A fair old weekend
Booked last Friday off to go visit my brother in prison. First though I got a call Thursday around 7am from my sister saying my mother had been rushed into surgery during the night. Skip forward to Sunday and we finally cornered a nurse to ask a few questions. Turns out that during the night one of her blood vessels was leaking and another had burst. The woman in the bed had gotten up in the night for a smoke and had heard her struggling, apparently she was foaming at the mouth, and called the nurses. There must have been a lot of blood loss too because she had to have a blood transfusion before they could operate. When the doctors arrived on the scene they had to get the crash cart because she'd gone into respiratory arrest then, when she'd got enough blood back in her and the surgeon arrived, they operated. During the operation she also went into cardiac arrest twice. By the time I saw her it was Friday morning and she'd had over 24 hours to recover a bit. She was awake and talking, a bit muddled as you might expect. Didn't remember any of it. Last thing she remembers is eating a cheese sandwich on Wednesday night. As it is the whole thing was unnerving, but I think it would have been a lot more tense if we'd known what had happened earlier. We'd already seen her recovering by the time we found out how serious the situation was. And one more thing, some of the staff had wanted to let my mother go home on Wednesday, in which case, the doctor said, she definitely would have died. Moreover, if the woman in the bed opposite hadn't called the nurses when she did, she would have died. So, I guess the moral of the story is smoking saves lives. For added irony, the Friday before that I smoked my first cigarette.
Skip back to Friday afternoon and HMP Parc, Bridgend. Parc. Parc! What a name for a prison. The c ending is the Welsh spelling by the way. All the buildings in the place looked like they were copied from the schematics for those metallic grey briefcases with the rounded corners. I arrived early and waited in the car park for my brother Ben to turn up. The one way system in the car park was confusing so I drove around it the wrong way, then I ate an apple leaning against my car and casually threw the core away. Oh yeah, I was acting all tough. After being vetted in various ways we were ushered through a few doors operated on the airlock principle and escorted into the visiting area. I saw my brother sitting at a bench. His blue prison smock over his clothes made him look like a cafeteria worker. He looked up and we made eye contact and both sort of laughed. I can't properly explain it, it was just so silly, if that's the right word. I had to look away and just shake my head. The visit wasn't terribly interesting. Sion told us about the prison and the easy life the prisoners have. They don't have to do much work because the prison have to pay them. It's only a pittance, a good wage for a prisoner is £12 a week, but they still don't want to pay out. The prisoners get up in the morning for breakfast, if they feel like it, there's an hour of physical activity a day and most of the rest of the time is spent idling in their cells. Most of the prisoners are allowed to order things from the Argos catalogue and have them delivered to the prison. I don't want to give the impression that it's an easy life though. Apparently you can only have a Playstation after you've been in for three months and classified as low-risk. Imagine the torture. I'm thinking about writing to Amnesty International. It must be bad because my brother claimed to have read five books since he'd been in. That's probably more than he's read since he was ummm, born. Surprise surprise, Mr. Imagination's been reading books about the army and war. I tried to recommend him Orwell's Homage To Catalonia and various war related Hemingway. Don't think he was going for it, but at least I tried. It seemed too early to talk to him properly about what he was going to do when he gets out. He might be out on tag in a few months, June 18 I think being the earliest, but there's a big can of worms there concerning just where he might stay. I somehow can't see my mother being in any fit state to look after him.
Skip back to Friday afternoon and HMP Parc, Bridgend. Parc. Parc! What a name for a prison. The c ending is the Welsh spelling by the way. All the buildings in the place looked like they were copied from the schematics for those metallic grey briefcases with the rounded corners. I arrived early and waited in the car park for my brother Ben to turn up. The one way system in the car park was confusing so I drove around it the wrong way, then I ate an apple leaning against my car and casually threw the core away. Oh yeah, I was acting all tough. After being vetted in various ways we were ushered through a few doors operated on the airlock principle and escorted into the visiting area. I saw my brother sitting at a bench. His blue prison smock over his clothes made him look like a cafeteria worker. He looked up and we made eye contact and both sort of laughed. I can't properly explain it, it was just so silly, if that's the right word. I had to look away and just shake my head. The visit wasn't terribly interesting. Sion told us about the prison and the easy life the prisoners have. They don't have to do much work because the prison have to pay them. It's only a pittance, a good wage for a prisoner is £12 a week, but they still don't want to pay out. The prisoners get up in the morning for breakfast, if they feel like it, there's an hour of physical activity a day and most of the rest of the time is spent idling in their cells. Most of the prisoners are allowed to order things from the Argos catalogue and have them delivered to the prison. I don't want to give the impression that it's an easy life though. Apparently you can only have a Playstation after you've been in for three months and classified as low-risk. Imagine the torture. I'm thinking about writing to Amnesty International. It must be bad because my brother claimed to have read five books since he'd been in. That's probably more than he's read since he was ummm, born. Surprise surprise, Mr. Imagination's been reading books about the army and war. I tried to recommend him Orwell's Homage To Catalonia and various war related Hemingway. Don't think he was going for it, but at least I tried. It seemed too early to talk to him properly about what he was going to do when he gets out. He might be out on tag in a few months, June 18 I think being the earliest, but there's a big can of worms there concerning just where he might stay. I somehow can't see my mother being in any fit state to look after him.