Slade

In fact things did not start off very well at all.

I was just leaving the camper van after a confused sleep and a ridiculously early awakening, when I remembered that I would need my ID. I reached into my bag for my purse to discover that it was not there.

It is always there, always, always. It lives in my bag, and almost never gets an outing, especially if Mark has got his wallet handy.

I do not know how it was not there, but it wasn’t.

The ID rule is rigid.

Stomach churning with horror, I crept up to the prison gates. 

They almost didn’t let me in. 

I almost had to go home.

Fortunately I had been there before, and the head of HR came out to vouch that I was really me, and not just some confused passer by, wandering in in the hopes of employment. 

I was admitted and ridiculed and everything was all right.

I was dispatched to the office, where I was joined by the other new starter. There should have been a third, but she has run off already and did not turn up at all.

We were given a thick file full of stuff that we ought to know, like the Official Secrets Act and the menu for the staff canteen.

This last has not been written by Jamie Oliver. I think that the person who composed it liked chips very much. There is not a burrito or a jalapeño in sight. The vegetarian option appears to be the chips without the burger, and it is, wonderfully, as cheap as chips. 

In addition to these, there were warnings about not using the prison internet for rascally activities, and some utterly incomprehensible information about the way the shift system works. I found out how to use a radio, and read, without taking any of it in at all, a long list of prison acronyms.

Our next adventure was a tour of the prison.

HMP Slade is bleak and windswept and plagued by seagulls who – reportedly – poo all over everybody’s uniform. A team of hawks and owls are kept by the prison for the purpose of executing swift capital punishment on such offenders. 

It is caged in with magnolia-painted wire and filled with bedraggled flower beds. Prisoners are housed according to their general behaviour. The peaceable well-behaved ones are on a wing with en-suite showers and a key to their bedrooms. The naughty ones are in grim-looking rooms where everything is nailed to the floor. 

My wing is not for especially naughty prisoners, although as we came through the door there was a bellow of male guffaws, and a gentleman dressed in nothing but his skin burst out of his cell and belted across the association area. 

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to notice naked men or not, so I decided it would be better not to. It turned out that the other prison officer had actually not noticed him at all, and he got in trouble later on when another prisoner snitched on him, for that, and for doing a wee in the shower. It brought to mind one of my very first holiday jobs, as a nursery nurse in a kindergarten. 

When I got back to the office I had to take an Oath.

This was much like the one that I took when I joined the Brownies, really. I promised that I would Do My Best for the dear old Queen. 

Then I had my photograph and my National Insurance Number taken, and that was it. We were taken to an enormous warehouse and given a Father Christmas sack full of uniform and told that from tomorrow we would wear it at all times. 

I stashed mine in the camper van to investigate later, and then we were dispatched out for an afternoon on the wings. I am not allowed to do anything yet, and have just got to watch. 

This was superbly entertaining. I was situated beside a very pretty young officer whose job was to do a pat down search on every tenth prisoner. There was some competition to be the tenth prisoner. Then we ambled across to the exercise yard, where the bitter grey cold seeped into everybody’s bones, and the young men wishing to display their resilience and masculinity strolled, nonchalantly, in their shorts. The rest of us looked at our breath hanging in the icy air and felt secretly glad that we had got nothing to prove. 

We were supposed to end the day with an actual interview with the governor, but we didn’t, because he had forgotten and buzzed off. 

I staggered back to the camper van and realised that I was so tired I could hardly lift the door key.

Mark came across later on, with my purse. 

It was a huge wash of relief to see him. 

He brought a bottle of wine and some cheese, and we ate together, and for a little while there was just us, and our old life, and the camper van. 

When he had gone I tried on my uniform. 

It all fits absolutely perfectly, apart from the gloves. 

The boots are just fine.

I look like a prison officer. 

The picture credit goes to my ingenious friend Tim. You might have seen it on Facebook already, but it is so clever I have put it on here as well.

I think it is all going to be splendid.