In the topsy turvy world that constitutes the penal estate, nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems. When it came to my transfer last week, from Stocken in Leicestershire to Lindholme prison near Doncaster in south Yorkshire, the 52-seater coach set off for the north in exactly the opposite direction.
The previous evening, I had crammed my belongings into boxes in preparation for the early start of a 70 mile roundabout journey I had been told was going to take three days to complete.
Nothing surprises me anymore after a criminal "career" which has spanned 15 years spent in 32 prisons. As it happens, I have come to rather enjoy these circuitous away days, giving me, as they do, the opportunity of catching up with gossip from all around the system. It is like taking one of those slow locale trains that rattle around Italy-the buses stop to pick up and drop off prisoners everywhere.
After the usual undignified strip search procedure in Stocken's reception, myself and another prisoner set off just after breakfast. It was a beautiful day, made even more so by the fact that I had not seen the outside since my last excursion nearly 12 months previously.
Through the plate glass windows, the undulating Leicestershire countryside unfolded. Harvested field after field, well kempt village after village, imposing 18th century fa?ade after fa?ade. We travelled past Burghley House; through Oakham; picked up another half dozen bedraggled inmates from Ashwell prison; and failed to stop at the tearooms in postcard pretty Cottesmore. Hawthorn bushes by the wayside heaved with autumnal berries. Cattle masticated. At Leicester prison we trooped like Victorian felons into the castellated granite gatehouse, and urinated, still handcuffed to our partners, while the guards changed shifts.
Lunch was taken at Onley Young Offenders Institution, a staging post on the other side of Rugby which receives coachloads of prisoners from the four corners of the kingdom; feeds them; processes them; and dispatches them again in myriad onward directions.
Inside the holding cell was an extraordinary man with candyfloss pink hair, black leather jacket and jeans that looked as if they had been painted on to his legs. He glared at me, revealing tattooed across his emaciated face, a daddy-long-legs and two hypodermic syringes. "They call me Spider," he announced to nobody in particular as we took seats on the benches. "I smashed four shop windows the other night and got a month apiece to run consecutively. Got any roll ups?" he asked each of us in turn again and again until one of my companions told him to fuck off or he'd find himself on the wrong end of a bunch of fives.
The coach trundled on to Birmingham where we had to spend the night as "lodgers" in Winson Green. "You are now entering Fred West country" a graffito on the reception shithouse wall proclaimed. The overnight stay was long enough to appreciate why so many prisoners have chosen to end their lives in this filthy, decrepit city gaol so badly in need of demolition.
With relief we reboarded our coach the following morning for the return trip to Onley. I disembarked an hour and a half later even more relieved after being forced to listen to a woman screw who couldn't stop talking to one of her male colleagues about her recent package holiday to one of the Greek islands.
At last it was time to turn northwards. But what a shock when I saw the new mode of transport. Before me stood an armour-plated Black Maria-the hated mobile "sweatbox"-12 miniature cells on wheels into which we were individually herded. Cinderella's glass coach had turned back into a pumpkin.
Set high on a hill above Leeds, Armley prison looms down blackly, as intimidating and lugubrious as Colditz Castle. We arrived at teatime, but it was four hours before anyone saw fit to feed their new arrivals. There must have been 70 prisoners and their collective detritus crammed into the waiting room. Eventually, a flustered screw shouted through the spyhole to tell us there was no room at the inn. They were already well past their official certified capacity level. Quite simply, that meant there were no cells available. We would have to sleep in the prison hospital.
This was to our advantage. Instead of being slung into another bed and breakfast cell, a group of us were escorted to an area of the prison normally reserved for madmen and those on trial for murder. The beds were bigger and the air fresher. Although the communal facilities meant a late night spent chatting, for the most part about crime and punishment, I awoke refreshed, ready for the last leg of the journey.
The meatwagon awaited. Lindholme lay south again, on a marshy plain once inhabited (so one of the screws told me) by a hermit with magical rejuvenative powers. As I slid myself back into the claustrophobic cubicle, I noticed a small card that must have slipped out of a previous occupant's pocket. On it was printed a quotation from the Book of Joshua. "Be strong and of good courage," it instructed me. "Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." The message seemed appropriate. I folded the card and put it away for future reference.
