Prisonomics by Vicky Pryce Page B

Saturday evening when she returned whether she had had a nice day and she described how she had first been at a curry house where you can eat as much as you want for a fixed price, then a couple of hours later had a McDonald’s and then feasted on Nando’s at 5 p.m. before coming back – she was recounting this while complaining with a straight face of a belly ache as if the actions of the day had nothing to do with that. I thought I should go and repeat just that culinary trip on my last day, 11 May, as that was my FLED, i.e. when I could go out on visits and also have employment. Alas, there is a (I think unwritten) rule that says that before release you must spend the previous twenty-four hours in ESP and I wasn’t going to jeopardise my departure. So no Maidstone for me.
27 MARCH
    Time for my manual handling course – yes, you haven’t misread it. Three of us, Liz, Anya and I, wentto the visitors’ centre (out of bounds, by permission) to have a course with Craig on how to lift a parcel without hurting ourselves. I would say it was the most relaxed two hours spent in ESP. The course is there, I guess, to ensure that one is not injured if one can avoid it doing the work around the prison but more importantly, if the cynic in me can be allowed occasionally to surface, to ensure that there are no claims against the prison for any injuries suffered while working. It is true that I did meet a number of girls who had managed to do serious damage to themselves by lifting heavy pans around the kitchen several hours a day and some whose work on the farm or the meat shop had left them with pain in their arms and back. Some of them had to have healthcare sign them off these tiring jobs and switch to other, less physically demanding, activities but the process wasn’t easy and relied on an ESP labour board providing approval. But in general they loved to do their jobs and took pride in what they did. I was lucky in a way – my dining room duties were not back-breaking, though I can’t explain how it was possible that out of four of us doing dining room and Butler’s Room duties and tray cleaning and, my favourite pastime, disinfecting everything, I was the only one who seemed not to have a bad back. It was me and me only who went on my hands and knees twice a day and cleaned the floor with a dustpan and brush. I must admit I still can’t decide whether those ladies were having me on.
    We were taught what was good for our bodies: apparently sleeping on your back was the best in terms of putting as little pressure as you can on your body and staying healthy and free of back problems for longer; on your side a bit worse; and sleepingon your front with face down against pillow was by far the worst. I had no idea. Hilarity soon stemmed from two things. First, Craig demonstrated all of this with the use of a plastic male skeleton called Eric – an odd name to use and for some of us who knew an ‘Eric’ doubly hilarious to see the skeleton practise all sorts of movements that, if done in real life, would be back-destroying. We also wondered why it had to be a male or why, since we probably wouldn’t have noticed, not call it Erica. And second, causing many laughs were our attempts to lift the packet we were practising on without in real life injuring our backs or tripping or falling. In the end we were just women having fun; the best therapy for three grown-up women finding themselves in prison. Finally we were all presented with A4-size certificates to say we had completed the manual handling course – mine is now framed and proudly displayed on the hallway wall outside my study.
28 MARCH
    Today the professional hairdresser came to cut and colour hair. It was a real scramble to book a place and though Liz and I managed to both get one, the visit ended up coinciding with the gym for me and a knitting class for Liz, so we gave our places away. We had had to pay out of our wages to get the appointments : £1.50 for a cut,