Well Hi!!!
As i say i was sentenced to 2 years at the Edinburgh Sherriff court and sent to HMP Edinburgh. I was sentenced with a guy I know so it wasn't too bad being shipped there as at least i knew someone who i could share a cell with. It really wasn't as bad as i expected. I took Rossi's advice and kept myself to myself for a bit to get the lay of the land and got a job in the prison gardens cutting grass and picking up litter which was alright as it got me outside.
I was located in an enhanced wing of the short termers hall which meant i was low category. I shared a cell with my co accused for about 6 weeks until i moved into a single cell which gave me my own space. The main thing was the boredom. I started really hitting the gym mainly for something to do but really got into it and played football alot as well that was kind of like mean machine!
There was a poker game going during the association time so i joined it nearly as soon as i got there. They were playing a tournament between 4 of us for a half ounce of tobacco (about £2.65). This was shit though as you only really got an hour and a half so what they did if the game wasn't finished was to do a best out of three hands so it turned to luck. They also had a stupid blind structure of 10 and 20 with 10,000 chips to start so after a few weeks i started to get them to change the game. What we ended up doing was giving the people playing 3000 chips to start with and called that a buy in. What happened then is that the game was never ending and people could come and go as they pleased, if you won a load of chips and someone didn't have any you would sell them 3000 for £1 and every week the plus and minuses were added up for items off the canteen sheet. There was the odd argument about end of day totals written down but at the start it went quite smoothly. i was on average around £15 a week up which was good as we only got paid £9 a week. It grew so we always had a table of 10 playing but people started not playing so we had a rule that you couldn't play until you paid the debts. We then got a load of young dickheads playing and it ended up with me being up £60 one week and only getting paid £4 so i set up a new game with the original people to make it go smoothly which really fucked off one guy that was there playing so i had a couple of run ins with him....
They were all shite though and to be honest didn't really know how to play. There were a load of arguments over hands (most people thought the rule was that the higher kicker automatically won irrelavant of what was on the board) with the most arguments being when someone had a low pair and the board came up for example 9988K and i would say that the A4 has beaten the pocket 55 and it became a running joke me saying "i've got 3 pairs!". Nobody would spot the flush when there were four of a suit on the board but it did get frustrating when someone hit a 2 outer when they didn't really know what they were doing.
One funny thing that happened away from poker was down to the language difference. People in Edinburgh don't say "do you know?" they just say "Ken" and they call people George "Dod" this young guy just walked up to me and said "Ken Dod?" so I just said "yeah his dads dogs dead"... he didn't know who Ken Dodd was though so thought i was mad...
During the Norway v Scotland game a guy came up to me and said "Scotlands problem is that they can't afford to buy any decent players"!!!! Idiot.... I just said "Who do you want them to buy a couple of brazilians?!?!"
So i'm out and looking for work which is hard. It'll take ages as nobody is touching me with a barge pole due to my record. I did find 13 euros in my Virgin Poker account... not sure where that came from but have turned it to 200 but am only really playing for something to do. All the bank accounts attached to that account have been cancelled in the bankruptsy so even if i win i have no idea how to get the money out!!
Hope you're all alright
BOY123
3 years ago
