How Did All This Happen?. John Bishop

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СКАЧАТЬ my mum to get chips on the way home from a night out they had started another argument. When my mum had intervened, they had pushed her so hard she had bounced off the bonnet of a car onto the ground. My dad had reacted to the provocation and, as had happened the week before, both men ended up on the ground and my dad walked away.

      To this day my dad is very bitter about the sentence, and even the arresting officers said the case should have been thrown out. On both occasions, my dad was not the aggressor and was defending himself, and on the second occasion was defending his wife. But for his defence he had not been advised very well, which is something that can happen when you are limited financially in the professional advice you can seek.

      Months earlier, my dad and Uncle Freddie had been playing in the same football team, and my dad was sent off by the referee for something his identical twin had done. They appealed against the decision and the local FA had upheld their claim that the referee had sent the wrong man off because he could not tell who had committed the offence.

      Had my dad just stood in court and simply relayed the events as they happened, there is a very good chance he would have walked free, or at least only been given a suspended sentence. However, it was felt by many on the estates that people who had moved to Winsford from Liverpool would be unfairly treated by the local police and courts. As the other two men were locals, or ‘Woollybacks’ as we called them (an insult to sheep that I have never really understood), he tried to use the same ploy in court that had worked with the local FA. As both men had ended up pole-axed on the ground, it would be impossible, so the plan went, for them to know which twin had hit them. As the judge could not send both my dad and Uncle Freddie to prison, he would have to throw the case out, and that would be the end of that.

      The defence didn’t work and, as my dad was sentenced for violence, he was sent to a closed prison. At first he went to Walton Prison in Liverpool and then on to Preston.

      He told my mum not to bring us children to visit him, but by the time he had been transferred to Preston he was missing us too much and asked her to bring us in. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. My Uncle Freddie drove us and we arrived early and had to sit waiting in the car, opposite the prison. There were all four of us, Eddie, Kathy, Carol and I, along with my mum and Freddie in the front, yet I don’t recall anyone saying anything as we just sat and waited.

      To my six-year-old self, Preston Prison looked like a castle. It was a stone building with turrets and heavy, solid, metal gates that had a hatch, through which the guards behind could check the world outside remained outside.

      At the allotted time, we approached the gates along with some other families, and the hatch opened. Before long, a small door swung open, and we were allowed inside, only to be faced by another metal gate.

      Standing just in front of it was a guard in a dark uniform holding a clipboard with a list of names on it, which he ticked off with the expression that you can only get from spending your working life locking up other men. My Uncle Freddie said who we had come to see, whereupon we were duly counted and moved towards the next gate. Eventually, after everyone had met with the guard’s approval, the gate in front of us was unlocked and we were allowed to pass though to be faced by yet another gate.

      This process of facing locked gate after locked gate was a frightening and dehumanising experience: we were being led through like cattle. We eventually walked up some metal stairs and entered the visitors’ room. I just recall rows of men sitting at tables, all wearing the same grey uniform, in a room with no windows and a single clock on the wall.

      When I saw my dad, I broke free of my mum’s hand and ran towards him to give him the biggest hug I had ever given anyone. My dad reciprocated until a guard said we had to break the hug and I had to be placed on the opposite side of the table like everyone else. I know prison officers have a job to do, but who would deprive a six-year-old boy of a hug from the father he had not seen for months? It was not as if I was trying slip him a hacksaw between each squeeze.

      ‘Have you been good?’ he asked us all, and we each said we had.

      ‘Good. Have you been looking after your mum?’ he asked then, and for some reason it seemed like he was talking to just me.

      I wasn’t so sure I knew what looking after my mum entailed, but I was sure I was doing it, or at least a version of it.

      ‘I have, Dad,’ I said.

      ‘They’ve all been good,’ my mum informed him across the table, which seemed to satisfy him.

      ‘Good,’ he said, with a smile I had never seen before. A smile that appears when someone’s face is trying to match the words that are being spoken, but not quite managing it.

      I don’t recall anything else that anyone said. I just remember looking around and thinking my dad didn’t belong with all the other men in grey uniforms. He was my dad, and they were all just strange men wearing the same clothes as him, many sporting similar tattoos on the backs of their hands.

      After what to me appeared to be too short a time, my Uncle Freddie said he would take us out so that my mum and dad could talk alone or, at least, be as alone as you can be whilst being watched by prison officers alongside thirty other families visiting at the same time. To soften the disappointment of having to leave, my dad gave us all a Texan bar each, a sweet of its era: chocolate covering something that was as close to being Plasticine as legally possible, so when you chewed it almost took every tooth out of your head with its stickiness. We didn’t get many sweets at the time, so it was a real treat, even if the trade-off was that Dad was in prison. What I didn’t realise at the time was that four Texan bars virtually accounted for a week’s prison allowance. Not for the first or the last time, my dad was giving us children all he had.

      During the year that he was away, I can only recall visiting my dad on one more occasion. It was when he was moved to the open prison at Appleton Thorn. I remember the visiting room had windows so that light flooded in, and hugs were not prevented with the same degree of enthusiasm by the prison officers. Before he had left Preston, the governor there had told my dad that he was the first prisoner he had ever transferred to an open prison: by the time you reached Preston you either went onto a maximum-security unit or stayed within the closed-prison sector till your time was served or you died.

      The only reason he moved my dad was because of the support he was given by one particular prison guard, Officer Hunt, who stuck his neck out for him and pressed for my dad to be moved. It would be easy to say all prison guards of the time were bad, but clearly this wasn’t the case. Despite one or two close shaves, I have not needed to visit a prison since.

      I don’t recall the day Dad came home. You might imagine it would be ingrained in my memory, but somehow it isn’t. While he was away, I remember that things seemed harder than usual. As a family, we never actually felt poorer than our neighbours, but I was aware that some people just had more.

      It was when I started junior school at Willow Wood that I was first exposed to people who had more than me – basically, people who did not live on our estate. My two friends from school were Christopher and Clive, and both were posher than I was: Clive lived in a house that had an apple tree in the garden. Despite being at least three miles from where I lived, I would happily cycle or walk there to play. By the time I was in junior school I knew the estate inside out, so leaving it to go on adventures seemed natural.

      Clive was clever, and I recall his dad coming home from work once. He was wearing a suit and didn’t need to get a wash before having his tea, which I thought was a really odd thing for a dad not to have to do. I liked Chris because he could draw, which I also enjoyed doing. He lived on the private estate and, to my eyes, he had the perfect life: he was the oldest, so he didn’t have an older brother who always СКАЧАТЬ