Jail takes on new perspective

Sunday Star Times

LOCKED UP: Until now I've looked solely on the gloomy side of being in jail, but a flash of information from a trial under way in the High Court at Wellington made me reconsider, writes Rosemary McLeod.

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Rosemary McLeod

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OPINION: Until now I've looked solely on the gloomy side of being in jail, but a flash of information from a trial under way in the High Court at Wellington made me reconsider.

The part that always puts you off jail is the company you have to keep. It is not exactly a Wadestown book club at which you gather to discuss George Eliot's novels.

Apart from tattered pornography, you're probably allowed one comic a week to read in the pokey, and you'd get tired of reading it through six times, then backwards and upside-down, and finally memorising it for something to do.

There are always your fellow prisoners' tattoos to read, but the sentiments expressed therein are hardly intriguing. Snobby prisoners - bent lawyers, financiers and such - must have a dull time of it.

It seems most male prisoners while away the tedious years by working out in the gym, a homoerotic activity, surely, once you've put a few years into your pecs.

I don't expect gym conversation is all that challenging; more a matter of grunts and the reek of sweat, unless you've adapted to the idea of muscly manhood as a diversion, and simper at each other.

I feel sorry for criminals who have to share cells, whatever they've done to deserve it. Being left alone with your own thoughts would be bliss compared with having to share in other peoples' ablutions, and toilets are always uncomfortably close to prison bunks.

That would take me right back to boarding school, having to queue for the sole toilet before bedtime, with only a plastic curtain between the current user and the queue, and the seat always warm from your predecessor.

We might have been taught to say grace in French, and warbled our share of hymns throughout the day, but the basics of life were as truly basic as in any jail.

The only possible pleasure in life in either situation would be getting around the rules, and that's what perked me up about the current trial, in which prison officers are alleged to have smuggled goodies for a popular prisoner into Rimutaka Prison.

Among the coveted, clandestine treats mentioned is anti- wrinkle cream. And right there you have a new slant on incarceration. I picture gang members out of circulation for years, but tenderly rubbing unguents into their faces so they don't look a day older on their release.

Just think, you emerge one day like Rip Van Winkle, after the equivalent of a long sleep during which you haven't aged a bit.

Since nobody seems to change their outlook in jail either, that makes sense. You emerge the same as when you went in, your skin as smooth as a baby's backside and your mind as devious as ever.

* * *

Some people wind up in jail, and others have more interesting experiences, exploring lesser known regions of the mind.

The Japanese prime minister's wife, Miyuki Hatoyama, already makes former British prime minister's wife Cherie Blair look tiresomely sane, and since her husband's only just been elected we'll have years to discover more about her.

Mrs Hatoyama claims to have travelled to Venus on a UFO in the 70s, finding it "extremely beautiful and very green". She also knew Tom Cruise when he was Japanese, in a former life.

In a weird way, this connects. Cruise is a UFO nut, too, being a scientologist, and he starred in The Last Samurai, a film that was supposed to be set in Japan but was very obviously made around New Plymouth: you expect a sheep to drift into frame at any moment.

The countryside does look green, however, and this is where Mrs Hatoyama will have got her wires crossed. Venus, New Zealand, what's the difference when you've seen our gushy tourism ads?

She has also described how, as part of her health regime, she "eats the sun" every morning for breakfast.

"Yum, yum, yum", she is supposed to have said in an interview, closing her eyes and placing imaginary solar morsels in her mouth. "I get energy from it. My husband also does this."

Like many of New Zealand's pharmaceutical prisoners, I'd like to know what she's on, and where I can get some. At 66, the old girl's having more fun than I am - and it's legal.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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