A window into LandWorks

“It’s like in Prison, you start talking to someone, you know within a few minutes whether they’re full of shit, whether they’re telling the truth, whether they’re making up … you know, everything comes in that first few moments and it’s “bye” or you keep talking. Those are the options.

Going home’s going to be the hard one and people are like “bloody hell, I’d be glad to be going home”. I say “yeah, but I had to leave my family to come to prison and that’s sort of given me a hard time, now I’ve got another family that I work with every day, now I’m going to have to leave that family to go home to my own family”. Then I’ve got to go out and I’ve got to find my own life, which is fair enough. No-one gives anyone anything away, but it’s the thought of having to start everything again. You’re thinking “@*#*ing hell, I’m 53 years old”.

Work, I’m not worried about that. I can sit and do 18 hours of work a day and I don’t care, whereas people, it’s five-to-five, go home. With me, I’m not interested in what time it is. If I’m tired, I go home. If I’ve finished my work, I’ll go home. But, if there’s more interesting things to be doing at work, what’s more interesting to be going on at home? Now, unless you’ve got a partner to go home to, there’s not a lot to go home to, not really.

This place has helped me a hell of a lot. My brain was stagnant. I’ve got so many things in my head that I can do, to be actually sat in a room … ‘Big Bang’ again, how many times have I seen this episode? Things just start going around and around in your head and you sit there thinking “*@#*ing hell, I need something else to do”. Then all of a sudden, this comes up and suddenly my brain starts getting …

There’s a guy I met in prison. we just get on really well. He’s retired now. He’s 65 now. He’s off to another prison on Tuesday, which is a good thing, a D-cat… I make him cups of tea every now and then. He’s made me one cup of coffee in two bloody years. We watch all the box-sets. When I get back at night, I’ll grab my cup, put a bit of coffee in it, he gets my packs, I go in and get some sugar, and I go and sit in there for most the night… He’s only just found out he’s going. It’s not so bad. I’ve only got three-and-a-half weeks when he goes anyway, so, I’m sure I can find something to do. There’s only three weeks and two days after he’s gone. His daughter’s got cancer. He hasn’t seen her in two-and-a-half years. So, there’s a lot happening in his life and he really needs to get home and he needed this D-cat to do it…

It is a scary thing going home, but at the end of the day, it’s got to be done. I’m more afraid of what’s going to happen with my ex. I know what’s happening with my kids. My kids are great. They love me, I love them. I’m always there. Alright, at the moment I’m not always there. My mum’s always there for me, but I don’t know, I’m uncertain about my ex, but I know that she wants me there… Like I say, it’s a difficult time. I’ve had it easy now, I’ve been in prison. Now, I’ve got to go home…

I think LandWorks has been the most wonderful thing. I feel like I’m part of the family here and the hard thing’s going to be for me, when I’ve had my lunch on the last day, is my parting speech. I’ve had about eight goes at it so far and even that brings a tear to my eye. So, I’m trying to sort of make it, so I don’t [sobs] “I’m going tomorrow, and I don’t want to go”. It’s just been an experience… It’s been such an experience for me…

Being here though, I haven’t had to hide anything. I’ve just been me. Well, that wasn’t me to start with, “who are these people? they’re being nice to me”. It just took me a little bit of time to realise that there are nice people in the world…”