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When count’s not correct

Here’s an idea: don’t do count.

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All this worry about people escaping — from my experience, everyone ends up coming back quicker than a boomerang anyway.

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Save the dramas, forget the muster, and if one or two people are missing, they’ll be out, charged, denied bail, and back in before the next count anyway.

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Who left their milk in the toaster?

Some blokes treat the unit kitchen like it’s an episode of MasterChef. They cook up a storm, feed half the unit, then vanish like its canteen day, leaving behind a sink full of arguments and a bench that looks like it’s been cleaned with botulism bench spray. Usually, it’s the same guy who cooks sardines for breakfast and doesn’t know how a
spoon works.

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The first-timer

Who’s the better bloke, the one who tells you ‘word, I’m getting out tomorrow’, or the one who ‘word, I’m putting money in your account when I get out’?

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They’re as good as each other – mostly because they’re usually the same bloke.

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May God bless the men who come into jail for the first time, promise you it’s their last, leave you everything they own, go to court, and come back carrying a three-year sentence.

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And if he does manage to keep his word and get out, he’s nice enough to keep my word and not put money in my account. Not my first time, sport.

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When your celly snores: A symphony of suffering

Sharing a cell with a snorer is like living inside a faulty leaf blower. You don’t sleep – you just lie there, contemplating your life choices.

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It starts off gentle, like a distant chainsaw. Then it builds into a full-blown Bunnings warehouse demo. You try everything: earplugs, pillows, kicking the TV.

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By 3am, you’ve memorised every time you’ve been shit go-ed, and written three novels in your head. He wakes up revitalized. You wake up crazy eyed.

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The soiled celly: Welcome to the walking biohazard

He’s got his tradies in the sink, socks on the ceiling, and a smell that could evacuate a sewage plant. Asking him to clean up his toe nail clippings causes confrontation and you’re gaslighted by being told you didn’t make your bed.

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You go through all the potential diseases you could have from the time you confused his towel with yours, and you start thinking polio and footrot would be the best outcome.

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Jailhouse lawyer: Legal advice from a bloke who failed parole

Who needs legal aid when you’ve got regal mates?

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My first time in jail, I copped three months from his honour, but from other inmates I copped a two-week,
a seven-month, an eighteen-month, and a three-to-four-year sentence. If I’d stayed any longer, I was heading for life with no chance of parole.

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The celly who sleeps all day

He’s horizontal more than a bench press. Sleeps through muster, his debts, and his own release date. Wakes up just in time for lock-in and yawns like he’s done hard labour.

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To him the word fit doesn’t mean exercise.

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Whooshing to the front of the prison line

A blessing in disguise, because without these people, we wouldn’t know who’s better than us.

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I’ve wanted to do it and it’s not that I don’t think I’ve got it in me – I just don’t like to rush through my prison sentence. Wouldn’t surprise me if the joke’s on me, though. Can anyone tell me if pushing in makes your end date come sooner?

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I’ll let you know when I see one of these blokes walking out the front gate with a spring in their step. Maybe I’ll ask the bloke who’s been here since Kevin Rudd was PM – he seems to have all the answers.