Her Majesty’s Pleasure

I have had the most peculiarly unsettling day.

I have been to have a look around the prison where, in just a very few weeks, I will be gainfully employed.

Suddenly I do not know how I feel about this.

The appointment was in the afternoon, so obviously I tiddled around doing not very much and watching the clock all morning, until it was almost time to go. At this point I suddenly became engrossed in something urgent and pressing and made myself late.

The prison is an hour’s drive away from our house. I will not drive to it every day. Some of the time I will just stay over at the prison. They do not have cells for prison officers. I will stay in the camper van. It is a long drive, through an area so rural that it has been liberally bestowed with Mark and Ted’s broadband. There is nothing there at all, except for the hills and the sea, and the occasional farmer trying to get his iPad to work.

When I got to the prison it did not matter whether I was late or not, because they had forgotten that I was coming. I had been warned by another prison officer to expect this, so I was not surprised. I occupied a less than compelling half an hour reading the notices about the prison’s Outreach Programme and listening to a voice that can only have been achieved by smoking a thousand cigarettes a week, swearing profusely and creatively at the reception desk. This made me feel rather at home. It seems that my taxi-driving customer-service skills will not be wasted here.

The lady I was due to see turned up eventually, without an apology, which I admired very much. In fact I liked her very much indeed. She talked so much that I didn’t have to, and was unfailingly friendly and enthusiastic about everything. This is not easy to achieve when your subject matter is a prison, and I was jolly impressed.

Without any preamble she took me into the office, and what happened next unnerved me more than I can begin to tell you.

She went on to her computer and printed off a list of the shift patterns and days off that I have been allocated for the next year, and then asked which of the available holiday weeks I would like.

I was completely shocked.

For the last twenty two years I have only ever shown up at work when I have either felt like it or had a pressing financial emergency, mostly, I have got to say, the latter.

To have my start and finish times for what looked like the rest of my life handed to me, on a sheet of paper with my name on the top, just like that, left me open-mouthed and speechless.

“But what happens when the sun shines?” I would have liked to say, because this is an important factor to be considered when deciding which days of the week one might work: but of course I didn’t. I knew, in that terrible moment, that it would no longer make any difference.

My life is about to change out of all recognition.

Once I had recovered my composure we set off on a tour around the prison.

If it were a boarding school you would not attract many customers, not because of the barbed wire and the heavy bars, but more because the grass needed cutting and the whole place looked as though it could do with a bit of paint. Also the weather was not inspiring.

The prison is right next to the coast, and today the winds were blustering through the steel gates with a stony howl. It was grey, and chilly, and our hair whipped about our ears. I shall be purchasing some thermal underwear for the winter.

Inside the prison it was not cold at all, and apart from smelling acidly of men, and disinfectant, it was not horrible. We visited a friendly chap in his cell, and looked at the gym and the library and the workshops, and I thought that I will probably be all right.

I am going to be a prison officer on Residential One. This is a bit like the equivalent of your house at school, where you eat and sleep and cheer on your football team.

It was bright and clean and warm once we got inside. There were several prisoners milling about, tidying things up and trying to look busier than they were. None of them looked particularly wicked, although there was a varied collection of tattoos, and at least one of them was grumbling noisily about having the contents of his pockets investigated. Certainly nobody looked as though they might be especially alarming, and most of them seemed considerably less trouble than your average intoxicated taxi customer.

They called me Miss, and I will become a Key Worker for some of them.

Somehow I think that mostly I liked it. There is a farm, where they keep chickens and grow things, and windmills for their own power. There is a smoke house for preserving things, and workshops where things are manufactured and repaired. It is like a rather unlovely village, or perhaps a school, where nobody ever wins any prizes.

The picture was taken earlier in the year, when we came here for a look. I didn’t take any pictures today, because it isn’t allowed. You will have to imagine it.