A Room full of Gentlemen

2013-03-27

A Room full of Gentlemen

8.25 I’m trying it out to see how easy it is to get here in time for an 8.30 start.  I’m a bit too early as I was booked for 9.30 and it turns out Vikki is busy helping Sandy with oral testing so I have to hang around for a while in the waiting room in the gatehouse.  The governor asks me if somebody knows I am waiting.  I have to show my passport and put all valuables, mobile phone and my car key in a locker.  Somebody with prison keys has to escort me so Shauna, the education administrator, comes to get me and takes me to the education wing.  In the staff room, I meet the Art teacher and have a cup of tea to warm up.

Vikki comes and we have a chat about my qualifications and experience and what I would like to do as a volunteer.  I say that I would like to help out with reading and writing.

She takes me to Sandy’s bright, warm, spacious classroom and I meet some of her students.  Most of them are black, non native English speakers.  Far from being intimidating, they are the most motivated, charming and polite group of students I’ve ever had the pleasure to be in a classroom with.  Gentlemen, the lot of them.

Sandy calls them Mr. So and so and they all call her by her first name.  It’s good practice to keep your surname out of it and never tell them where you live

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I listen to one of the men read and then join in with the class when Sandy teaches them some how to spell words they may have to use in their writing exam on Monday.  She has a relaxed, chatty manner and a good relationship with her students, even teasing them gently at times.  They’re very respectful with her and the whole class has a supportive atmosphere.  The lad whose reading I listened to rushes to give me a tissue from his pocket when I have a coughing fit.  Sandy says her Wednesday class is very peaceful and she comes out feeling calm.

 “The Verne isn’t a real prison,” one of them says.  “The Scrubs is a real prison.  You know you’re in prison when you’re in The Scrubs.”  One man says he liked The Scrubs better because you knew where you were in there.  He doesn’t like all these corridors in The Verne.

 The Verne is not an open prison but the men take classes and many of them work.  Some of them work outside the prison in The Jailhouse Cafe and in charity shops.  One man tells me he packs tea bags and cereal into boxes which go to other prisons.

“Do you have any choice about what work you do?”

“When you first come in, they give you a list of jobs and you can put down which ones you want to do.”

"This man is the best in the class.  I can't teach him anything."

She reads out the letter he has written asking a friend to buy a present for somebody in his family.  It is faultless.  He will sail through the tests.

She is very worried about these tests, which have just been brought in.  They have to do speaking and listening tests, reading tests and writing test every seven weeks and in some cases they can’t even read when they start in her class.  From not reading to taking these tests is a huge step but she can’t bear the thought of them failing.

One man, (let’s pretend his name is Bruce), helps the other students with their work.  Sandy says he is a great example of what prison education can do, as he is now well educated, despite having had no qualifications when he left school – although he says he was always good with spoken language. 

Bruce says he was moved around so much as a boy, he could never settle down in any school and also says he was a “scumbag” who deserved every bit of his sentence.  He’s been inside for ten years and has grey hair which may be premature. 

 

“When I went into prison I thought at least I could get some education.”

He talks about giving something back by helping some of the others learn.

There’s a programme in the prison called “Toe to Toe” where good readers can be peer tutors for those needing to learn.  The tutors wear a tee shirt with a Toe to Toe logo so they can be identified .

“I love it when they shut my cell door,” This is Bruce again.  “I read books do some of my art and I know nobody will disturb me.”

 He tells me that his fiancée is a teacher, but she’s thinking of giving it up, because of the pressure she feels under.

 “You wouldn’t think he was a murderer, would you?”  Sandy says when we leave the class room. “I never ask them what they’re in for, but most of the lifers are in for murder.”

I suppose you wouldn’t get life for much less.

 “I learn more from them than they learn from me,” Sandy says and not about murdering, presumably.  

Later, Vikki and I have a debriefing session.  She tells me that when I have my security briefing they will try to talk me out of coming.  They’ll ask you what you would do if you were taken hostage. 

“You would comply with what they say and keep yourself safe.”

I ask her what would happen if a dangerous situation developed in the classroom.

“Every classroom has a panic button that you can press if you need help.  In the three years I’ve been here it’s gone off three times – twice by mistake.”

The keys I will carry on my belt when I am cleared by security have to be put down a chute  when I go home.  If the keys leave the prison, every lock will have to be changed.  Luckily an alarm goes off if you forget to give them in but soon it will just become automatic.

