No false summits to this horizon, white shores free of fears.
Hard to focus a mind that wants to falter; no looking back at all life’s majesty.
She stepped softly out of life, on to the summer shores,
Her heart not attacked but relieved, awash with love as she nears,
Hard now for the lives left to wonder, soaked wet with mists of tears.
The Steering Group
Chapter 2
The Preparatory
And so it began… I left home to be taken to a detention and disciplinary school just south of the Scottish border. I was 13 years old. It took all fucking day to reach this place. It was raining, very cold and an incredibly long day. I remember, after we had left the motorway, there being long parts of the drive with no civilisation, just open countryside. There were drystone walls for miles that crawled along the roadsides and up the hills into the mist, with sheep desperately clinging together under isolated trees for a little shelter from the persistent downpour. It was pretty bleak and already I was trying to dream up some sort of escape plan. I was desperately trying to memorise landmarks of one type or another throughout the journey so I could possibly backtrack and find my way back to civilisation, not knowing how important all this would become. I drifted in and out of daydreaming but my thoughts kept returning to me heading back to Aberdeen again sometime soon for another shot at being a merchant sailor – well, a stowaway again at least. I found some comfort in this daydreaming as I sat patiently as far over to the window as possible, breathing on the glass as I tried to make a tune out of the sound of the windscreen wipers scraping over the glass, fighting the weather just like those on the bridge of the Atlantic Star in the North Sea in a storm.
Eventually the transport arrived at a gatehouse that opened up from the main road that took me over a railway bridge and into the main compound. No greeting party, just an empty arched stone doorway through which I would pass and then be left alone to the mercy of all its occupants. My arrival was simply greeted by what appeared to be an abandoned dark castle-like building. It was late afternoon now and the light was fading quickly. A tall, masculine building, built of stone, with one turret-like structure holding on to a flagpole at its summit that looked down over the entire complex. The flag, whose cloth was soaked from the rain, slapped itself together in the wind, making for a cracking sound like a whip, as if to suggest to me that I would be subjected to a regime of a similar nature upon entering this place. This turret and flag dominated the rest of the assembly of add-on structures that clung to the more masculine-looking stonework, as if for protection from something, or claiming to be part of the older building because their modern construction made them feel out of place or somewhat inadequate.
The main structure disappeared behind a compound wall shadowed further by skeletal trees desperately trying to hold on to their few remaining leaves in the howling wind, as if they were the last layers of clothing keeping their bark warm. The flood lighting made great efforts to penetrate the rain to reach the trees but simply illuminated the sheets of rain as they pelted past the beams of light, creating a weird and wonderful flashing light show. An Alcatraz for kids, I put to myself. There was not much lighting from within that I could see – a few silhouettes passing the tall windows – but mostly just a dark shell that was perhaps a little overwhelming for a 13-year-old boy, away from home and all things familiar. Welcome to DECAF (Defiant Disorder Educational and Assessment Facility). Defiant Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder can be translated to ADHD, not that I was ever seen by any medical professional to officially label me with that disorder; I think just the fact that everyone thought I was out of control was enough.
I remember the induction process: I was greeted at the main entrance by a correctional officer (CO). (I don’t remember him because you just don’t, and besides I was trying to stay unnoticed as much as possible, not wanting to stand out or for my name to become too well known in this early stage.) I remember walking down this huge long corridor, as long as the eye could see almost, with large solid oak doors to the right and huge Victorian-like windows to the left which were barred, caged on the outside and half blacked-out by weatherboards or shutters. The floor was polished teak, similar to a ship’s decking; all floors from this point onwards would be referred to as decks, even though they would never see a storm at sea.
