

  TEN YEARS EARLIER. BRADFORD, YORKSHIRE. 1964.

  At the age of four our household consisted of my mum and dad, my two younger brothers Paul and Andy, and me. Paul is only sixteen months younger than I; Andy at that time was just a baby. My life was as normal and as drama free as any young child’s should be. As anyone else over a certain age will tell you when they talk about their childhood, the sun was always shining and if I wasn’t eating or sleeping I was playing out. Now I come to think of it I did a little eating whilst I was playing out too. I have fond memories of Flying Saucers, Pirate’s Tobacco, Black Jacks and Fruit Salads.

  My father managed to change everything when he dropped what to me, was a bombshell, he was leaving us. Before he left he sat me down and tried to explain to me what was happening. I remember sobbing my heart out and let’s be fair, I was only five years old, I hadn’t been in this world for very long and already it seemed to me
it was falling apart. After reeling out some bullshit reasons for his departure he finished by telling me how it was now up to me to look after my mum and my brothers, I took this to heart. I guess he gave me the flannel to make me feel better or maybe it was to make him feel better. Whatever the reason I remember feeling much older than my years, I had responsibilities; I was the Man of the house.

  It seems a bit cold now but I’m sure children accept things, even tragic things, more readily than adults. I think I got over him leaving us quite quickly. On second thoughts, got over is the wrong phrase; accepted would be more like it. Having said that the older I became the more I missed him.

  It wasn’t long before my mother had a new man in her life, Philip, though we were not allowed to call him Philip or Dad; we had to refer to him as Mr Nelson. He was in my eyes quite a stern looking man, especially if you compared him to my dad. My dad was overweight with a round, cheeky, almost childlike face. Mr Nelson’s features were angular and sharp. It may be just me, it usually is, but at that age I never thought of my dad as a ‘Man,’ he was just my dad, a bigger person who liked to hug us a lot. Whereas the minute I saw Mr Nelson I thought of him as a Man, and the very idea that he might hug us was preposterous and if I’m honest, repulsive.

  Even after my mum and he were married we still had to call him Mr Nelson. It may not sound like a big deal but I got sick and tired of having to explain it every time I made new friends or was writing in school about what we did in the summer holidays with ‘Mum and Dad.’ I know I’m not the only person with a different surname to their parents and though I’ve read it in Dickensian type books, I don’t ever remember meeting anyone else that had to call their step parent Mr or Mrs. I’m not sure what his thinking was behind this, I never asked him, but to me all it did was alienate him. I always felt there was this, ‘them and us,’ thing between us. Pretty much from the day he moved in, the family in my view never felt like one unit.

  Paul and I always dropped the ‘Mr’ when we discussed him but we knew better than to ever let him hear us. So, simply for my benefit and to help me get in the right frame of mind I suppose, I will for now refer to him as Nelson.

  I don’t blame my mum for finding another man. It was around 1964, she was in her early twenties, a single mother of three kids aged five and under, what was she supposed to do?

  We moved from our flat in Rockwell Lane in Thorpe Edge to a maisonette on Idle Thorpe Way and Nelson moved in with us. As an adult looking back on your childhood it can often be difficult to separate what you know to be a real memory from what you have been told and believe to be a real memory. This is why at this stage of my waffling I’m only going to write what I know to be fact. I know they are facts (I was there) plus on recalling them I get the same feelings in my stomach that I had back then.

  I clearly recall something that Nelson said to me. During a rare conversation, (I made a concerted effort to avoid him if at all possible) I made the mistake of repeating what my dad had told me about being the man of the house. Nelson made it perfectly clear that he was now ‘the man of the house’ and what he said in his house was the law. Apart from my dad telling me he was leaving us I had nothing at that age with which to compare the feeling I had inside, however now I do, a kick in the bollocks, especially the bit where it slowly creeps up into your guts.

  For the next year or so apart from my resentment of Nelson life was pretty normal. I had started school in Idle, if you don’t know Bradford then yes, Idle is a real place and yes it did and maybe still does have the, ‘Idle Working man’s Club.’

  I suppose for people looking in we were an average family but whether or not Nelson and my mum believed we were just that I don’t know. I do know however even at such a young age I was not of the same opinion.

  There was one occasion which some members of my family look back on as the start of my slippery slope, however I see it differently. Having said that my wife reckons I see a lot of things differently. It was Christmas morning 1965. Paul and I were all excited, we were up and out of bed really early as most kids are and I, still wanting to be ‘the man of the house,’ was keen to get the living room looking all Christmassy for my mum and Andy. I switched on the Christmas tree lights and opened the curtains so we could see the fake snow made from cotton wool that mum and I had stuck on the windows a few days earlier. I then decided it needed one final touch.

