Brave

I am here.

I am parked, in the silent darkness, outside HMP Slade. 

I am quite glad that it is silent darkness. It would not be ace if there was a kerfuffle of sirens and running feet. Silent is all right by me.

Anyway, it is not quite silent. I can hear the wind, and occasionally a sheep, and the ticking of the camper van clock. 

There is not very much here.

Leaving was not very easy.

We had a busy night last night, culminating in drunk people miles from home for both of us, and it was half past six this morning before we got to bed.

We were meeting Nan and Grandad for lunch. This was not due to happen until four in the afternoon, but we still had to set an alarm. 

When it went off, which felt like about twenty minutes after we went to bed, we fumbled about rather uselessly, failing to organise washing and the dishwasher. We were so unsuccessful with all this sort of thing that I have left a bit of a mess behind me for Mark to sort out, although rather less than he left when he went to work in Aberdeen. On that occasion he knocked down a wall in the kitchen the day before he left, leaving me doing the housework with a wheelbarrow and shovel for some time before things were all right again.

We took Lucy back to school, meeting Nan and Grandad on the way. This was a brilliant thing to do the day before my debut at HMP Slade, because of course Grandad was a prison officer for years and years, and was full of very useful advice, for which I was extremely grateful. It is extremely difficult to find out what it is like to work in a prison. Apart from Grandad, the only inside stories I have found are pages and pages of online stuff written by disgruntled past employees, who complain bitterly about being unappreciated and then suggest that you don’t bother.

I think that if you want appreciation you might be better becoming a nurse. I don’t think HMP Slade’s customer base are likely to be especially thankful for my efforts.

We dropped Lucy off at school. It is her birthday soon. The next time I see her she will be eighteen. This is unexpectedly grown up, in my head she is still the fierce three year old with the determined ambition to become a pony. Nan and Grandad are going to take her out for her birthday, for which I was grateful, something nice ought to happen when you are eighteen, and I will be in Staffordshire, learning which key is which.

We left Lucy and drove home: then Mark faffed about with the camper van brakes for a while, and I had a shower: and then it was time to go.

I was in such a state that I forgot to say goodbye to the dogs.

I do not like saying goodbye anyway.

Of course I had to be brave. Our family is scattered to the four winds, and everybody else is brave. Number Two Daughter was brave when she went off to Australia and is still being brave even though she is alone and broke. 

Oliver has been being terribly, heartbreakingly brave since he was eight, and started boarding school. The parting is a crucifixion every time, but he is brave. 

Number One Daughter was brave even when she went off to fight in Afghanistan and was the one of the first handful of women that the British Army actually sent into battle. We saw a video of her afterwards, taken by the Sun newspaper. She was crouching behind a wall with some other soldiers and diving out to shoot every now and again whilst bullets whistled last their ears. We didn’t know it was her. We just thought that the Army had employed some extremely short blokes. 

Number One Son-In-Law was brave even though when he went off to Afghanistan he left a wife and tiny new baby behind him. Lucy was brave even when her school closed, and she had to go and board somewhere new, with strangers who were all friends with one another, and she knew nobody. Mark was brave when he went off to Aberdeen, and we didn’t see him for months and months.

I am going to be brave as well. I am going to learn lots of new things, and I will be home on Friday. 

The picture is Roger Poopy. We brought some bones back from our lunch out. He lost his in the car in the way home, and was terribly sad, because his father refused to share. We found it when we got them out. His joy at being a bone-owner again was wonderful to behold.

I am going to bed.