The walk took us past some young lads buffing this deck with hard wax blocks that stuck to their hands. I could see them attempting to wipe the wax off on their trousers, to no avail, just simply adding to the build-up of stains from previous floor polishing days. They were busily swinging industrial-sized heavy buffers backwards and forwards in a pendulum motion over the waxed floor, totally ignoring me as if I were to be avoided until I’d been fully inducted. They had half the corridor blocked off using buckets and brushes as bollards, like roadworks, so you couldn’t walk on the wax they had laid. You could smell the wax; it smelt old and disciplined like a longstanding police station, town hall or the old law courts I had so often attended. There was no mistaking that this whole place was kept painfully clean and in immaculate order. I remember thinking, There’s no way I’m polishing fucking floors, but in time I would be proven very wrong. Those boys looked lean, and they weren’t playing at polishing that floor, you could see the sweat under their arms as they buffed that floor to a high sheen, and the warning in their eyes to stay low was transmitted almost telepathically as I caught them glancing up before I passed by, careful not to tread on their hard work. Then a familiar smell – they had that blue cleaning shit, like on the Atlantic Star; it’s like paint stripper and works good on removing your skin too; there’s no mistaking that shit. There were other boys wiping down the overheads and cleaning windowsills with cloths soaked in that blue cleaning fluid, hands red raw with the chemical, but satisfied that their work would not be criticised or, worse, rescrubbed (slang for made to do it all again following a failed inspection).
It’s an interesting feeling and one that I suspect any inmate feels at a real prison – feelings of dread, loneliness, isolation, being targeted, fear, expectation, excitement, all entwined and confused with the unknown and the future. Where will I sleep? Do we eat tonight? Will it be shit or will they have a good kitchen? Will I make friends? I hope no one picks on me first and, of course, why the fuck am I here? How the hell did this happen to me? Followed by a million other unexplained feelings and questions that only time can answer in such places.
That feeling comes from your stomach; it’s not a light thought in your head or a passing Oh shit, I’ve forgotten my coat, it’s a feeling that consumes your body and mind, and you are literally sick from the inside out. Your mind goes into a kind of reduced readiness state, focusing only on what is the here and now. Your mind descends from multitasking transmissions and wavelengths to a kind of binary code or survival mode, only processing the most important information you need to survive and do what is necessary in the here and now. I know this place wasn’t a prison but it was probably close to it, and I was only guessing that it wasn’t as well controlled. Being just boys, I think the organisation thought we couldn’t get up to much more than the odd fight or other such minor misdemeanour and we would all be too scared to fall out of line with the correctional officers. What a crock of shit – this place truly was a bumble fuck and its control measures were non-existent.
After walking almost the length of the main hall, every boy would be told to stand in front of a huge noticeboard. You were then instructed by the correctional officer escorting you regarding the contents of this main noticeboard, the most important thing apparently being the station bill; fuck knows what that meant at the time. There were timetables, classroom allocations, division lists, laundry duties, dormitory allocations, work duties, punishment programmes etc., etc. – everything that you apparently needed to know, where to be, when to do it and with whom. You only had about 30 seconds to absorb all the information given to you. If any of the informatio
n at all went into your brain you were doing well, as listening to the instructions whilst at the same time trying to find your fucking name amongst all the other names and the plethora of other notices covering up parts of this all-important station bill was an impossibility.
No time to linger before we passed the dining hall and kitchen, then I remember descending a stone stairwell into the main hall where there were stalls for uniform, other clothing, bedding, toiletries, and a depository for everything you’d brought with you. The main hall was huge and cavern-like. It was transposed into what looked like a Sunday market but with all the stalls numbered. You received a small card with 15 numbers on it, to which you needed the corresponding stall stamp to show you had been round all the stalls, and your induction would then be complete.