  Under the Christmas tree were two decorative candles I had made at school. Taking a box of matches from the kitchen I lit both candles. Paul and I took one step back to admire how pretty it looked but before we could take a further step back the tree caught fire. It went up in flames quicker than the bloody Hindenburg. Within seconds the Christmas tree was just a stick, a lone, pitiful skeleton of a thing. Paul screamed, I screamed, and then we both noticed a string of Christmas cards which had been hanging on the wall were also on fire. As the cards began to gently float to the floor like black confetti our Paul screamed some more and I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to join in. By this time, not only had my mum come running into the room but the sodding curtains were now ablaze. My mum must have had the same idea as Paul and I, she started screaming as well.

  The next thing I remember is Nelson appearing in the room and dragging the curtains and the pelmet off the wall and throwing them on the floor. He started stamping all over them looking for all the world like Michael Flatley having a panic attack.

  After what seemed like an age, Nelson had put the flames out, opened the windows and then turned to look at my mum. The screaming had stopped and an ominous silence filled the room, well the bits of the room that weren’t already full of smoke. My mum was cradling Andy in one arm whilst her other was tightly wrapped around Paul’s shoulder pressing him firmly to her side. I had my arms wrapped around her leg and was doing my level best to slowly inch my way behind her so Nelson couldn’t see me.

  I have heard people say young children have no concept of consequences. Well I can honestly say on that memorable Christmas day, even as a six year old, I knew for sure there would be serious consequences. I wasn’t sure what they would be but I did have a long list of possibilities in my mind. A good hiding? Well that was a given. No Christmas presents? Aye, a possibility. Grounded for the rest of my life? Perhaps. I have an idea death was on the list too. Not for the last time in my life I was wrong and after blurting out through a face full of tears, soot and snot, what I had done and why, I prepared myself for my punishment. It never came.

  To this day I have never seen somebody’s facial expressions change so quickly and so often. Nelson’s face went from fear to anger, from anger to relief. It then went through them all again a number of times but in a different order. It was like watching someone spinning the wheel of fortune with just those three emotions on them and me with my fingers crossed silently praying, ‘please land on relief, please land on relief.’ It did.

  There was some shouting, fist clenching, teeth grinding, arms thrown in the air and eyes widened in disbelief at my stupidity. Though, considering I had just been a gnat’s nad away from burning my family to a crisp, I reckon I got off lightly.

  For a few weeks after the ‘Great fire of 65,’ I got the occasional tut- tut and shaking of heads from adult family and friends but that was as far as it went. I was more than happy to live with those minor repercussions. Things went back to normal with no more real dramas, well none that I can remember. Though were you to ask my mum she could probably come up with a few more.

  It would have been around 1966 when Nelson was offered a job in Wombwell near Barnsley so we upped sticks again and moved to a three bedroomed house in Wilson Street. I can recall being chuffed to bits that I was given my own bedroom. I had started at a new school and made new friends, I was seven and if I did my own thing and stayed away from Nelson I was relatively happy.

  In his defence Nelson did try to be a good stepfather and when all is said and done, whatever his failings, he made more of an effort than my real dad. I’
m quite happy to shoulder some of the blame for our inability to get on. No matter how hard he tried, whatever gesture he made, I could not let go of the resentment I felt towards him. One other problem was, and if anyone had said this back then I would have given them a real mouthful, in a number of ways we were very much alike, in particular our stubbornness. He never thought he was right, he knew it, and if he knew it so did everybody else and neither wild horses nor dynamite could shake his opinion. I, though of a similar make up, because of my age and size soon learned I didn’t have the luxury of voicing an opinion, not unless I wanted a good hiding, so what came out of my mouth was not necessarily what was going on in my head. It was a compromise that I had no option but to live with.

  Wombwell was a small town and I think it had grown around the local Colliery, Wombwell Main. It was probably just a small village community at one time but by the time we had arrived council estates had been and were still being built. The estate we lived on was not much different from the one we had left in Bradford. The surrounding area however was totally different. No more than a hundred yards from our house at the top of Wilson Street were acres and acres of countryside. At the bottom of the nearest two acre field was the slag heap from the pit, on the other side of the slag heap was, if my memory serves me right, Elliot’s farm. There were masses of woodland, a quarry and a railway line, everything a little bugger like me needed to get himself into all sorts of bother.

  Then ‘The Bastard’ turned up.

  “The Bastard?” I hear you ask.

  Yes, ‘The Bastard.’

  If you don’t mind I would like to set you a little task. After you have read the next few paragraphs could you make list of, let’s say five, different words which would describe this person? I have a tenner saying Bastard will be on the list.