counterjihadwarrior.com – Because Islam will NEVER EVER be a Religion of Peace – rather a barbaric, totalitarian cult, based on fear, violence, intimidation & terror.

  Visiting Time

Foreword: All chapters of Pigeon on the Wing published on this website are in draft form only. The final version may include grammatical, syntax and content changes, as well as sidebars and illustrations to maintain a level of interest and to stop readers’ eyes from glazing over. All comments and / or criticisms of content or writing style would be most welcome. Masterpieces like this don’t just write themselves, you know.

Seriously, though – this is your book just as much as it is mine. I couldn’t have even begun to write it without all of your help and support. Thank you so much for everything you have done for me, and I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Tim Burton

Pigeon on the Wing – Chapter 11 – Visiting Time

Tuesday 30 May 2017 – For some weeks now I had been looking forward to the prospect of meeting someone from the outside, in the form of a process known in the prison as “Visiting Time.”

For those of you familiar with soap operas such as Coronation Street, East-Enders and Emmerdale, where characters are being banged up every other week, and subsequently visited with a never-ending procession of their loved ones at little or no notice, it might seem like an obvious and integral part of the humane and considerate prison environment in the UK.

However, in reality the process is fraught with bear pits and elephant traps, no doubt designed to bring home to all those involved that incarceration is not meant to be a walk in the park, and communications with loved ones on the outside of the prison should be only conducted with extreme difficulty.

It wasn’t all the fault of other people, as I was to find out. In order to initiate communication with people on the outside, it was necessary to employ a certain level of handwriting skills, in order just to send the most elementary of letters to prospective visitors on prison notepaper.

Although I had access to a computer terminal in my cell, there was no word processing software, no email software and no way of electronically communicating my thoughts to the outside world, so I would have to call on those very same handwriting skills, painstakingly perfected in the British educational system after years of being rapped over the knuckles with a wooden ruler by the formidable Mrs Anderson, head of English at my local primary school, St Norberts in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey.

What could possibly go wrong, I hear you say? I will tell you what could go wrong. I used to win prizes for my handwriting skills at school, but half a century later I would find that those handwriting skills had deserted me.

Half a century of conducting my communications via a typewriter and a computer keyboard had left me with all the calligraphic skills of a dyslexic chimpanzee.

A chimpanzee, furthermore, who having been tasked with writing the complete works of Shakespeare, along with an infinite number of other chimpanzees, had unfortunately found it all to be too much to cope with, and seeing no other way out, had overdosed on a combination of crack cocaine and methylated spirits.

I had received letters from several good friend and colleagues who had expressed a desire to come and visit me, and all I could do was to scrawl a missive on prison notepaper that looked as though a demented spider had decided to dip its feet in an old-style ink-pot, dance the Light Fantastic across my notepad and gracefully expire in a blob of noxious fluid  in the bottom right-hand corner, signing itself off as “Best regards xxx.”

I found this extremely disconcerting. As I said, I had won prizes at my school some fifty-odd years previously – at the time, I had invested in a plethora of Parker pens, numerous bottles of Indian ink and other writing implements – and with broad brush strokes, judiciously placed full stops, expertly located commas and quotation marks, I had swept the board with my calligraphic expertise.

Where had it all gone? I had no idea. The phrase “use it or lose it” came to mind, and I resolved to recover my handwriting skills in prison by writing “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on innumerable sheets of notepaper every single day until I could at least write a coherent letter to someone on the outside.

In the meantime I had been fighting a battle with the prison authorities to have them accept some nominated names, addresses and telephone numbers for potential communication. This was a problem because I was not allowed to communicate directly with anyone from Liberty GB, and it was only with great difficulty that I was able to nominate some good friends of mine, who I will from now on refer to as Margita, Karen and Chris (although not necessarily in that order.)

These three fine people had attended my trial at Southwark Crown Court, and they had very kindly distributed the details of my trials and tribulations far and wide through the counter-jihad support network. Now, they had expressed a desire to come and visit me, and I had to pull out all the stops to make that happen.

I had to nominate the appropriate telephone numbers and have them approved – a process which took over a month – and once the approval came through, I had to set aside some of my weekly allowance to contact them via telephone and set up a meeting.

Every time you make a phone call from prison, it costs you a substantial sum which is deducted from your minuscule £15 weekly allowance, and setting up a meeting is a process fraught with difficulties which could have been derived from Dante’s seventh circle of Hell.

My potential visitors then had to submit a request to the prison for a visit, the prison administrators would let me know, and then I had to inform the prison administrators that I would agree to such a meeting taking place.

It sounds simple, but as I said, it takes a long time to arrange. Of course, time is something that most prisoners have a lot of in HMP Thameside.

That the one visit I had took place at all was something of a miracle. Nevertheless, the promised day arrived, and on the Tuesday before I was released, the visit from Chris, Margita and Karen took place.

For me, it was one of the best experiences of my life.

It was up there with my earliest childhood recollections – of a day in the park with my parents in the summer sunshine, the day I managed to ride my bicycle without falling off and the day I made the acquaintance of a large number of very attractive black and yellow winged insects whilst I was eating jam sandwiches and subsequently ended up at the local hospital A&E with multiple wasp stings. Good times.

“Oi, Burton, you’ve got visitors.”

Two prison officers handcuffed me and collected me from my cell. (Over the previous few weeks, everything involved in moving me from one place to another had been done in the presence of at least two prison officers. I was obviously a hardened criminal who – left to his own devices and with a series of mighty leaps and bounds – would stop at nothing to escape the clutches of the prison system.)

Having been securely handcuffed, I was led to the preparation area and instructed to don a vivid fluorescent purple and yellow vest over the prison greens that I had been wearing for the previous four or five weeks.

I have to say that the colours clashed more than I would have liked. I could think of more than one camp performance artist from the world of theatre who would have said something along the lines of – “Oh dear – That purple and yellow does NOT go with that green, darling.”

I don’t wish to be overly melodramatic, but I could see how that colour combination would produce nausea in someone of a delicate disposition.

From the preparation area, I was led to the visiting area. At that point my handcuffs were removed and I was made to sign in using a secure fingerprint recognition system. I made a mental note of the process that I would have to employ in the future if I were to make my escape (which would probably involve sawing off a prison officer’s finger and using it to fool the fingerprint recognition process.)

I’m only kidding. It’s surprisingly difficult in prison to obtain a saw that would be suitable. I would probably have to resort biting the finger off with my teeth. (You can see that I have thought this through.)

Strangely enough, I had been approached a few days previously by two members of SO-15 (the counter-terrorism police.) It had been the same routine (“Oi, Burton, you’ve got visitors.”) and I had been led through to the visiting area, having been prepped with the same fluorescent purple and yellow that passes for haute couture in the prison system, and the same fingerprint recognition process. (I was still using my own finger. I hadn’t as yet found a prison officer prepared to donate a finger in exchange for a packet of cornflakes and a month’s supply of toothpaste, which was all I had in the way of bargaining chips.)

At that time the two SO-15 police officers introduced themselves to me with a cheery “Don’t worry, we’re just here to conduct a random survey on how you are being treated at HMP Thameside.”

The hackles on my neck rose. No police officer conducts a “random survey.” Random surveys are the prerogative of organisations such as the statistical gatherers of information such as Pew and Mass Observation. The police only target people of specific interest.

“So how are you getting on?” said SO-15 counter-terrorism officer No. 1.

