Tuesday

I am changing the way that I do this.

There will no longer be a public diary, but a private one, shared with people I know. If you have managed to get this far then you will carry on being able to read it.

The prison service, reasonably enough, does not want a diarist in its midst. This seems entirely sensible. They do not want prisoners to read about themselves, nor somebody blurting out sensitive security details to all of Facebook.

I will not do either of those, but I would like to carry on writing about the bits that it is all right to discuss. Please understand that now I am in prison there are some things that I can’t write in a diary. 

The conclusion I have reached is that I am going to need to close this off from the world. Think of it as a letter, and keep it to yourself.

It will not be on Facebook any more, you will have to remember to read it for yourself. There will not be pictures, because I can’t take pictures of the place where I am, or of anybody around me. There will just be diary.

Prisons are not funny places. They are shocking and grim. 

It is a shock every time a key turns in a lock, and a man is trapped alone behind a steel door.

It is easy to dismiss this, but it is an uneasy and frightening thing. 

They go quietly, for the most part, because the alternative, which is called ‘being non-compliant’, is noisy and messy and unpleasant for everybody.  

I hope I never lose the recognition of the dreadfulness of that locked door. 

I have drenched myself in Penhaligon’s floral perfume to go in there, both at the start of the day and again at lunchtime. This is not because the prison smells awful. It smells male, with pine disinfectant pervading everything: but because I want something sweet, and gentle, and warm, to take in with me, something human and lovely. I do not have anything to give to the people in there apart from a pleasing smell, for a few moments. 

We take nothing in with us, apart from a handkerchief. When I have finished my training I will be given things to carry on a special belt, like a radio, and a baton: and according to Radio Four, prison officers are all going to be issued with a pepper spray. 

I am not sure what I think about this. Taxi drivers never carry anything for the purposes of self defence, in case somebody grabs it and uses it on them. I have had one or two scary adventures in my taxi, but they were all ages ago, when I didn’t know how to make angry people calm down. 

I do not think I like the idea of anybody squirting pepper spray, even if it is me.

I met my first prison dogs today. They were not savage, snarling brutes, but spaniels, with gleaming coats and an enthusiasm for everything.

They are used for sniffing things, and the handler told us proudly that they had even sniffed out a mobile phone this morning. Somebody said that probably it had got traces of drugs on it, but the handler said that was unlikely, since they had only been practising and it was his own mobile phone. 

A drug called spice seems to be the current scourge of Britain’s prison population. It is horrible. When you take it you have fits, vomit and pass out. 

I am not quite sure what the attraction is, because it isn’t easy or cheap to purchase spice, especially not if you happen to be in prison. Any prisoner who really wants to have fits, vomit and pass out has got to invest hard-come-by cash in the project and also risk being in dreadful prison trouble.

I think that this sounds worse than being in prison. 

I am going to draw a line here, it is very late and I am tired. I will write more tomorrow.