Night Terrors

Having been a Good Boy and not been near a spliff in years, on my arrival in Leyhill in 2004 I decided to treat myself. I finally discovered that it is possible to get so stoned that any further inebriation is impossible.

Having fallen asleep, I awoke in the early hours needing to pee. This being Leyhill, I could open my door and stagger down the corridor to the loo. Prison loos are communal affairs, more akin to a Roman Bathhouse. A large, tiled room with urinals on one wall, closets along another, showers on the third, and rows of sinks filling the middle of the room.

Positioning myself at a urinal, I gripped myself firmly, rested my forehead on the wall, and let fly. Drifting in and out of sleep, I forced my eyes open. The room was only partly lit, the corridor light bouncing round the tiles.
Focusing on the wall inches from my face as a point of reference to aid stability, an image struck the corner of my eye. Freezing my eyes at dead-ahead, I took a long pause to translate what I thought I had seen into some sensible context.

Why was a woman standing in the corner of our prisons toilet at 3 a.m.? Nearly naked, one hand on her hip, black stockings, suspenders, tiny knickers and a push-up bra. Yummy.

I stood at the urinal, struggling to put all of this in order. Should I say anything? Would it be rude of me not to say hello? I decided it was perhaps best if I pretended not to have seen anything, and slowly found my way back to bed.

Staggering out of my cell the next morning, I found that some wag had propped up a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Kylie Minogue in the loo. I nicked it.