Fun in the sun

Did you have a nice summer? You did? That’s nice.

As for myself, I, like many people travelled far away for a spell in prison. Alright, it may be more accurately described as a holiday in the sun, but as I lay there on my sun/cell-bed, I couldn’t help musing over the similarities.

For one thing: getting there. Tenerife is a little farther afield than Strangeways and Benidorm is more than a few stops on from Broadmoor, but you still need to get there. Be it on an armoured bus with the fug of resignation in the air or a Boeing 747 airplane where the disparate smells of boiled sweets, sun cream and baby vomit diffuse together, travelling is never a wholly delightful experience.

Once you arrive, nothing changes. After a bureaucratic check-in, you are shown to your room, which contains a bed and a bath and/or sink. Whether or not you have the furnishing of a truly enlightened society such as tea-making facilities depends on your connections. You will meet most of the other tourists/in-mates in the exercise yard. Whether said exercise involves a cheeky dip in the pool or breaking rocks with your fists is up to your own individual tour rep/guv’nor.

In both situations, you quickly lose track of time as the days blur into one repetitive tableau. Your only way of marking the time, and primary form of entertainment, is scoring the days into your bedpost. Either way, you will count down to your eventual return to civilisation and normalcy.

Most days pass in a blur of confusion and fear. As you find your table in the dining hall, you wonder if that’s an onion ring on your plate or maybe squid (or something with even more tentacles). And next to it, the mayonnaise – is that genuine or have the guards … spat in your food?

The nights bring little relief. More often than not you are afflicted by cruel and unusual punishments. These can take the form of a risky, risqué affair in the showers around a bar of soap or an ABBA tribute act in the lounge bar. To this day, I don’t know which is more horrific.

Some people patiently see out their sentence by reading a few books and dreaming a few dreams. Others try to obliterate themselves in brightly coloured alcohol and fast, meaningless sex*. Others become so institutionalised that once they leave, normal life is so frightening for them that they quickly return to the warm embrace of cosy familiarity. Recidivism is as much a problem in Gran Canaria as it is in Belmarsh.

Very few dare abscond from their imprisonment. I was only able to escape and bring you this article by tunneling through the wall behind a poster of Rita Hayworth.

* Sex, in this usage, can include evening-long games of Gin Rummy