and returned to the house, with many often in tears. In fact, some women I met deliberately chose to limit their visits to avoid heartache. Most would spend the rest of the day like zombies, sorely missing their loved ones. We tended to huddle around, try and chat and read the papers, do whatever one could to cheer each other up. Not easy.
On that first day, as photographers had camped around ESP having got word I was now housed there, it was decided I wouldn’t walk to the visitors’ centre but instead be driven there to avoid the press. Therewas space in the car so we took two others along. One was a woman in her very early thirties with a number of children including a very young baby. She was having trouble adjusting to it all and on the way back, after seeing her youngest child, she sobbed uncontrollably. A few weeks later she tried to commit suicide, though somewhat half-heartedly, and a week later she was sent back to a closed prison.
18 MARCH
As part of our induction course, we met with the prison chaplain, who ensured that ESP covered all faiths and who took service himself in a makeshift way in the multi-faith room, which happened to be next to my dorm room. There were plenty of bibles and hymn books for whoever may want to read them and clergy came to look after any Catholics, for whom the occasional mass was held, especially at Easter, and also any Muslims. At the invitation of the chaplain under the Prison Fellowship scheme, we also had visits from various groups, including a group of evangelist and New Testament folk, who had an interesting way of portraying the ‘facts’ and argued strongly in favour of the creationist view of the world. A Pentecostal group from Brixton visited a couple of times while I was there and ran services that were quite jolly with the level of singing and clapping rising substantially on those occasions. I knew what to expect as my daughter-in-law’s father is a Pentecostal bishop who preaches both in Brixton, near my home, and in Ghana, where he is from originally, and I had been to a number of services he had held.
I started attending service after meeting the chaplain as he seemed to be serious about providinghelp to the girls in ESP, who he believed had special needs that were quite different to those of the men in Blantyre, who he also looked after. For the benefit of killing any rumours to the contrary, I must say that I did not discover God like some famous male prisoners seem to have done. I have to confess also that I am not particularly religious but as a Greek Orthodox I attend church on special occasions such as for weddings (including the two that involved me), christenings , the odd funeral (to be avoided) and the Easter celebrations in Greece, which are quite spectacular as they involve open air mass, candle processions, a lot of noise and fireworks at midnight when Christ is resurrected, even though they are supposedly banned. What is more, I had to explain to the congregation that audience participation is not encouraged in my church. You have to sit or stand still while the priest and the male criers sing psalms in a strangely nasal way, leaving the end of the psalm hanging in the air for quite some time for special effect. The congregation sits there getting slightly nauseous on the incense that wafts up as the priest waves around a holder he is dangling from his fingers while singing and walking about holding the gold-leaf-covered Gospel. The women all found this terribly intriguing but I felt I had something to prove so became an enthusiastic attendee of the various church services. I don’t think that in the eight weeks there I missed a single Tuesday evangelical meeting, a Thursday Bible-reading session (taken by the second chaplain, who came from the Free Church movement, which as far as I understand it is an interdenominational national Christian organisation separated from any government endorsement or funding), or the Sunday service with
On that first day, as photographers had camped around ESP having got word I was now housed there, it was decided I wouldn’t walk to the visitors’ centre but instead be driven there to avoid the press. Therewas space in the car so we took two others along. One was a woman in her very early thirties with a number of children including a very young baby. She was having trouble adjusting to it all and on the way back, after seeing her youngest child, she sobbed uncontrollably. A few weeks later she tried to commit suicide, though somewhat half-heartedly, and a week later she was sent back to a closed prison.
18 MARCH
As part of our induction course, we met with the prison chaplain, who ensured that ESP covered all faiths and who took service himself in a makeshift way in the multi-faith room, which happened to be next to my dorm room. There were plenty of bibles and hymn books for whoever may want to read them and clergy came to look after any Catholics, for whom the occasional mass was held, especially at Easter, and also any Muslims. At the invitation of the chaplain under the Prison Fellowship scheme, we also had visits from various groups, including a group of evangelist and New Testament folk, who had an interesting way of portraying the ‘facts’ and argued strongly in favour of the creationist view of the world. A Pentecostal group from Brixton visited a couple of times while I was there and ran services that were quite jolly with the level of singing and clapping rising substantially on those occasions. I knew what to expect as my daughter-in-law’s father is a Pentecostal bishop who preaches both in Brixton, near my home, and in Ghana, where he is from originally, and I had been to a number of services he had held.
I started attending service after meeting the chaplain as he seemed to be serious about providinghelp to the girls in ESP, who he believed had special needs that were quite different to those of the men in Blantyre, who he also looked after. For the benefit of killing any rumours to the contrary, I must say that I did not discover God like some famous male prisoners seem to have done. I have to confess also that I am not particularly religious but as a Greek Orthodox I attend church on special occasions such as for weddings (including the two that involved me), christenings , the odd funeral (to be avoided) and the Easter celebrations in Greece, which are quite spectacular as they involve open air mass, candle processions, a lot of noise and fireworks at midnight when Christ is resurrected, even though they are supposedly banned. What is more, I had to explain to the congregation that audience participation is not encouraged in my church. You have to sit or stand still while the priest and the male criers sing psalms in a strangely nasal way, leaving the end of the psalm hanging in the air for quite some time for special effect. The congregation sits there getting slightly nauseous on the incense that wafts up as the priest waves around a holder he is dangling from his fingers while singing and walking about holding the gold-leaf-covered Gospel. The women all found this terribly intriguing but I felt I had something to prove so became an enthusiastic attendee of the various church services. I don’t think that in the eight weeks there I missed a single Tuesday evangelical meeting, a Thursday Bible-reading session (taken by the second chaplain, who came from the Free Church movement, which as far as I understand it is an interdenominational national Christian organisation separated from any government endorsement or funding), or the Sunday service with
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