“I can’t complain,” I said, “but I can’t help but wonder how you selected me for your visit to one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

The officers looked at each other. “Actually we wanted to ask you about what you were planning to do once you had been released.” said SO-15 counter-terrorism officer No. 2. “You know, whether you had seen the error of your ways and were remorseful, or perhaps had decided to repent.”

Remorse and repentance might have been high up on their agenda, but it was not even on my radar. “You must be joking,” I said, ” I am going to be making speeches, writing articles and transmitting my thoughts concerning Islam and its deleterious effects around the globe on radio, TV, social media and You-Tube channels until the Grim Reaper knocks on my door and invites me to participate in some scythe-sharpening exercises.”

This was obviously not what they had wanted to hear. “But why would you persist in publicly expressing anti-Islamic views after having been locked up?” said SO-15 counter-terrorism officer No. 1, “and please call me Ray.” He gestured to his colleague.”This is Dave, by the way.”

Ray and Dave were in for a surprise.

For the next forty-five minutes I proceeded to explain (quoting chapter and verse from the Qu’ran) to Ray and Dave as to why the entire counter-terrorism narrative was flawed, and why they would never achieve any success while they clung to the view that Islam was at its core a “peaceful religion.” (instead of the reality of it being a genocidal totalitarian ideology with ambitions of global supremacy at the expense of all non-believers.)

I also explained (again quoting chapter and verse from the Qu’ran) that their media-inspired world-view where so-called “Islamist terrorists” were essentially twisting and misinterpreting the so-called “peaceful religion” to justify their violent attacks on non-believers – was likewise essentially flawed.

I told them in no uncertain terms that I felt that it was my duty to make every single non-believer aware of the dangers of allowing the ideology of Islam to occupy the public space in any capacity whatsoever – even if that awareness meant that some politically incorrect decisions would have to be taken by those in power to maintain and reinforce national security.

I spoke of the need to halt Moslem immigration and the building of new mosques, the need to monitor existing mosques, and the need to remove Moslems from positions of power in local and national government, the police, military, judiciary and educational infrastructure, primarily because of the divinely-commanded duty of every Moslem to promote Islam at the expense of the non-believer at every opportunity.

At the end of the forty-five minute interview there was a stunned silence from the SO-15 counter-terrorism officers. “You seem to know an awful lot more about Islam than all the other people – including Moslems – that we have talked to in recent months,” said Dave, “maybe we could talk to you again once you are on the outside in a couple of weeks?”

“Sure,” I said, “no problem.” But they never followed it up. They did telephone me a few weeks later to claim that they had been called away on a more pressing engagement  – would I mind very much if they postponed or cancelled their visit?

I could sympathise with the myriad priorities that the officers of SO-15 would have to deal with. Perhaps Anjem Choudary, locked away up the road in Belmarsh, urgently needed somebody to clip his toenails.

Or – perhaps – his wife, on the outside, urgently needed assistance with the collection of some heavy shopping from Harrods (the exclusive department store) on account of her having mislaid her burqa and being unable to leave the house.

Anyway, I digress.

On the day of the visit from my three friends, having been kitted out in the aforementioned purple and yellow vest, and having been signed in to the secure fingerprint recognition system, I was allocated a table number and was led to the seating area where my three visitors were waiting.

It seemed to me as if I had never met three more beautiful human beings in my entire life. When you have been incarcerated behind bars for almost six weeks then you really appreciate the company of people who share your worldview, and Karen, Chris and Margita were together and separately the epitome of human kindness.

And I’m not just saying that because they bought coffee for me – proper vending machine coffee too (supposedly meant for visitors only) and not the ersatz coffee supplied as standard for consumption by prisoners.

When I say this, I don’t wish to cause unnecessary offence to the no doubt highly respected purveyors of coffee granules to the prison population of the UK. And I suppose at the end of the day I should have been grateful – I could have been restricted to a bread and water diet with the odd tin of tuna thrown in. But if they could have chosen something that tasted a bit more like coffee and a bit less like second-hand grit from the bottom of a budgie cage, then I’m sure it would have been met with much appreciation.

I sipped at my vending-machine coffee. Nectar from the Gods would not have tasted any better. We talked about all the things leading up to my trial, the trial itself and my subsequent imprisonment. I tried to make light of it but I started to get quite emotional, which is something that doesn’t often happen to me.

I don’t remember everything that I said, but in the heat of the moment I do remember kissing each of my visitors on the cheek several times more than I should have under the circumstances.

This produced a variety of interesting responses.

Karen was a beautiful young lady with blue / grey eyes that looked straight into your soul. She had a flawless facial complexion that could have come straight from a Chanel cosmetic advertisement, and as she was being subjected to my unwarranted attentions, she blushed fetchingly. I loved it.

Chris was a retired insurance underwriter and a professional musician. He was a quiet and thoughtful man, as straight as a die and around the same age as myself, which probably explained why he spluttered profusely at my thoroughly inappropriate exhibition of tactile enthusiasm.

Margita (who was married to Chris) seemed to take it all in her stride. As a college teacher (and as another strikingly beautiful woman with a soft and sexy Eastern European accent) she was no doubt used to having to fend off the attentions of randy old reprobates like me.

I’m sure that under different circumstances, all three of them would have reported me for sexual harassment. I only had a week to go before my release date, but I remember that I was ecstatic that these three wonderful people had taken time out of their busy day to visit me.

You know who you are, and I will love you for always.

The visit ended, and I was escorted out of the visiting area, across the courtyard back to the Category C block, and from there to my cell. The door clicked shut behind me with an air of finality, and I was alone once again with my thoughts.

Tim Burton

End of Chapter 11

Please donate – whatever you can – to the Tim Burton Legal Defence Fund

Help to overturn an unjust conviction and strike a blow for justice.

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 A Mohammedan in the Nick

Foreword: All chapters of Pigeon on the Wing published on this website are in draft form only. The final version may include grammatical, syntax and content changes, as well as sidebars and illustrations to maintain a level of interest and to stop readers’ eyes from glazing over. All comments and / or criticisms of content or writing style would be most welcome. Masterpieces like this don’t just write themselves, you know.

Seriously, though – this is your book just as much as it is mine. I couldn’t have even begun to write it without all of your help and support. Thank you so much for everything you have done for me, and I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Tim Burton

Pigeon on the Wing – Chapter 10 – A Mohammedan in the Nick

Thursday 25 May 2017 – I was settling in to my new life on the wing of Category C block in HMP Thameside. It was Thursday morning, and I had assumed my accustomed position in the communal area, hunched over a chess-board whilst drinking a lukewarm mug of tea – courtesy of the hot tap in my cell (in the absence of a dedicated desktop plug-in water heating device.)

The absence of such a device, (a.k.a. an electric kettle) while not exactly leaving me disgruntled, was leaving me far from being completely gruntled, and I had been debating with myself for a couple of days about whether or not to lodge a complaint with my Trip Advisor representative.

No doubt he would have told me that kettles occupied a similar position on the HMP Thameside scale of desirable accoutrements as co-axial TV leads, Tasmanian alligator feathers and the excrement of rocking-horses. I surmised that it was just one of those things I would have to put up with.

In the meantime I was simultaneously contemplating my next move against an opponent with all the charisma and chess-board skills of a village idiot on his day off. He had left his king exposed in a fool’s-mate position, a basic error that was about to cost him dearly.

All of a sudden, a Mohammedan hove into view from the other end of the communal area. I noticed that he seemed to be heading in my direction.

This particular Mohammedan looked as though he was trying extremely hard to win the “HMP Thameside Devout Mohammedan of the Year” award, and I felt that his appearance warranted further examination.

