David McMillan

Well, not forgot about it, tried to pretend it wasn't there.

An inner moat that ran around inside the prison, full of turds, of course, that's where the name comes from, Mars Bar Creek, and barbed wire.

So I can't put my long ladder over it because it hits the wall, goes clunk.

I can't ignore the creek because the barbed wire will tangle up the ladder.

The ladder weighs more than I do by this stage.

How do I get it over there?

to this narrow strip that runs around on the inside.

Now, if I'd have been with anybody else, we would have had a long, stupid, pointless, fruitless discussion about that and probably many other things about being lost and where best to go and all the time clouding the only instincts that mean anything to surviving human beings, which is a sense of smell, really, and a sense of pattern and movement and the sounds of the night.

and the things that are dangerous that they're in, I suppose.

Yeah, all of those things would have pushed me and who I was with beyond into the start of a new day and disaster.

So just as well, the Swede did not join me, or anybody for that matter.

With the ladder above there, at the top of it, I could see dawn was coming.

There was a glow in the sky, somehow heartening but terrifying at the same time because I knew the shifts were coming.

And there was electricity, of course, on the top.

Only 240 volts and it hadn't been arced up.

According to my friend who was a bit of an engineer in there, we'd looked at it long and hard and

decided there weren't any transformers you know if you've got a a fence to keep cattle you have this sort of high amperage low voltage thing here they had household voltage by the look of it but it was just 240 so it was kind of manageable providing you don't sweat on it yeah yeah yeah so um that's what you don't do at the top of that um

I'd never heard of anybody being up there at the time, or previously, so there was nothing to go on.

But I knew where the insulators were, so if I needed a foothold, that's the only possible place.

And I'd changed into my khaki long trousers.