And even if he had been there, would it have made any difference?

You see I had glimpsed the future and I knew that the drums of chemicals had nothing whatsoever to do with the madness. The chemicals were not to blame.

It was the Brentstock cigarettes.

Cigarettes that had been manufactured from genetically engineered tobacco. Genetically engineered from a formula laid down in the notes of Uncle Jon Peru Joans, the man who would talk with the trees.

So, what should I have said? Should I have grassed up my bestest friend? Blamed it all on him? And on what evidence? That I had glimpsed the future?

I couldn’t do that.

‘It wasn’t me,’ I told the magistrate. ‘It wasn’t me.’

But did he listen?

Did he bugger!

14

I really miss the 1970s.

Which is to say that I really missed them.

Missed every year of them. Every single month and day. Every hour and minute.

He banged me up, the magistrate did. Sent me down. Gave me fifteen years.

Fifteen years!

I wasn’t pleased, I can tell you. I was angry. I was bitter and twisted and boiling and brooding. I was not a nice man to know.

They sent me first to Parkhurst and then to Pentonville. Later I was moved to Powys, then Penroth and finally to Poonudger. That each began with the letter P gave me no cause for amusement.

The Doveston wrote to me, of course. His early letters were full of apologies and promises that he would do everything within his powers to secure me an early release. Knowing well his love for dynamite, I slept nightly with my mattress over my head, to shield myself from the blast that would bring down my cell wall and herald the arrival of the getaway car that would whirl me off to freedom.

No blast came; no car arrived.

His letters became few and far between, but with them now came press cuttings. A note was enclosed with the first of these to the effect that, as his biographer and finding myself with time on my hands, I should dedicate my days to compiling an archive of his achievements as they were chronicled in the daily newspapers.

This, he suggested, would give me something worth while to do, with the added bonus that it would also keep me well informed as to what was going on in the world outside and just how well he was managing, even without my invaluable help.

We would get through this thing together, he wrote. But he never once came to visit.

Norman called by every month, until they moved me north. Norman brought me news of Brentford. Mostly grim, as I recall.

The growing of tobacco on the St Mary’s allotments had been banned. The plots had been split up again and it was now as if the plantation had never existed. The Mexican migrant workers had moved on. The Crad fields of Chiswick were now a council estate. In Hammersmith a woman had given birth to a child the shape of a hair-drier and there had been numerous signs and portents in the heavens.

‘Surely,’ said Norman, ‘the End Times are upon us.

Along with the reports of prodigious births, the sightings of mythical animals and the life and troubled times of a Brentford confectioner, Norman also brought some tragic news.

Chico was dead.

Gunned down in a drive-by whilst dealing on the street.

‘It was how he would have wanted to go,’ said Norman.

And who could disagree with that?

Norman was not my only visitor. Brother Michael dropped in once or twice. He offered me counselling, with the view that I should purge myself of former wrong-doing and release the monk within. He told me that he had been inspired by a dream, a vision it was, which showed me as a monk in a low-cut leather habit, receiving the stigmata in a most unusual place.

Brother Michael displayed before me the holy paraphernalia that he had brought with him to effect my initiation. The crucifix and rosary; the golden icon of St Argent with his tiny nose; the Latin texts and phial of holy water; the sash of penitence; the tube of KY jelly.

Although tempting, as some may consider it, I did not become a monk. In fact my physical response to the brother’s proposition, which manifested itself upon his person in a most vigorous and prolonged fashion, left him not only in some doubt as to the accuracy of visions, but also no longer predisposed to the riding of his bike.

It got me six months in solitary and put two more years on my sentence.

I was never the same man again.

I don’t know whether you have ever read any Hugo Rune. But amongst the many Ultimate Truths revealed by this great twentieth-century philosopher and shoulder-rubber with the famous is one that relates to the human condition. Rune states, in terms which even the layman can understand, that IT IS THE NATURE OF MAN TO BEHAVE BADLY.

According to Rune (and who is there to doubt his words?) ‘Any given person, at any given time, will be behaving as badly as he or she is able to get away with.’

According to Rune we are born behaving badly. We enter this world kicking and screaming and pooing ourselves. As children we are constantly punished for behaving badly. We are taught where the line is drawn and what will happen if we step over it. This continues throughout our lives, at school, in the workplace, in relationships and in marriage. We each behave as badly as we can get away with, stepping across a particular line at our peril.

Exactly how badly we are able to behave depends entirely on our circumstances. The poor oft-times behave very badly, as can be witnessed in football hooliganism, holidays abroad and the wearing of sports clothes. But if you wish to see real bad behaviour, bad behaviour taken to the extreme and exhibited (privately for the most part) as an art form, you must visit either the haunts of the very rich and privileged, or a long-term institution.

It is something of a cliché to state that wealth and bad behaviour go together. We have all heard the stories of best-selling authors who demand kumquats and chardonnay from harassed sales staff at signing sessions, of the antics of rock stars and cabinet ministers, matinée idols and members of the Royal Family. We know it goes on and we tut-tut-tut, but if our roles in life were reversed, we would do the same.

IT IS THE NATURE OF MAN TO BEHAVE BADLY.

And the more that you can get away with, the more you will try to get away with.

So what of the long-term institution? Well, here we have another set of circumstances. Here we have a place almost entirely peopled by folk who have stepped over the line. They are paying the price for their so doing.

Here we have the murderer whose bad behaviour has condemned him to life imprisonment. Society has condemned him to this punishment, even though this same society is forced into turning a blind eye upon the bad behaviour of its army or police. Society has said that this form of bad behaviour cannot be tolerated. Lock the bad man up for ever, get him out of our sight.

But is the murderer always a ‘bad’ man? If it is the nature of man to behave badly, was he not simply following the dictates of his nature? Doing what was natural to him? And what of the person he murdered? Was this an innocent victim?

I only touch upon this now, for reasons that will later be revealed. But I learned, whilst in prison, that the man without hope of release is the man who has no line left to put his foot across.

And you don’t push in front of such a man when in the queue for breakfast, or you will see some very bad behaviour.