You had to be near those stacked chairs, in the corner of that chapel, to catch what Chappie said to me.
It was August ‘23, and as per, during that month, I was down South doing a bunch of jails. One of them is a well-known Victorian-type prison, in Central London, that I’ve been speaking in for a while.
This time round though, they’d planned for me to do two groups. One with the general prisoners, and the other with lads from the Recovery Wing (a first for me in there).
The first session was dead informal. We were sitting round tables that had been set up in a horseshoe shape, so we were facing each other. I just did a short talk about some of the mad days I’d been through as a way of setting things up for a conversation to go deeper.
When we got chatting, some of ‘em got right into it.
One had greying locks, green eyes, and silver rimmed glasses… he did most of the talking. Then there was a stocky, Polish guy who had a scar on his face. He chipped in quite a bit as well. And there was a young black lad who was a proper thinker. He came out with some right pearlers. There were a few others that jumped in too.
You should’ve heard the chatter that day! There was more wisdom flying around than at Oxford University! Those debating bods, with their criminology PHDs, have nothing on these! Trust me!
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But there was one serious-faced, mixed-race, older lad sat there who stayed silent. This was Chappie, the chapel orderly.
After we’d finished, everyone went back to the wings. Apart from Chappie. He started unstacking chairs to get set up for the bigger group coming in. So, I went over to help.
‘How you doing, mate?’
‘I’m doing alright, gutted to be back in here though, Baz. I’m in for a smash and grab this time, on a jewellers in the East End.’
‘Why, what happened, man?’
‘Well, when I got out the last time, I kept on the straight and narrow. But my mum got ill. And I owed her, cos she was always there. So, I nicked a car and went on a spree. And they got me, man, didn’t they?’
Then he goes, ‘You know before, when you lot were batting stuff about, I just stayed schtum. I always do! But what I wanted to say was … ‘if you’d not been through all that madness, you couldn’t do what you’re doing now. It’s like all that has shaped you, man, hasn’t it?’
I doubt he could’ve said anything truer!
Listen: hard pathways can be the making of you!
There’s a bloke in the Good Book who had a tough time or two. Paul wrote this when he was in a jail in Rome: ‘Trouble produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.’
For me, once God pitched in, this became massive!
How’s it with you? Maybe you’re going through something, right now. Or it could be you’ve been through a few rough patches back in the day. Maybe there’s been some shaping going on, for something you could do. Like there was with me. Who knows?
Hard pathways can be the making of you!
Barry