The first paranoid madman I talked to, took me aside, away from view of other inmates. He informed me that he was a psychic ninja, my mentor and guide.

He focused my attention towards a sweaty greasy man, wearing a long winter coat, in the overheated dining/recreation room. I was told the sweaty greasy man was concealing a knife and the psychic ninja also insisted I would be a dead man before morning, if I didn’t follow his martial instructions exactly. My mentor showed me how to effectively attack the knife-wielding psychopath before the psychopath attacked me first.

I proceeded to not take the psychic ninja’s advice.

Petrified, I was hiding, almost uncontrollably shaking, in my sleeping quarter, in a room with 3 other beds. (I guess they are called sleeping quarters for a reason).

I pulled myself together. Braved the elements. I watched the knife wielding psycho playing table tennis, looking at me menacingly out of the corner of his evil left eye.

Eventually it was smoke time.

Smoke time was for 10-15 minutes every hour, on the hour, until the night staff arrived and ushered us to bed, with biscuits and squash, not long after our nightly ‘medications’.

I was really scared during my first smoke time. I sat for about 5 minutes, alone in the recreation room before making my way to the fag butt infested yard.

The knife-wielding psycho was staring at me with a murderous smile. I took a large deep drag from my roll-up, and I gathered every atom of insanity that my lungs could find and blew a fog of madness into the darkest of skies, high above the peachy artificial light of the yard.

Then, for a long few minutes, I was the sanest man on earth.

I assessed the situation and observed the psychic ninja pacing up and down, stopping, doing an impression of a badly trained middle-aged ‘karate kid’ with a ponytail, having a deep conversation with his ancient marijuana spirit guide I presume. He would growl and threaten anybody that came within six feet of him. The knife-wielding psycho was not staring at me at all, he was just looking in my direction, trying to get my attention with a friendly, welcoming smile. He was a psycho, but he was not carrying a knife.

I was a few moments away from making my first friend. He showed me the ‘ropes’, along with a young ginger nut, an attempted self-murderer with a pair of NHS-issue crutches and very heavily bandaged legs.