My friend Charlotte texts me when I get out. 

“Are you free to talk?”

“I am now.  I just got out of prison.”

I don’t often get a chance to say that.

Two new shops have opened up on Fortuneswell.
One is Jackson Gallery, a spacious, beautiful cafe with local art shows and a view which replaces a boarded up window and gives Fortuneswell a soul-satisfying look at the sea.  They have imaginative lunches and brunches on Sunday and they even cater for difficult foodies like me who don't eat wheat.  Their coffee is delicious and they carry redbush tea too so we are big fans.
Mark and Jo who own it run a bed and breakfast business in the rest of the house and have a holiday flat for rent below with the same sea view.
The second shop is Portland Pride, which sells local produce and gifts.  We have started buying all our cow's milk there as it only comes from Weymouth .  They also stock vegetables from Steepton Bill Farm run by Tess and Steve who used to supply the Saturday morning stall at Victoria Square when we moved here.  It's good to have their vegetables again.
The shop is a real boon to the neighbourhood as it is beautifully decorated, has fairy lights in the window at night, gives 10% discount to people over 60 and delivers free on Portland.

Fortuneswell has been transformed by these new shops.  Long may they thrive.
  

The South West Coast Path is closed along the West Weares, which is my favourite bit of Portland.  A huge crack has opened up and if it turns into a landslide when you walk along it, you will fall down a 300 foot cliff.

If you want to walk here, you still can but you have to detour through Tout Quarry, which has the benefit of being sheltered, with Anthony Gormley's Man Falling to look at, but it doesn't have the jaw dropping views you get from the West Weares and you can't see Chesil Beach at all.  I miss this walk, as it's one of my regular routes and the quickest way to get to the gym on foot.

The upside is that the number of suicides may go down.  The West Weares has three or four jumpers a year and there are a couple of places with memorials and flowers.  A spot for a lad called Browner had a bottle of beer left out last time we walked by.  Every year the islanders play a game of cricket in his memory.

Guillemots in trouble at Chesil Beach

Hundreds of dead or struggling guillemots coated in a sticky, transparent goo landed on Chesil Beach last Wednesday.  The survivors were taken to a bird sanctuary where they are being washed with margarine  then Fairy Liquid.  If they live, they will have to wait until their waterproofing returns before they are put back in the sea.
Nobody knows what the stuff is and there is no sign of a slick on the water or the beach.  There's talk of it being Palm Oil, which is ironic, as we are fighting to stop a Palm Oil Plant being built in the area.
Anyway, we've been on the National News and the BBC were looking for a local eye-witness, so I ran down to the beach on Friday morning but couldn't see anything except for a huge television news truck with a satellite dish on top.  The surfers were out at Chesil Cove.  They were't afraid of getting coated in sticky goo.

Snow in Portland

It hardly ever snows in Portland.  Two years ago, when we had just arrived, it snowed for the first time in eleven years, even on Chesil Beach which is covered in salt.  The children in the primary school had only seen snow in pictures.  Now, this year in the middle of January it snowed again.  We haven't even been here for three years and already it's snowed twice.  Could this be down to our Canadian heritage?  Friends advise us to keep quiet about it.  We could get attacked in the street, the weather we're having.  Luckily our accents have all but faded and we hardly ever wear our mukluks, although now is the time we need them most.

Chesil Beach

New's Year Eve

On New's Year Eve we go to The Cove House Inn.  It is the only house left standing from the original Chiswell village, most of which was washed away by the sea a century ago.  It looks like a cottage from the Yorkshire Moors, the white Portland stone turned to the colour of Millstone grit over the decades.  The sunsets from the front door are without compare and in the bars are pictures of shipwrecks and scavenged lobster pots.
Big Kev who works on the Oil Rigs tells us about the night in November a forty foot wave came over the shutters and washed his uncle, who couldn't swim, down the cellar stairs.  He survived but refused to come back here for twenty seven years.
There's free food and music for the regulars and a few people are wearing costumes.  One lady is there with her seven sons and they are all in fancy dress.  They come every New Year's.  There are men in black, a bat man and Mandy's son is John Lennon.  The pretty girls behind the bars are wearing wenches' outfits.   At midnight we hug and kiss everyone.  Kev's step daughter Amy gets tearful and his son Zak who has Downs syndrome is dancing up a storm.  He doesn't have speech but he communicates beautifully.  I join in until until the music is unplugged half way through a song.