If symptoms persist.. .

ON MY way to the prison last week I turned on my car radio and heard a heated discussion about plans to priva- tise the railways. Someone was angrily defending to the last syllable of several subordinate clauses the inalienable right of the British public to subsidise our gen- erally disgusting, dirty and overmanned railways, whereupon I switched the radio off.

According to the angry defendant of our collective rights, the Government was trying to sell the entire heritage of the country. This seemed to me a slight exaggeration, and then I suddenly had a brilliant idea: why doesn't the Govern- ment try to sell off some of the popula- tion, and buy a better population in exchange?

I can foresee certain problems with my proposal: for example, no one is likely to pay very much for the British. Besides, there will be immediate disagreement as to which section of the population should be sold off. The scope for the set- tling of personal scores would be consid- erable.

Putting these illicit thoughts behind me as I walked through the electronically controlled gates of the prison, I went to inspect the prisoners in the maximum security wing, who must be visited every day by a doctor. I was accompanied by an officer who, as we entered the wing, called out, `F Wing, doctor on board!'

There was a brief flurry of activity, as newspapers were put down, and then the cells were opened in succession for me. `Doctor to see you' was generally fol- lowed by a thumbs-up sign and a happy exclamation of 'Sound!' on the part of the murderer within. But one of them took a few steps towards me and said, `I've had this fucking cold for three fuck- ing days and it's still no fucking better. You fucking prison doctors don't fucking know nothing.'

`Anything,' I said. 'We don't know any- thing.'

The steel door was slammed shut before our dialogue could develop and deepen.

I had then to give an opinion on whether an axe-wielding robber was fit to plead. He admitted that he had had an axe while he was in the post office, but denied that he had ever wielded it. He had been too drunk to do so, he said. He had only been trying to buy some stamps.

`Do you always take an axe with you when you buy stamps?' I asked.

`I was going to chop some firewood on the way home,' he replied.

I asked whether he often went out to get drunk.

`Well,' he replied, 'you don't go out to get sober, do you?'

Finally on my rounds, I was consulted by a pleasant little man, rather older than the average prisoner. He had migraines, and I wrote out a prescription for him. He looked closely at my signa- ture, with professional interest.

`That's a difficult one,' he said.

`I take it you're a forger?' I asked. `Yes.' He gave me a grin.

`Go on, have a go,' I said, handing him my pen.

`No,' he said, like a writer reluctant to show his work in progress. 'It'd take three weeks before 1 got it right.'

We had a good laugh together. Oh, I wouldn't swap my prisoners for anything: not even for nothing.

Theodore Dalrymple