In the clink

My nap was great, thanks for asking. I'm now back at my desk and, despite a pre-midnight bedtime yesterday, I'm still yawning and my eyes feel as though they've been sluiced with nail varnish remover. 'Tis the season to be jolly, but I don't remember anything in amongst the falalalalaing that mentioned "and 'tis also the season to spend every non-alcoholic waking moment in a kind of purgatory, unwilling to die but unable to function adequately to justify continued existence." Hard to get a rhyme for some of that lot, admittedly. Perhaps falalalala was less trouble, even if it is missing out some of the fundamental truths we should all hear more about.

Back in September, I bought tickets for a play that I said at the time would be guaranteed to clash with something or other. On this occasion, it was my work Christmas party, but I can't say I was that sad as I got off the tube at East Acton and walked towards Wormwood Scrubs, London's second biggest prison, for a performance of a play put on by a selection of the inmates. I've never been inside a prison before, and I was excited.

The play was a 45 minute promenade performance of A Christmas Carol, reworked to fit in with our wonderful modernity. It wasn't fantastic, but it was certainly enjoyable and despite my hangover, I even managed a LOL towards the end, when Scrooge has been enlightened and wakes up very confused and excited at the prospect of a new beginning. In the original, he leans out of the window at a young scamp and asks, 'What day is this?' and the whippersnapper says, 'Why, it's Christmas Day!' and it's all very jovial. In this version, Scrooge leans out and asks the same question to a random passer by who looks up and says, 'Fuck off.' OK, not the most highbrow of moments, I'll admit. Tom Stoppard doesn't need to worry himself about the competition, but it did raise a chortle.

On a note of prejudice, the cast was almost entirely black and Asian, with only one white guy. I don't know if that had been a deliberate choice or not. Personally, I found it a bit of a shame that such an absurdly white audience come to a prison to watch criminals act, and all their most secretly held racist suspicions are confirmed when the only prisoners they see aren't white. Grania and I were talking about it afterwards as we waited to be released, and agreed that we had been surprised to find that the person we'd found most sinister was the white guy. He had a skinhead, and evil eyes. And then we looked in the programme and found that someone had dropped out close to the start of the run, and so they'd had to hire in a professional to fill the spot. The white guy was the only one who wasn't a prisoner.

Before the lights went down, we had been given a quick talk about the process by one of the main guards, who explained what would happen afterwards. He also said that the players would be running around at times, sometimes in amongst the crowds, so to get out of their way. We shouldn't be scared but they are dangerous and suddenly the lights went out with a dramatic warehouse-style clunk and the guys ran in shouting and we all jumped. When I recovered, I found that beginning really annoying. The whole point of the play, surely, is to break down the boundaries between 'us' and 'them' - so why ham up their potential violence? It was lame.

What was better than the play was talking to one of the guards beforehand. She obviously took a great deal of pride in her work, and was well-equipped with all the facts and figures one could possibly want. The room in which we congregated before being taken to the church for the performance is, she told us, used for several things, but mainly for social visits with kids. There are further visiting facilities elsewhere for prisoners to spend time with family and friends - up to two hours at a time, two or three times a month, depending on your level of naughtiness. She explained that every day there are people leaving and new inmates arriving, with a turnover of about 200 out of 1500 every week or two. And when I asked her whether she believed that prison was effective, she said what I'd expected her to say, that it was a bit too comfortable, that a lot of people's lives on the outside are so unpleasant that the idea of spending time in the warm, with no bills to pay, no girls, no kids, with a Playstation to play as much as you like - it's less of a deterrent and more like an appealing break from reality.

I'm definitely not a fan of prisons on the whole - I know they are necessary in extreme cases, but generally I think they're a sign of a failing society and the idea that people would rather be in a prison than free, with their friends and families around them, suggests that freedom sucks for them, which is awful. Sure, the prison wasn't too bad, and had distinct wafts of boarding school about it, but ultimately, those thick metal doors are scary and I wouldn't want to live there. It's very sad that there are hundreds of people whose life is so rubbish that for them, prison is preferable. And, fascinating though it was last night, I don't think that putting on plays is going to change anyone's anything. I've always been more of a macro than a micro kind of gal, and I know that it's got to be about the small steps, about the drops in the ocean, about the grassroots, but on this occasion, I'm not sure the divide was blurred enough for it to be effective. I didn't come away feeling any differently about prisoners, and I doubt the prisoners are any more or less likely to reoffend having performed a short play in front of a roomful of middle-class white people. The whole thing still felt very 'us' and 'them', not helped by the icy director in her grey leather trench coat. Great concept on paper, fairly well executed, but ultimately not so great in reality. She says, from the comfort of her warm desk in the financial capital of Europe. Little Ms Ivory Tower. But I'm just telling you what I thought. Hmmm. This is pathetically disjointed. I'm in no state to provide scintillating social commentary. Back soon with more drunken antics. I think that's about the best I can manage right now. Festive kisses to you all.