So… a month on and its time for another update mostly about the jail social scene.

But first, a quick summary of the latest green-fingered developments in my window sill allotment: I have 12 tomato seedlings have sprouted and survived, growing in a range of experimental media…The first is a roll of toilet paper (stood upright in a Stork margarine tub full of water…Then I have 2 little ice cream tubs filled with various combinations of tea leaves (boiled or not), toothpaste (to combat acidity) and very dilute wee…So far the plain tea leaves are the only ones whose first set of proper leaves haven’t withered away shortly after growing. I’ve also sprouted 6 dandelion seedlings, with the hope of some flowers at some point. I enjoy tending to them all every morning.

Now back to the jail social scene…It’s been in interesting 5 weeks, sharing thoughts via letters and emails with friends who have varied life experiences and backgrounds in a numer of relevant careers: community education, youth work, mental health and psychology. I’d say that a couple of these last few weeks have felt very unsettling to me, and really quite stressful. I see this as a good thing though. I’ve been taking on board, thinking through and processing the various inputs that I received. The last 2 years of pretty intense introspective work (including one year of great support from social work) have taught me that when I feel unsettled it means that I’m growing. I’m challenging my previous ideas, leaving my comfort zone, and am developing new ways of perceiving myself and the world around me. At this time I think that it also means that I’m understanding and accepting some of the negative views that people understandably have of me – something that I know will be very important as I set up a new chapter of my life after my release.

As you may have gathered, the social life here is incredibly complex and multi-layered. I’ve been thinking it through from different angles: From the position of an observer, stepping back and watching how things play out in front of me; and from the position of an active participant in the social interactions that unfold from day to day. The latter has been far more challenging so let’s start with the easier stuff!

Discussions with a friend who works in a mental health setting brought to light some stark truths about our prisons: 60% of inmates have some kind of language or social communication difficulties, which are often undiagnosed and therefore unsupported. A third of the prison population have a diagnosable learning difficulty. For me these stats are very believable and reflect what I see around me. And they explain a lot about the interactions that I’ve been having here…the difficulty in having reciprocal back-and-forth conversations, and the difficulty in understanding what people are talking about as they attempt to narrate their own experiences. These “conversations “, as I mentioned last month, often feel very ranty and one-sided. I think I’m a little more tolerant of them now. For example, one of my buddies here is slowly committing suicide by starving himself, so I think that giving him a space where he can vent and rant is a really good thing for him.

BUT… I’m not just an observer. I’m part of the picture, and so I create these bizarre and flat conversations just as much as the people I’m talking to do: as well as trying to be more tolerant of other people’s rantiness I’m also making an effort to be more aware of when I’m being the ranty one. The other thing is that there’s no reason why other people should be interested in the things that interest me. For me, the perfect “Astroturf chat” might be about things that I think are important… maybe things that I’ve been reading about in my weekly broadsheet: the UN’s peacekeeping role in Afghanistan; the state-sponsored persecution of Muslims in India; whether or not Covid -19 will create lasting shifts in society. Or maybe things to do with life outside; cool places that I, or other people, have visited; hobbies or sports; plans for the future etc. But, to most people here, who are very much focussed on living the prison life day-to-day, all of these things are both irrelevant and uninteresting. Not to mention stressful: a lot of the inmates have no home and no supportive family. Thinking about the outside world and how the hell they will fit back into it once their sentence is over is incredibly anxiety-provoking. So, not surprisingly, my preferred topics of conversation are often shut down immediately.

But, in the same way, when people talk about things that I can’t immediately connect with (smoking, fights, computer games, music, shoot-em-up films etc) or that I don’t want to engage with (sexual conquests or bitching about other inmates), In these situations I find myself closing the conversation down.

Another aspect of the social life here that I’ve been thinking about is the dark humour. I’ve never really enjoyed or “got” dark humour much. But I’ve come to realise that it doesn’t necessarily express a lack of concern for its subjects. Rather, it’s a different way to engage with harsh topics whilst bringing some much-needed lightness to the prison community. The difficulty is that very often here dark humour is wrapped up amongst real nastiness and unkindness. It tends to be directed at a minority of inmates around 20 – 25% of them. What can seem like a light-hearted throwaway comment to one person creating laughter and camaraderie within a group, can crush the spirit of the person who is the butt of the joke.

In here, my only experience of this is not only from the inmates, but from the prison officer/ warden who I’ve written about before. On arriving here I think that other inmates quickly viewed me with either a certain level of respect or with indifference: I’m neither a pushover nor a threat. As a result, I’ve not been on the receiving end of any of the nastiness that I’ve described. However, others who find themselves the butt of dark humour sometimes experience it as yet another assault on their self-esteem, in some cases after a lifetime of such assaults.

So, over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to embrace the dark humour when its intention is to raise people up, but not when its intention is to push people down. It’s a very thin line, and I have started to understand why I have always found it easier to reject this form of banter outright.

When it comes to the more cruel interactions that happen around me, I’m finding that stepping back both physically and emotionally is a healthy response. As someone pointed out to me in a letter last week, remaining on the outskirts of many encounters here is a luxury that I should be grateful for rather than a sign that I have failed to engage. (Only this morning, for example, someone asked if I would buy some vaping pods using my prison account, in return for an equal value of snacks or toiletries, so that he could pay off his troublesome drug debts. Although I wanted to help him, I explained that I wouldn’t because this was an area of prison life that I wanted to steer clear of.)

Well, I’ll sign off in a sec but first he’s a quick update on my studies…I’ve been cracking on with more garden designs, and also learning about growing fruit and veg. I’ve finished creating my fourth cryptic crossword, and this week I’m learning how to breed queen bees! Never a dull moment. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve literally not felt bored since I arrived 4 months ago.