He was in the possession of a large bushy black beard reaching halfway down his chest, which made him look like a Pakistani version of Father Christmas, but without the red suit and the accompanying jovial ho-ho-ho disposition.

He was wearing a multi-coloured prayer cap which looked as though it had been made in a kaleidoscope factory by an over-zealous operative who had just been told that silver glitter was all the rage this year, and who had been instructed to spare no expense in the manufacturing process.

The final touch was a long khaki-coloured djellaba reaching down to his ankles – an ensemble which contrasted fetchingly with his olive-green fur-lined parka jacket and matching olive-green socks and fur-lined slippers.

Most tellingly, he also had the notorious terrorist instruction manual – in the form of a green and gold hard-backed Koran – tucked under his arm.

Yes, I thought, that was definitely a one hundred per cent stove-enamelled, copper-bottomed, dyed-in-the-wool Mohammedan without the shadow of a doubt.

He bore down on me with all the unnerving accuracy of an incoming Exocet missile zooming in on an unsuspecting squirrel. I braced myself for the worst. Just because someone sports a natty matching parka, socks and slippers combination, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you, and in prison it is a good idea to be on the alert and to prepare accordingly.

Never let it be said that life in prison makes you paranoid about such things.

“Hey Grand-Dad,” he said – which I had found was the standard greeting for anyone over the age of 60 in the prison – “My name is Rohani. Can you help me with my English language homework? I hear you’re good at this. We need to complete all the tasks before my personal liaison officer visits next week, insh’allah.”

Word of my proficiency in the assessment process while I had been in the Category B section of the prison was something that had obviously spread quickly. However, something about his opening statement intrigued me.

“Personal liaison officer?” I thought. How come I didn’t have a “personal liaison officer”? I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was one rule for some people and another rule for others in the prison system. It was almost as if there was a privileged group of inmates whose demands and needs took priority over the rest of the prison population.

Surely not, I hear you say. What group would that be, I wonder?

Now it would seem that “personal liaison officers” could be added to this ever-growing list. No wonder conversions to Islam in prison were on the rise. If it had not been for the beguiling attractions of the young ladies of the South East London Gospel Choir (who were currently playing a starring role in the overnight maintenance of my nocturnal fantasies) then I could easily see how a conversion to the satanic world of Islam might be worth a try.

Only kidding. I am not so easily persuaded. It would take far more than the prospect of my own Personal Liaison Officer for me to convert to a genocidal totalitarian ideology with global ambitions of supremacy.

Even the prospect of seventy-two virgins in Paradise wouldn’t be enough. I am sure that most Mohammedans don’t realise that seventy-two virgins imply the additional prospect of seventy-two potential mothers-in-law, ready to nag you for all eternity if you don’t keep the house tidy, make sure that the lawn is mowed regularly and the hedges are kept neatly trimmed.

     Islamic Paradise

However, the delights of Islam obviously do appeal to many prison inmates. For example, it is not unknown for self-declared Mohammedans to enjoy a raft of extra privileges in British prisons, such as halal meals, extra time out of one’s cell for communal prayer on a Friday, and even (in some of the more progressive prisons) toilets orientated to face away from Mecca on the grounds that if Mohammedans knowingly defecate while facing Mecca then it would be the first step on a slippery slope to eternal damnation.

The metaphor “slippery slope” is probably not the most tactful one to use in such a context, but I am sure that you know what I mean.

While such privileges are no doubt meant to assuage religious sensitivities, it only encourages the Mohammedan community to consider themselves as superior to the rest of us mere mortals. Unfortunately this ridiculous notion is reinforced by the teachings in Islamic texts – such as Koran 3:110 – where Mohammedans are informed that they are “the best of people.”

That would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. Since when did the ideology of Islam produce people superior to any others on this planet, when even a casual glance at the statistics available reveals that in every country where the ideology of Mohammed holds sway, the inhabitants of that country are right at the bottom of virtually every measurable yardstick of success?

If the teachings of Koran 3:110 were not bad enough, another verse – Koran 98:6 –  informs Mohammedans that non-believers are “the worst of creatures.” Apologists for Islam frequently argue that this doesn’t apply to each and every non-believer, only to those who reject Islam, “even though they know it to be the one true religion” – which of course is nothing more than sophistry.

Sophistry, the use of clever but false arguments, with the specific intention of deceiving the unwary, are meat and drink to Mohammedans when it comes to defending Islam in front of non-believers. I know this from my own personal experiences leading up to the Birmingham Taqiyya Trial in April 2014. (See Chapter 6.)

All things considered, I was grateful that I had made the decision to keep the real reason for my detention to myself. A conviction for Religiously Aggravated Harassment might be somewhat complicated to explain to a devout Mohammedan, and I didn’t want to generate any unnecessary ill-feeling whilst confined inside the enclosed space of HMP Thameside.

I glanced down at the chess-board. The fool’s mate gambit would have to wait. I murmured my apologies to my opponent, and moved over to another table to sit opposite Rohani.

“So, you’re the Pigeon, eh?” said Rohani. “I have heard about you from my friends. You blow pigeons apart with a .44 Magnum, eh? Or was it a .50 Barrett? Like Dirty Harry, insh’allah. Maybe I should call you Dirty Harry.”

I wasn’t about to enlighten him concerning the limitations of my armoury. This was because my trusty .22 air rifle was nowhere near approaching the capabilities of a .44 Magnum or indeed a .50 Barrett (with its 2800 FPS muzzle velocity and effective range of over 2000 yards, it is obviously the ideal weapon for discouraging our feathered friends from nesting under the roof panels, and I had resolved to save up for one after I had been released.) “Oh yes,” I said nonchalantly, “no pigeon is safe from me and my .44 Magnum. Do you feel lucky, punk?”

I pointed my fingers at him and with my best Clint Eastwood impression, mimed the action of a hammer being pulled back on a .44 Magnum. It was obviously a good impression as far as impressions go.

Rohani regarded me impassively for a moment and then smiled broadly.

“Ha-ha! You and your famous British sense of humour! You and me are now good friends, yes? Now you can help me with this homework. I have to atone for my sins, insh’allah.”

Rohani’s homework was indeed an act of atonement. It comprised a series of questions relating to his offences of car-jacking a few months earlier. It was obviously designed to appeal to the conscience of a wrong-doer.

There was of course – implicit in this process – the premise within the prison homework questionnaire that the conscience of a Mohammedan was identical to the conscience of a non-believer. This is not necessarily true and is a frankly dangerous supposition which is, in my humble opinion,  at the root of many if not all the differences, fallacies and misapprehensions between  Mohammedans and non-believers. They simply do not think the same way as we do, which is – without a doubt – due to the teachings of the Koran and the Islamic Prophet Mohammed.

This was not something I was about to point out to Rohani at this time. In my experience, Mohammedans for the most part do not take kindly to points of view that may disagree with the Koran or indeed disagree with the views or the behaviour of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed, no matter how heinous such views and behaviour may be to those of us brought up with the honest and decent traditions of our Judaeo-Christian heritage.

I looked over Rohani’s homework and started to read out some questions.

Question 1 – “Describe how your victims must have felt when you attacked them in the street and stole their vehicle.”

Rohani: “Yeah, I suppose they might have been a bit upset. But then that’s infidels for you. Serves them right for having a posh motor though, innit. ”

Me: “No, Rohani, Moslem or not, they were more than likely extremely traumatised. It isn’t nice having your prized possessions taken away from you by a knife-wielding psychopath.”

Rohani: “Oh. Yes. Right. I suppose.”

Question 2 – “Describe how your family must have felt when you were arrested for your crimes.”