You were systematically stripped of all your clothing and belongings and transformed into one of them, an inmate or member. For me it was like preparing for special treatment at Auschwitz: stripped of all identity before being cast into the furnaces or herded into a gas chamber. At just 13 years old it was the most crazy and frightening experience ever and one not easily forgotten. It wasn’t meant to be happening or would be over just as soon as I’d had the standard bollocking from my mum, or something similar, which then usually allowed me and everything around me to return to normality. But this shit wasn’t short-term, this was for the long haul – well, two years at least. As you removed clothing you felt stripped of all defences; left standing in only your pants, nakedness and self-embarrassment ensued, wishing you had some sort of trendy pants on or something to look cool in front of the other lads. Or wishing you’d spent more time building up your biceps and six pack at the gym, not that anyone really gave a shit at the time. But then, as you got to the end of the lines, you were rebuilt into an inmate, a clone just like all the other boys in their uniforms. We were all transformed from individual little hooligans into members of a semi self-disciplined organisation, or perhaps this was more a disorganised mustering of the unwanted youth safely excommunicated from society, nicely out of the way, and out of sight from those nice people in society.
Getting a haircut when you’re near bald is fucking stupid, but there were no exceptions. But bizarrely you weren’t allowed a crew cut, just a short back and sides, so I was in the shit straight away; the little skinhead from Nottinghamshire was in for trouble. There were cool ‘az’ boys with trendy blond streaky hairdos who cried when it all hit the floor, and others who fought it and were disciplined immediately. To me it was a free haircut and I couldn’t understand the fuss. In the end it just made us all less like individuals and more robotic and conforming. It’s a simple trick to get everyone into a single way of thinking or a way of life.
I guess, looking back, it was all just boys being boys and all that. However, when you mix around four hundred young, all male idiots with a lot to prove, gallons of spunk and testosterone, no parental influence, deliberate correctional officer absence, laced with a blind-eye attitude, crammed into a confined space with a survival of the fittest mentality, some real tough bullies and a side order of homesickness, you get absolute chaos. This was a regime that will undoubtedly turn fuckwit wimps into some nasty young cunts, a place where boys became young men really quickly regardless of who you thought you were and where you’d come from. No telling Mum to fuck off here.
I had a two-year term; most had longer and weren’t they the lucky ones. I had arrived on a large intake day along with a whole year’s worth of other kids from just about every background and corner of the country, as well as some lads from overseas. I think it was important to try and look hard even if like me you were a complete fucking mummy’s boy who’d never really had a good kicking. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my skinhead haircut which I had kept in honour of Anatoly had caught the attention of some of the more experienced inmates, or BUL’s as they were known. Immediately I was marked as a hard fucking little skinhead who needed a good kicking, trouble that needed to be sorted out on the first night. Great, my first kicking was already in the post.
As soon as I’d been kitted out, I was assigned a wing. All the new guys were assembling in their wings, with a ‘BUL’ (as far as I remember this was Boys Unlimited, meaning they could do anything) taking charge of the welcoming speech. He, Trent No. 1165 (everyone wore a number and surname on their shirt), was very clear about it; the regime was really simple: if you were in your last year you were a ‘BUL’, if you were new you were a Kilk (Kids I’d like to kill). BULs and Kilks! If you were really young you’d be a Sprog, but there weren’t many real young kids – I’m talking under 13. BULs had total rule and could kick the shit out of anyone, and Kilks had to do as they were ordered by the BULs and take all the shit. It was an absolute. If you didn’t do as a BUL wanted, you were fucking dog meat and were gonna be taken care of and disciplined. BULs were untouchable, protected and used by the COs. Oh, fucking great, who made this shit up and how the fuck was I gonna survive two years of this? We all received a copy of the DECAF rulebook on completion of this little speech and told to hold on to it at all times. It was the Stanford Prison Experiment reinvented for kids, with no one monitoring its progress, and this experiment of reality was set to last for two years not two weeks. The supposed oversight had been completely handed over to the inmates.
