It has been An Adventure.
It has been such a thoroughly adventurous adventure that I don’t know where to start.
To begin at the wrong end.
I don’t think that the Queen is going to offer me a job locking people up. I think that we can safely say that my career as a prison officer is going to progress no further than my career as an undertaker, i.e, not past interview.
There are several reasons for this.
The first is that I am terminally unfit, but we will gloss over that one for the present and return to it in a minute. The second is that the Prison Service seems to be generally well-meaning but rubbish.
I finally found the right place after a kindly prison officer from the wrong place escorted me round the corner and assured me that nobody could ever find it, even since his own interview, back in prehistoric times. The Recruitment building is behind an unmarked door in an unmarked building across the road from the prison. I don’t think I would be able to find it again.
Once inside I went up three flights of dismal nineteen seventies stairs and found a large lady and several wilting plants in a daylight-free room with a large television in the corner.
Once I had handed over my passport I had several minutes to marvel over the sheer awfulness of daytime television. I have never, ever seen any before and hope to be spared the experience for the rest of my life. There was a loathsome chirpy girl and some people who did not know if they wanted to emigrate to Australia. I deliberately looked everywhere else but at the huge screen, which is how I noticed the plants and the decor, but the chirping made me long for a shotgun.
The room filled up with aspirational prison officers and we were whisked away for the fitness test. We had been told to bring things to wear for this, and we had to change. The boys were given a secure changing room with lockers. The girls changed in the loo and were told that we had to carry everything about with us.
After that everything was marred somewhat by having to transport a coat, a handbag, a kit bag and my boots around with me, had I known I would have brought a trolley.
We went into the gym and stood in a shivering line at one end for the bleep test. There were a lot of us. We ran about and fell over one another and I fell over a traffic cone. I stopped when the instructor shouted: “You. Sarah. You’ve failed.” I started again when it turned out that the girl next to me was also called Sarah and was even less fit than me, but in the end did not catch up. We all failed except one chap who was there for his third go, and who had clearly become adept in elbowing people out of the way.
To my astonishment I passed the rest, the speed and agility test, the weight lifting and the grip bit, and the instructor kindly said that since I was very close with the bleep bit I could come back and do it again if I passed everything else.
After that came the role-play.
It turned out that there was not time for us to change back into civilian clothes after the fitness test, and we were obliged to stay in our sports kit.
Think ‘underwear’.
I objected strongly and said that I wanted to get dressed, but was overruled because they were running late. We were given ten minutes to memorise the prison rules.
It was explained to us that not only must we uphold the prison rules but every time anybody said anything racist or homophobic we must tell them that they were in breach of the prison regulations (except they spelt ‘breach’ wrong) and they would be reported.
Nothing, we were told, nothing, is as important in the running of a prison as the Equalities Document.
We were then, still in our running shorts, girls encumbered with bags and kit for which there was no storage facility that women were allowed to use, sent into cells where actors were pretending to be terribly distressed prisoners. We were supposed to comfort and reassure them whilst upholding the prison rules and reporting them for calling people names.
I do not think that name calling is very important. I think expressions of hate come out of distress and that people who are respected will eventually learn to respect.
I think that it is a good idea to discourage hateful thought.
I do not think that people hate less if you threaten them with loss of parole for doing it.
One role play was so dreadfully sad that I almost cried. It was a man whose wife had been locked up, and who was not coping on his own. I had to tell him that I was not going to smuggle a letter in. What I wanted to tell him was that the world was horrid, and that he needed to be be as brave as he could and try not to let his misery destroy him from the inside, but there wasn’t space for that. I told him that he must not say racist things about the officer who had told him all the wrong things so that he had hoped for a visit and was disappointed. I expect I scored a point for that.
I was astonished to discover that one role-play upset everybody very much, because the prisoner was so abusive. I have been a taxi driver for a long time and did not realise that he had been abusive until the person after me cried when she came out. You were supposed to explain to him that he should not say insulting things, but I didn’t, because I did not really register that he had done it. I just thought that he was very upset.
After that came the written tests. The other girls and I were still carrying our luggage about, and could not get changed back into normal clothes, but there weren’t any questions about equality in the written tests. This was fortunate, because I was beginning to be in the right frame of mind to make some acidic comments.
The tests have not been marked yet but they were not difficult enough for me to feel concern. This time there were fifty six prisoners to be counted, so clearly it was becoming more challenging. If I have not got a hundred percent I shall be very embarrassed indeed.
They sent us home then.
I insisted on getting dressed first.
In the car park I discovered a frantic phone call from school telling me that Oliver had been taken ill.
Instead of going home I drove to Yorkshire to collect him.
It was late when we got back. Mark had cooked dinner and wanted to know all about it.
I did not know where to start. It is a well-meaning system that encapsulates awful cruelty.
I do not ever want to make somebody stop telling me that they are so miserable that they want to die, and remind them that they should not call other people unkind names.
I do not think that the prison system is going to want me.
The picture is of the Hanging Tower.