Rohani: “Yeah, well, they probably thought I was a chip off the old block. My dad was a senior commander in the Taliban, you know. He could shoot the eye out of a chicken at fifty paces. My mum was always telling him off about that. She needed those chickens for the eggs to sell at the market.”

Me: “No, Rohani, as Moslems living in the West, they would have been extremely ashamed that you had failed to live up to the high standards expected of a well-integrated law-abiding citizen in a civilised democracy.”

Rohani: “Oh. Yes. Right. I suppose.”

Question 3 – “Describe what you would do if you were faced with the same situation in the future.”

Rohani: “Yeah, well I would try harder not to get caught, wouldn’t I?”

Me: “No, Rohani, you would have seen the error of your ways and resolved to be a good citizen in the future by not stealing from other innocent law-abiding citizens, Moslems or not, and by making amends to your victims.”

Rohani: “Oh. Yes. Right. I suppose – I suppose we had better be writing this down. My personal liaison officer will want to see this. Please write it down for me. You want a Kit-Kat?” He held out a chocolate bar in front of me. He obviously felt that I was easily bribed.

I sighed inwardly. This was going to be hard work. I could see that he was expecting me to be his personal scribe. To be fair, Rohani’s handwriting and grasp of written English left something to be desired. Not to mention his moral compass.

“What did you do with these vehicles that you car-jacked?” I asked. “You obviously wouldn’t be able to keep them for any length of time.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Rohani. “My first cousin makes a good living churning out forged documents and cloned number plates – and my uncle has a chop shop in Bradford where you can get pretty much any car part that you might want.”

“Not only that,” he said, warming to his theme, “top-end Range Rovers and Jaguars fetch a fortune in the Middle East, where they are not so fussy about the paperwork. They are ever so easy to steal and disguise. I just change the plates and drive them to a container ship in Hull, where – ”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, “you have a relative who is a container ship captain. And another one who is a Customs Officer, perhaps?”

Rohani smiled at me, a big gap-toothed smile full of innocence. “I suppose some people might say that I shouldn’t have got involved, but it’s all part of the family business. In Islam, family is everything.”

He continued, “And it was great fun! So much fun! The expressions on the infidels’ faces when I held a knife to their throats and threatened to behead them!  And of course I only ever stole cars from infidels, which is the most important thing, insh’allah.”

He uttered the last words with some trepidation, and glanced behind him, as if half-expecting to see the archangel Gabriel himself standing there, a frown etched into his brow and his wings gently rustling in disapproval as he thumbed through a sheaf of paperwork relating to a dodgy Range Rover.

Or worse still, a Range Rover that had mistakenly been taken from an innocent Mohammedan – which would have been in dire contradiction, naturally, of the numerous edicts concerning Range Rovers and other top-end vehicles that had been handed down by Allah over the centuries and subsequently incorporated into the Koran.

I was reminded of yet another verse that never made it into the Koran, having allegedly been written down on a palm leaf and eaten by a goat in the seventh century:- “O ye who believe! Never steal a camel from another Moslem, because he is your brother. But verily, the camel of the infidel is yours to do with what you will. And one day that camel will have air conditioning, adjustable suspension and reclining seats, and you will be at ease while the infidel gnashes his teeth and walks upon the desert sands.”

Oh well, that’s OK then, I thought. That’s the most important thing. No Moslems had been harmed during the execution of these crimes. I could definitely see Rohani being a productive member of society when he was finally released. All things considered, I felt it was my civic duty to help him.

Not only that, but I felt that it was right to show some compassion. I could see that Rohani had been to Hull and back.

In any case, you never know when you might end up needing a particularly hard-to-come-by distributor cap for a Ferrari. Or more likely, a set of tasty alloy wheels and tyres and some furry dice to hang from the rear-view mirror of a souped-up Ford Fiesta. Last but not least, helping Rohani with answering the questions in his English Language homework wasn’t entirely without its compensations.

A day or so later, there was a knock on my cell door. It was association time and the cell doors had been unlocked a few moments previously. A familiar face appeared.

“You want a kettle?” said Rohani, looking around my cell and expertly assessing my electrical appliances – or lack thereof. “I can get you a kettle.”

Tim Burton

End of Chapter 10

Please donate – whatever you can – to the Tim Burton Legal Defence Fund

Help to overturn an unjust conviction and strike a blow for justice.

http://www.paypal.me/followthecat

   A New Wing for the Pigeon

Foreword: All chapters of Pigeon on the Wing published on this website are in draft form only. The final version may include grammatical, syntax and content changes, as well as sidebars and illustrations to maintain a level of interest and to stop readers’ eyes from glazing over. All comments and / or criticisms of content or writing style would be most welcome. Masterpieces like this don’t just write themselves, you know.

Seriously, though – this is your book just as much as it is mine. I couldn’t have even begun to write it without all of your help and support. Thank you so much for everything you have done for me, and I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Tim Burton

Pigeon on the Wing – Chapter 9 – A New Wing for the Pigeon

Monday 22 May 2017 – A couple of days after my assessment in English Language, Mathematics and Computer Skills, I was approached by a prison officer as I was preparing for another exciting, fun-filled day on the wing. I have heard it said that being in prison is like being in a combat zone with the army – long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of terror.

It’s not a perfect analogy of course – for example, I hadn’t as yet been issued with my own sniper rifle, nor indeed had I yet been enrolled on a high explosives handling course, but I dare say that the Howard League for Penal Reform would be addressing these very issues as I write.

Maintaining prisoners’ morale is a high priority for the HLPR, and I am sure that a series of courses based on the correct handling of small arms, heavy machine guns and high explosives would have an overall positive effect on the mental well-being of most prisoners.

To be fair, the officers at HMP Thameside appeared to be working diligently to reduce the possibilities of boredom setting in, at least during “times of association” when prisoners were allowed out of their cells. My cell-mate John was in the prison gym and pumping iron, and I was halfway through a game of chess with another inmate in the communal area.

The prison officer said to me, “Get your stuff together. You’re moving.”

I thought for a moment. “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked. I had got used to the prison routine and there didn’t seem to be any immediate threats to my well-being, but perhaps someone had complained that I was winning too many games of chess.

Was I likely to be thrown into solitary confinement with only bread to eat and water to drink until the end of my sentence? Or had someone at the RSPB – the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – been pulling strings to have me transferred to a “Cat A” prison with the other pigeon murderers?

The nearest Category A prison was HMP Belmarsh, just up the road from where I was in HMP Thameside. It wasn’t all bad news, if that were to be the case. Maybe I could get the “Mad Mullah”- Anjem Choudary – to sign my autograph book. He was currently cooling his heels in Belmarsh, serving a five-and-a-half year sentence for glorifying terrorism. A signature from him in my autograph book would definitely earn me some brownie points at the next meeting of the Sutton Coldfield Wheel-Tappers and Shunters Club.

“We’re moving you to Cat C,” said the officer, “be ready in five minutes.” On hearing this, I was somewhat relieved. Category C was one step down in terms of serious crime and psychopathic behaviour from Category B, and while it was not exactly a five-star upgrade to my current circumstances, the chances were that it wouldn’t be any worse.

“Do you know why I’m being moved?” I asked.

“No idea. Orders.”

I was later to find out that Paul Weston, the chairman of Liberty GB, the organisation of which I had been Radio Officer, had written in no uncertain terms to the Governor of HMP Thameside, reminding him of his duty of care towards vulnerable prisoners such as myself.