Next, we were assigned lockers for our kit, followed by a stampede to the locker rooms to claim them. There was only one locker room, a labyrinth next to the ablutions block. It was one of those huge spaces with only small windows at head height that barely let enough light in to see what the fuck you were doing as the fluorescent lighting was all but fucked. The lockers were in long rows and all battered and dented, with some unable to be properly closed or locked. The locker itself consisted of two metal shelves, one drawer with the lock removed and a hanging space wide enough for about three items. I was reasonably lucky, I had my locker in sight of the exit and reasonably intact. So, here I was, No. 1127, next to my tiny locker with a bag full of kit surrounded by all the noise and confusion of about one hundred and 50 half-terrified young lads, wondering what the fuck they or I should be doing. Or what to do after attempting to squash everything we owned into these poxy lockers we had all been allocated. So, to avoid any unwanted encounters, I remember deciding to go back into the main drag to find the big seat in the corridor I’d seen when I was escorted in. Now, this was commonly called the hot seat, a wooden bench arrangement that was placed over about four radiators at just the right height. You could probably get 15 kids on this seat. It was awesome; I was freezing cold and this did the job beautifully at warming you up through your ass, or you could even lie down and get real toasty.
I guess that was to be fuck-up number one. This seat was for BULs only, of course! How stupid of me. I was soon dragged out the back doors by three lads and properly fucked over. It was pretty quick. I tried throwing a few punches as I was being dragged out, but I couldn’t hit target, just a spasm of fists in all directions – splitting pain, bloodied nose and after a few punches to my head and a heap of kickings just about everywhere else I was released. Word spread quickly and it wasn’t hard to see the blood trail into the shithouse where I found myself cowering in a corner. A crowd soon gathered, I guess excited and relieved they weren’t part of this first test of the BUL’s rule and their sheer will to enforce it, all there to see what could happen to them. Fear would now enter their minds and always be there to torment them, remind them of what awaited them in the dark places they would have to tread.
This is when I met Owen 1149. A fucking American whose parents (expats from the UK, I think) had gotten rid of him for a few years for whatever reason. Owen was from a Middle Eastern background and had missed school for the last few years so he was kinda here to catch up on both schooling and life I guess. So that made him the most targeted boy in the establishment. Owen was too tall for his own good, spoke way too much and was generally annoying to most of the BULs. I think he felt, as he was American, he should be allowed
BUL privileges, or perhaps the American male supremacy thing was kicking in and he felt superior in some way. At times I thought he was a dickhead but he really was an okay guy and we hit it off straight away.
So, here we were in the shithouse getting acquainted with the BUL and Kilk regime; he had been dragged in behind me and held by his throat as I lay on the floor holding my face together. I staggered onto my feet and decided to smack one of the boys holding Owen in the side of his head. It was my first good fight, I think. We lost, of course, rather badly, and Owen ended up getting an orange shower in the urinals after he and I were completely done in (pissed on by the BULs). Funny, but that cemented a really cool friendship that little scrap. I think those early fights helped us in some weird way to gain a kind of favour with the BULs. In the end I think we maybe even earned a little respect.
I remember dinner was to be a few hours after that fight and we were all left to our own devices between organised activities. Time to get cleaned up before more shit came our way. Shit usually comes on a train with many carriages, I had found in my short experience of life, so best get ready for the next carriage was my philosophy. I had spent nearly an hour in the ablutions trying to get cleaned up. No showers, just 20 rows of sinks with those annoying push-down taps that only turn the water on for a few seconds unless you permanently hold them down, often burning your hand on the hot water tap. The ablutions were a separate block connected to the main building by only a covered walkway consisting of three separate areas: washrooms, shithouses and showers, all at the most basic level.
The washrooms were simply rows and rows of sinks over a red-painted concrete floor which was peeling off by the sheet. The sink drains simply poured out of open-ended pipes over the open floor (or your feet if you were unawares) and never quite made it to the central drainage system. No windows just dim lighting, a mangle for squeezing out your clothes after washing them by hand, and long benches built over the lakes of water that never seemed to drain away – ever. The whole place stank of dirty drains and stagnant water, adding to the smell of old soapy water and toothpaste stuck in the clogged pipework and blocked sinks creating a distinct aroma that really was a horrid musty acidic stench.
The Steering Group Page 4