We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2022
A RING OF GREEN SLIME
I had only been in prison one day. It was time to go out into the exercise yard and I was anxious because it was clearly a kind of informal and vaguely social occasion.
The exercise yard? It sounded like a prison cliché. As I emerged through the door into a high walled compound I could see the walking circle of prisoners forming, and couldn't quite believe my eyes. It was just like in the movies, except they weren't wearing striped uniforms, just shabby grey trousers and jumpers. Walking round and round in a circle, going nowhere, like in the cliché. It seemed an unreal stereotype of meaninglessness. Prison life. Do I go with the flow or what? I didn't know what else to do, so I wandered slowly toward the circulating straggle of men, and fell into step.
It was 1982. I was 24. Now, I have crowded fragments of indistinct memories about the occasion, but one that has always stayed with me is the awful ring of green slime that had formed on the inside of the circle as the men spat gobbits of phlegm to one side. A string of men walking slowly round and round in a circle, three times a day, and like some kind of human-formed seaweed on the tarmac, the accumulated expectorations of 200 men disfigured the exercise yard with passively malign intent. Prison. Men. All in it together.
Early one morning some 25 years later I was in another prison, and another exercise yard. This time I wasn't a prisoner. I was on the other side of a wire mesh fence, looking in toward the men walking slowly round and round. Observing, not participating this time. I didn't want or need the exercise because I hadn't been locked in a small cell since 7pm the previous evening. I’d walk the dog when I got home. I caught myself thinking about the ring of green slime, though. No sign of it in this prison. What else was different? The knot of nerves in my stomach and the tightness as I felt myself wrestling with it were not so different to those I had felt 25 years earlier, familiar now as an anxiety about being in the wrong place, not fitting in, feeling vulnerable, but in a transitory way I could handle.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