By vulnerable, I don’t mean physically or mentally weak – many years of studying the Japanese martial art of Aikido had toughened me up to the point where I could probably handle any sort of one-on-one confrontation – but the risk of large numbers of Mohammedans ganging up on me if the true nature of my conviction were discovered had obviously given the Governor pause for thought.

It would not look good for public relations if I were to be harassed – not to mention brutally slaughtered, systematically dismembered and turned into kebab meat for the benefit of the local Mohammedan prison population.

Picture the scene. A gaggle of Mohammedan prisoners are sitting around a makeshift barbecue pit in the exercise area during a summer evening. Flies buzz around, quietly murmuring as the sun sinks below the horizon. A row of kebabs is being gently grilled, hissing and sputtering over the flames.

A guttural voice is heard, swelling amongst the sound of the insects as Arabic music plays in the background. “I must say, Abdul, the kebab meat is especially tender this evening. It has the texture of soft yet succulent lamb, or perhaps camel. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”

“Oh yes, my friend, it is indeed especially tender this evening. Praise be to Allah, for he works in mysterious ways. Oh, look, there’s an eyeball. It seems to be regarding us with a somewhat reproachful expression.”

I scooped my belongings together into a large prison-issue polythene bag and was escorted out of the Category B prison block by two prison officers through an interminable series of imposing metal doors which were mysteriously unlocked as I approached and then locked again behind me.

Prison officers must spend years choreographing this seamless operation, although I never tested it to the point where they might be persuaded to unlock the main door leading to the outside of the prison. I thought that there would be little point pushing my luck at this stage in the process.

However, I made a mental note to recommend the officers as candidates for the forthcoming series of Strictly Come Door-Unlocking, an innovative TV entertainment series that I had invented during idle hours of reverie, and which I intended to host once I was released. In my mind’s eye, it would have all the attributes of a hit TV show, a cross between Strictly Come Dancing and Prison Break, but with more sequins and less of the brutal on-screen slaughter. I think that the officers of HMP Thameside would win it hands down.

I was led across the prison grounds, past the football field and the prison garden to another prison block, virtually identical in appearance to the one I had just left. I half expected to see a welcoming party with balloons, party poppers and signs on sticks saying “You made it! Welcome to Category C!” but I was sadly disappointed. They might have at least baked me a cake.

The prison officers who had escorted me to the new block handed me over to another two prison officers. I hadn’t been handcuffed or shackled, but obviously they weren’t going to take any chances with a hardened pigeon murderer like myself. A large sheaf of paperwork changed hands. One of the new officers scrutinised the paperwork carefully.

“Let’s see. Oh, yes, Burton. You’ll be in a cell on your own.” I still wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Did this mean solitary confinement? Apparently not. “Doors locked at 6:00 p.m. Open again at 7:45 a.m. for medication. Other than that you can use the communal area apart from lock-up and roll-call between 12:00 and 14:00. You’re not going to cause us any trouble, are you?”

Trouble? Moi? “I sincerely promise to be on my best behaviour, officer.” The officer regarded me with a certain degree of wariness. “Is that right? Follow me, then.”

I was led to a cell on D-wing in the Category C block and the door was locked behind me. I surveyed my new surroundings for a moment or two. Not so very different from the Category B cell I had just vacated, I thought. On the desk in the corner was a battered-looking computer terminal, comprising of a screen, keyboard and mouse, which I had by now established was for use as an ordering system for meals and for general prison enquiries such as arranging library visits and medical requests.

The terminal also doubled as a TV, and it was perched precariously on the desk in the corner of the cell, next to four or five dog-eared hard-back books from the prison library. There was a single bunk (with the obligatory thin blue mattress and a pile of soiled bedding, presumably left behind by the previous inmate) and an open cupboard with shelves for personal belongings.

For ablutions, there was an en-suite shower area, toilet and hand basin. There was only one chair, which prompted me to note that it was going to make it difficult if I wanted to host any dinner parties in my cell. For that matter, there was a distinct lack of candelabra, napkins and wine glasses.

But most importantly, there was no kettle in the cell. This was going to be a problem. If I wanted to offer any of my guests tea or coffee I would have to make do with lukewarm water from the hot tap. Still, worse things happen at sea, I thought, and I started to unpack my belongings.

I reached into my polythene prison bag and extracted my precious co-axial cable. I plugged it in to the TV system and it immediately burst into life. It had apparently been pre-tuned for the mainstream TV channels! No more having to negotiate for the acquisition of a TV remote control with a chronically sex-starved TV maintenance man! Things were looking up.

I switched to the DVD box-set channel. There was Series 1-4 of “Line of Duty” (a gritty and realistic police detective drama series.) Hey, not bad at all! Better than Prison Break by a long chalk. I could get used to this! And indeed, for the duration of my sentence, whenever I had nothing else to occupy me, I would watch the entire box set many times over, to the point where I could recite verbatim what words the characters were going to say before they actually said them.

I don’t want you to think that this was all I had to do with my time. Over the next few weeks, I spent as much time as was allowed in the prison library and I tried to play as many games of chess as I could each day. In addition, I tried to set aside at least two hours a day for meditation – my Aikido training had acclimatised me to an hour every morning and every evening, and the hours of enforced solitude in my cell contributed immensely to the transition to a meditative state at those times.

Aikido meditation is a technique that is for everyone, not just for martial art enthusiasts. It is definitely worth cultivating as it brings long-term benefits to the average human frame. It simply involves positioning your body into a comfortable (and preferably kneeling or seated) relaxed stance, and then focusing on taking a series of deep, regular breaths until your mind drifts away from your immediate surroundings.

Once you have your breath under control – maybe four breath cycles in and out every minute, one every fifteen seconds or so, after about five or ten minutes your mind enters a different phase – and you start to leave behind material concerns and to be more open to contemplating a veritable wealth of abstract concepts, such as life, death and the meaning of the universe.

An hour or so of Aikido meditation really does bring with it a more positive outlook on life, no matter what your immediate circumstances may be, and I found it to be of immense help to me over the subsequent days and weeks, which at this moment appeared to be stretching interminably ahead.

I know this sounds weird, but it’s true. Don’t take my word for it. Try it and see. I highly recommend it. But if it doesn’t work for you then please don’t sue me, or send round a bunch of heavies to teach me the error of my ways.

As my Aikido teacher used to say – You may not be, at least at the moment, completely in tune with your spiritual side. My advice to you is to persevere.

There is a Buddhist saying – “When the student is ready, then the teacher will appear.”

(I remember pulling this very statement out of a Christmas cracker and reading it out in front of the family over a turkey dinner, when admittedly there was a high degree of inebriation and a certain lack of philosophical awareness around the table. The response was along the lines of – “That can’t be right! The teacher should be in the classroom waiting for the students to arrive!”)

Sometimes you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.

The communal area was very similar to the Category B environment I had left behind, although over time I did notice that the Category C prisoners seemed more relaxed than those in Category B. There was very little aggressive confrontation between prisoners and guards, or between the prisoners themselves as far as I could see.

However, I reminded myself to be aware of the possible dangers from the Mohammedan population of around ten to fifteen per cent (as far as I could ascertain) in the Category C environment of HMP Thameside. It only needed one leak of the real reason behind my criminal conviction to the general prison population and I could be in real trouble.

I finished unpacking, left my cell and sat down at one of the communal tables with a chess-board in front of me. I had found that simply doing this was enough to pique the interest of at least a few of the chess aficionados on the wing. Sure enough, scenting new blood, a steady trickle of prisoners introduced themselves and challenged me to a series of chess games.

My chess-playing skills were still at a comparatively high level and over the next few days I managed to chalk up a respectable number of victories. Not too respectable though, it never does for the “new boy” to appear too clever, something I had learned early on in my life while growing up and attending a typically middle-class English grammar school.

