THEODORE DALRYMPLE
We must all move with the times, of course, or the times will move without us. I am in any case no Luddite who wishes to keep everything exactly as it was, merely from fear of the future. Technology changes, usually much for the better, and improves the quality of our lives, permitting us the time and opportunity to concentrate upon the more spiritual aspects of our earthly existence. This effect is obvious from walking down any British shopping street.
Times and technology change even in the prison. For example, in the old days (that is to say, when I started working there) prisoners would attack one another with old square batteries called PP9s, wrapped in a sock and wielded like the South American bolas, but then miniaturisation destroyed the market for such batteries, and in the process eliminated a transitive verb that for a time was part of prison argot: to PP9 someone. Thus technological advance has impoverished our language slightly.
The demise of the PP9, however, has seen the rise of the billiard ball as an instrument of attack. Last week a prisoner was hit on the side of the head with two billiard balls in a prison-issue sock, and as a result his face swelled up more or less in proportion. The reason for this attack, which could easily have done him far greater harm, was that he had once been in prison for a sexual offence.
The next prisoner I saw had been involved in a fight. He bore scratch marks on his neck and cheeks. I asked him about his assailant.
'I don't know why he done it. If it'd been on the streets, man, it would have been a different story. In here, I just didn't want to get involved, that's why I let him get on with it. But if he sees me on the streets, he's dead.'
He was a member of the gold-front-toothed community. I noticed that his face bore quite a lot of scars from wounds inflicted by machetes and even by human teeth. There was one particularly fine example of a dental impression on his cheek. I asked him how he had come by so many scars.
'Out there, man, it's madness. It's all madness.'
Fortunately, he was not badly injured and when I had finished recording my findings, he asked whether he could go on his visit. I asked him who was visiting him.
'My mother. I don't want no bitches to come, get what I mean, they only mess up your head.'
An officer interrupted, to ask me to see a prisoner urgently. The prisoner had been caught with some heroin in his possession and he had swallowed the evidence rather than face the charges. I rushed along to see him. Now he was afraid that he was going to die (a possibility in such circumstances).
'How much was it?' I said.
'I never asked,' he said. 'I don't know the price.'
'I was asking how much in quantity,' I said. 'I wasn't making an offer of purchase when it comes out the other end.'
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