I remember one such “new boy”, Watkins Minor, who had been transferred to our school during the course of Year Six. He was a rotund, bespectacled boy with a mop of blond hair, and he appeared determined to demonstrate his superiority to the rest of us by coming top in all the school activities he participated in.

No doubt he felt that by demonstrating such superiority, reminiscent of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias – “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” it would stand him in good stead during his remaining school years and earn him our undying admiration.

However, in the manner of most healthy pre-teenage boys with a sense of social justice in what was a typically middle-class English grammar school of the 1960s, we systematically disabused him of that notion with the standard school punishment of tarring and feathering, and then tying him up and locking him with a bicycle chain to the apple tree in the garden outside the school staff room.

Admittedly he was somewhat subdued for a few days after that, but I still maintain to this day that we probably did him a favour by teaching him such a valuable lesson so early in life.

All in all, “Category C” life in HMP Thameside had much to recommend it. I wouldn’t say that I would be sorry to leave at the end of my sentence, but I resolved to upgrade the facilities to at least a three-star rating on the travel site Trip Advisor.

Trip Advisor representative: “So, Mr Burton, how do you rate the facilities of Category C at HMP Thameside?”

Me: “To be honest, I did notice some dust on the top of my wardrobe. It was only faintly detectable on the outside of my white glove, but it was definitely there. And the sheets on the bed should have been changed prior to my arrival. Other than that I would give it three stars.”

Damn. I forgot to mention the lack of a kettle. But it was too late. The Trip Advisor representative (figuratively speaking) had left the cell, the door had been locked behind him, and there was the gradually diminishing sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, faintly reverberating until all that I could hear was the sound of silence.

Tim Burton

End of Chapter 9

Please donate – whatever you can – to the Tim Burton Legal Defence Fund

Help to overturn an unjust conviction and strike a blow for justice.

http://www.paypal.me/followthecat

     Assessment time

Foreword: All chapters of Pigeon on the Wing published on this website are in draft form only. The final version may include grammatical, syntax and content changes, as well as sidebars and illustrations to maintain a level of interest and to stop readers’ eyes from glazing over. All comments and / or criticisms of content or writing style would be most welcome. Masterpieces like this don’t just write themselves, you know.

Seriously, though – this is your book just as much as it is mine. I couldn’t have even begun to write it without all of your help and support. Thank you so much for everything you have done for me, and I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Tim Burton

Pigeon on the Wing – Chapter 8 – Assessment Time

Friday 12th May 2017 – It was now fourteen days since I had been taken from the Inner London Crown Court and transported to HMP Thameside – aka the “Thameside Hilton.” During that time I had been introduced to the rules and regulations of Her Majesty’s Prisons, and I had got to know a considerable number of inmates on my prison wing. The fact that I was interested in chess certainly helped when it came to making friends – men don’t just get together and talk about each others’ feelings in the same way women do – an external mechanism for bonding is essential, and playing chess on a regular basis allows for bonding to take place without all the touchy-feely stuff that most men would run a mile from.

No doubt I will be inundated with letters of criticism from hundreds of men out there who are more in touch with their feminine side than I am – but please feel free to continue to write in, as I have been informed that cheap writing paper, when shredded, makes excellent cat litter for Damian (a very particular and discriminating feline of my acquaintance.) I will have more to say about Damian later as his political opinions are apparently even more forthright than mine. An’ that’s sayin’ summat, as they say in Yorkshire.

In my two weeks behind bars, I had become used to the quirks and vagaries of the prison system to the extent that I was now considered to be an “old lag” – able to dispense solemn advice to some of the new inmates who, surprisingly enough, seemed to materialise out of nowhere every day.

I was able to explain the intricacies of the menu system – whereby prisoners could order their food for the week through a computer system based on fingerprint recognition – and I could show them how to select TV programs through their in-cell entertainment centre.

(I should mention that I was determined to make a concerted effort to stay away from dispensing advice on how to obtain illegal and contraband items. One could get into serious trouble for that, and leaving aside my recently acquired criminal conviction, I was keen to cultivate my image among the other prisoners as an exceptionally law-abiding criminal. Well, perhaps not too law-abiding. In the Thameside Hilton, that could land you in just as much trouble. Suffice it to say that my recipes for extracting the methanol from popular brands of boot-polish via six slices of Warburton’s finest were now proving very popular.)

Eat your heart out, Nigella Lawson.

I use the phrase “entertainment-centre” loosely – the premise for the successful operation of the system was that you required a co-axial lead to connect to the back of the TV in your cell and for it to be set up in such a way that it was able to receive signals from the ether and display them on your TV. The first challenge was that the co-axial leads were in very short supply.

(When I say “in short supply” I mean somewhere on the HMP inmates’ spectrum between gold dust, hens’ teeth and the pubic hair of expectant unicorns.)

I was advised that if I were to acquire such a co-axial lead, then I should keep it secreted about my person, otherwise it would most likely disappear and be squirreled away by one of the other inmates at the first opportunity. Apparently – whisper it quietly! – there were some acquisitive, thieving and downright dishonest persons on our wing.

Shock-horror, I hear you say! Surely not! But yes, there were indeed some inmates who would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, and that included TV co-axial leads from their fellow prisoners. As an aside, I was to find that it also included electric kettles. (More about that later.)

The second challenge was tuning the TV in. This required the services of an inmate who was in the possession of a remote control unit. In my case, I had to bet on the outcome of a chess game with the appropriate inmate in order to acquire a co-axial cable and to get him to tune my TV in to the available channels. This was relatively easy for me because I was quite good at chess.

I don’t know what sacrifices the other inmates might have had to make to acquire a co-axial lead and the use of a remote control unit, but I’m sure some of them ended up in transactions that might not be considered prim and proper (or even hygienic) by one’s maiden aunt. Anyway, I digress.

Having tuned in the TV, then next challenge was to select a channel to watch. In addition to the standard mainstream TV and satellite channels, there were two prison-operated DVD channels in operation 24 hours a day. You could say this was a mixed blessing. I use that phrase because the only DVDs available during my first two weeks were box sets of “Prison Break.”

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Believe it or not, the last thing you want when faced with a substantial period of incarceration is a DVD box set based on the premise that if you don’t break out of prison using the most violent means available to you then you are likely to die a horrible death at the hands of mobsters and psychopaths. Someone in charge of the DVD media administration at HMP Thameside obviously had a warped sense of humour.

During the first two weeks, there were numerous assessments carried out, mostly by nubile young women who seemed to have been selected for their sexual attractiveness in order to remind inmates of what they were missing. Now I may be mistaken on this last point, because when, as a man, you have been thrown against your will into an all-male environment for any length of time, then any female  who is possessed of a pulse and who does not display any outward signs of debilitating illnesses such as leprosy starts to look sexually attractive.

In fact I’m not sure that even leprosy would have put me off after two weeks of enforced celibacy. Although I think I would have to draw the line at the prospect of the object of my desire not having a pulse.

I do have some principles, after all. As the famous comedian Groucho Marx once remarked – “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them – well, I have others.”

I remember my first assessment well. A prison officer poked his head around my cell door one morning and announced that my presence was required outside. Could I possibly make myself respectable and meet my assessor at a table in the communal area outside my cell, if I would be so kind?

As I recall, his actual words were – “Oi, Burton, you’ve got a visitor. Get yer bleedin’ arse out here NOW.” They don’t mince words at HMP Thameside.

I duly obliged and sat down with a buxom brunette who looked as though she was on day release from the Cheltenham Academy for Exceedingly Demure Young Ladies. She had an cultured and refined accent, a face which was the very epitome of health and beauty, and a figure that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Milan catwalk – or at the very least, sprawled lasciviously in a skimpy bikini across the bonnet of my Ferrari – perhaps after I had loaned it out to Jeremy Clarkson for an episode of Top Gear.

I’m joking, of course. I would never loan out my Ferrari to Jeremy Clarkson. Not after he punched that Irish chef for not cooking his steak correctly. I am most definitely not a fan of culinary-related violence.

“So how are they treating you?” she purred. “Can I ask you a few questions? Are you suffering from any ailments? Allergies? Are you addicted to drink, drugs or any form of narcotics? How is your food? Have you any complaints that are not being addressed?”

She ticked off various boxes on a sheet of paper on her clipboard as I gave her my answers. The question about having allergies, I was to find, formed an indispensable part of any questionnaire in the prison system.

Strangely enough, due to my medical history over the previous three or four years, I had found that it formed an indispensable part of any questionnaire within the National Health Service as well. Here is an example:

Doctor: “Well, Mr. Burton, if you could just stop bleeding for a moment, get your epilepsy and heart attack under control, and stop throwing up while we retrieve your severed limbs from the floor of the ambulance, I need to ask you if you have any allergies. Hay fever is particularly prevalent at this time of year, and we wouldn’t want you to suffer unnecessarily.”

Maybe I’m just being oversensitive.

“Now that you mention it, Doctor, it turns out that I’m allergic to complete strangers continually asking me whether I am allergic to anything. I would advise you to stop it now before I grab you round the throat and throttle the life out of you before feeding your twitching carcass to the pigs.”

I have found that such witticisms were generally lost on the Mohammedan members of the medical profession. I have no idea why that might be. The Mohammedan sense of humour is perhaps not exactly the same as mine – which of course could explain why I had landed up here in the first place.

Anyway, the questions from of the Exceedingly Demure Young Lady from the Cheltenham Academy finally came to an end. I was quite sorry to see her go, really. She left me with the promise that she would be back for a further Educational Assessment within the next few days. Great. I couldn’t wait.

Maybe I could inveigle her into smuggling a cake into the prison with a file in it? Or persuade her to take my place in the cell while I dressed up as a washerwoman and made my escape past the unsuspecting prison staff. Unfortunately the aforementioned prison staff seem to be alert to such ruses these days. Whoever would have thought that reading “The Wind in the Willows” was so essential for custodial effectiveness?

Sure enough, after a few days the Exceedingly Demure Young Lady was back, with another series of questions designed to establish my level of educational attainment. Now, having graduated from Wallington County Grammar School in a leafy Surrey suburb some forty-seven years previously – with a diploma for flicking ink-soaked paper pellets from a wooden ruler with a high degree of accuracy over a range of ten metres – I considered myself to be fairly high up on the educational spectrum, at least compared to some of the less fortunate members of the prison population.

“You’ll still have to go for an English Language, Mathematics and Computer Skills assessment next Saturday,” she said, “and it’s important that you do well. HMP Thameside prides itself on making sure that all inmates leave with the requisite skills to enable them to become productive members of society.”

Personally I would have thought that some courses in advanced computer hacking, crypto-currency fraud and loan-sharking techniques would have been more useful to me at my time of life, but I forbore from saying so just in case the powers-that-be had an opportunity to review my comments and to decide that my release in four or five weeks time would be inappropriate.

It’s a funny thing, but being in an environment with people who might well be eligible for Professorships in Advanced Criminality makes one unconscionably competitive, and I resolved to do as well as I could to achieve a respectable result in the forthcoming educational assessment.

The following Saturday I was directed to a classroom with another 15-20 old lags to undergo an English Language, Mathematics and Computer Skills assessment.  I took my place in front of a computer terminal. I noticed a sign above the screen that read “Anyone caught stealing a mouse will be punished with the loss of all inmate privileges.” Blimey, I thought, that’s a bit much. What was it about computer mice that would attract such a draconian punishment? I could envisage a possible scenario:

“OK Fingers, now remember we are going to steal 100,000 boxes of high-end computer mice from this warehouse. Ignore the substantial quantities of cocaine, heroin, high-powered military armaments and the squillions of forged 500-euro notes that are lying about unguarded. We might end up doing serious time in the nick if we get caught with that lot.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you boss? If they catch us with those computer mice they’ll throw away the key. Just let us keep the Class A drugs, the rocket-propelled grenades and the forged currency – and we can unload them onto Barry the Baptist at the Sutton Coldfield Sunday Market Stall without any risk and no questions asked.”

(Barry the Baptist was a familiar figure in the Sutton Coldfield underworld. Like his namesake in the film “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, his specialist subject was half-drowning recalcitrant debtors by holding their heads underwater until they paid up.)

In the event, my fears were unfounded. The English Language, Mathematics and Computer Skills assessment proved to be a doddle. I suppose being an IT consultant for the previous thirty years might have helped matters, as would having English as my native language and the ability to total up an invoice in my head and calculate the result while subtracting a discount and adding VAT. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so smug about it. There were a lot of people on the wing who didn’t have the first idea about such matters.

“You’ve passed.” the assessment supervisor informed me. “Not only that, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone in here scoring Level 3 (the highest level) in English Language, Mathematics and Computer Skills. You’re obviously destined for great things.”

I detected a certain amount of cynicism in his voice. Hardly surprising, I suppose, given that I was ostensibly in HMP Thameside as a serial pigeon killer. Opportunities for career advancement in that field were limited, to say the least.

“Great things” might just mean making it to the end of my sentence without being brutally murdered by any number of inmates who might secretly be lifelong members of the internationally feared assassination department of the notorious RSPB.

I needn’t have worried. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds doesn’t take any prisoners.

End of Chapter 8

Please donate – whatever you can – to the Tim Burton Legal Defence Fund

Help to overturn an unjust conviction and strike a blow for justice.

http://www.paypal.me/followthecat

    Zen (and other stuff)

Foreword: All chapters of Pigeon on the Wing published on this website are in draft form only. The final version may include grammatical, syntax and content changes, as well as sidebars and illustrations to maintain a level of interest and to stop readers’ eyes from glazing over. All comments and / or criticisms of content or writing style would be most welcome. Masterpieces like this don’t just write themselves, you know.

Seriously, though – this is your book just as much as it is mine. I couldn’t have even begun to write it without all of your help and support. Thank you so much for everything you have done for me, and I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Tim Burton

Pigeon on the Wing – Chapter 7 – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

It’s an odd thing, but the human mind is capable of adapting itself to drastically changing circumstances relatively quickly. Only a few days previously, I had been a free man, able to sample all the exotic delights of Birmingham on a whim, with no worries other than whether I would wake up with a moderate case of “Delhi Belly” after having consumed a dodgy Chicken Tikka Masala from the Balti House down the road on Churchill Parade.

Churchill Parade is an exotically named row of shops on our housing estate. It doesn’t include an insurance company with a nodding bulldog as its logo, but it does include an off licence, a newsagent, a pizza restaurant, chemist and the aforesaid Balti House, which passes for our local “haute cuisine” establishment. (There is also the Falcon Lodge Chippie, famous throughout the area for its doner kebabs and salmonella.)

As it was, I was now a convicted criminal, subject to Her Majesty’s Prisons’ rules and regulations, and severely constrained in what I could do over the next forty-two days in terms of just about everything, not just sampling the delights of the local takeaway, although that is still fairly high up my list of “Great Places To Visit in Sutton Coldfield.”

However, they do say that “stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage” and I was determined to make the most of my predicament and not to let it get me down too much. There are those who say that this is easier said than done, but there are techniques that one can employ to mitigate the circumstances in which one may find themselves embroiled from time to time.

The first thing to do is to accept the things over which you have no control. In my case, I had been sentenced to twelve weeks in prison, which meant that I would hopefully be released in six weeks with good behaviour. So, for the next forty-two days I would do my very best to stay out of trouble and to navigate my way through the unknown waters that lay ahead of me.

The second thing to do is to treat your situation as a positive learning experience, and this is what I endeavored to do over the next forty-two days. I won’t lie to you – there were times when I felt down, and it would be very easy to be crushed by the experience. The loss of control over one’s life and liberty can be very hard to deal with, and I could see that many of the other inmates exhibited signs of extreme stress during the time that I was there.

The presence of illegal drugs such as “spice” was an ever present problem throughout the prison, and although there were numerous posters on the prison notice boards warning against the use of this pernicious drug, there were many prisoners who had fallen under its spell. It was easy to get hold of – consignments of the drug were regularly thrown over prison walls or brought in by corrupt officers, and in some case by remotely-controlled drones flown directly to the cell windows of well-connected prisoners.

You could always tell a prisoner who was under the influence of “spice” – just think of the zombies in the TV series “The Walking Dead” and you have a very good idea of the effect that this drug has on the average prisoner. A blank-eyed stare, shambling gait, and an inability to engage with the world are just three of the symptoms apparent.

In addition, the drug poses a challenge to all those who would help prisoners under the influence. It has been described as worse than heroin in that it not only can it render the user unconscious and in risk of death extremely quickly, but the toxic atmosphere literally surrounding such a user can be easily inhaled and may affect the person tasked with trying to help to a similarly dangerous degree.

However, assuming that one is able to steer clear of dangerous narcotics and other psychoactive substances, there is actually plenty to focus on in order to develop a positive experience.

As you may recall, I was asked earlier by the prison authorities whether I identified as Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain, a Buddhist or a Baptist or a Jew (to paraphrase Bob Dylan in his song Universal Soldier) and I thought it would be prudent to identify as Christian, seeing as how that was how I had been brought up. Not that I was actually a practicing Christian, in fact I saw myself then (and still see myself now) as an agnostic – one who admits to the possibility of a higher power but not necessarily within the confines of organised religion.

So on the first Sunday of my incarceration, 30 April 2017, I found myself making my way to the meeting room designated as the place of Christian worship within the prison. All those identifying as Christian were called from their cells by the prison officers, lined up at the exit of the prison block, and marched around the vast open space that doubled as a running track and a football field to a prison block on the other side, where we were patted down, identities checked – and checked again – one by one, in order to experience the solemn and profound word of the Lord.

Well, that was an eye-opener.

I had no sooner made my way into the meeting room than I became aware of a tumultuous hubbub emanating from a crowd of inmates at the front of the room. This was obviously a very popular event, and the reason why soon became apparent.

At the front of the room, on a slightly raised platform, were the members of the South East London Gospel Choir, and boy, were they dressed to impress. Modesty forbids me from describing the short mini-skirts and the tight blouses of the half-dozen or so well-endowed young ladies on the platform, but they seemed to be proving a big hit with those who had taken the trouble to ensure that they were right at the front and able to make the most of the sights and sounds presented to them.

The young ladies of the South East London Gospel Choir proceeded to belt out an enthusiastic range of songs that had the inmates literally dancing on their chairs and in the aisles. I couldn’t fault them – they certainly knew how to appeal to their audience, to the extent that I could see the five or six prison officers who were supervising the event glancing at each other in apprehension. Was something going to kick off?

In the event, things passed off without major incident. One young Afro-Caribbean inmate fell off his chair after some particularly animated dancing and had to be carried to the First Aid room with a dodgy ankle, but other than that, the South East London Gospel Choir exuded a certain magic that I felt was almost entirely beneficial. I could certainly see how they would attract inmates to their cause.

It was around then that an earnest lady of around seventy-five or eighty years of age approached me after the South East London Gospel Choir had completed their last number. “Did you enjoy that?” she asked. I tentatively replied in the affirmative. “Have you ever considered giving yourself to Christ?” she continued. Talk about trading on heightened emotions. “Let’s just say I’m open to all possibilities,” I said, “and I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out at this point.”

This was her cue to unload a ton of religious literature on me, including a copy of the Bible and a tract entitled “How to Counter the Double Curse of Booze.” Well, given that booze was quite hard to come by in prison, unless you included straining melted boot polish through six slices of Warburton’s finest, I would have thought that countering the Double Curse of Booze was not of the highest priority when it came to advising prison inmates.

However, I was not about to upset someone who obviously felt very strongly about all the good works she was doing, so I simply murmured “Thank you” as she departed to foist her attentions on another unsuspecting prisoner.

On the way back I was struck by the magnificence of the Prison Garden – a cultivated area by the side of the football pitch. Someone – I dare say maybe many people over the years – had clearly put a lot of effort into developing a truly inspiring oasis of horticulture in an otherwise barren landscape. There were numerous exotic plants – although as a complete ignoramus in horticultural matters, I would have great difficulty in naming even a few of them – interspersed with vivid green bushes and trailing vines circumventing their way up a series of trellises to simulate a tropical environment. I leaned against the fence surrounding this vision of beauty for several minutes, and almost completely forgot about my oppressive surroundings.

Then there was a shout from one of the prison staff – “Oi! Burton! Get a bloody move on!” and I was transported back to the reality of my situation.

The reality was that for the next forty-two days I would be subject to Her Majesty’s rules and regulations, which on one level was perfectly true, but on another level I was freer to explore the limits of the capabilities of my mind. When one is subject to the mind-numbing routines of everyday life, it is quite difficult to “think outside of the box” and to develop patterns and lines of thought which can lead one to a higher stage of enlightenment.

Having a lot of time to oneself, on the other hand, as in prison, allows one to cultivate a Zen-like environment where every thought can be analysed and expanded upon to reach conclusions that would never (or hardly ever) be attainable during normal everyday life. I was reminded of another book that I had read in my early twenties, entitled “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M Pirsig.

When I first read this book I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the thoughts, concepts and emotions described therein, but having re-read it in recent years I am struck by the profound truths that it contains. Distilled into a nutshell, the message is that there is more than one reality, and it is not always what you think it is. Only by undergoing hardship and endurance, coupled with humility and introspection, is it possible to perceive the perpetual transition between realities and to realise that many (if not most) things that one has taken for granted during their lifetime are but an illusion.

Another Buddhist saying:-

“When the student is ready, then the teacher will appear.”

This refers to a state of preparedness on behalf of the student. The teacher may not be an actual person, but an event or a combination of circumstances that allows the student to realise a truth of which they have previously been unaware.

I arrived back at my cell in a state of euphoria. “What’s up with you then?” said John. “I have been overwhelmed by the complexity and the beauty of the Universe,” I said, suddenly afflicted with a bout of uncontrollable spluttering and coughing, “nothing whatsoever to do with the extremely  brief mini-skirts and tight blouses of the well-endowed young ladies of the South East London Gospel Choir.”

John cast me a glance of scepticism. “Don’t you start enjoying yourself in here,” he said, ” or the next thing you know you’ll be fighting to get back in when you’re out on the street, and then from there on in, it’s a slippery slope to institutionalisation.”

I laughed. “As if,” I said.

Tim Burton

End of Chapter 7

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