Meat and Prison

Peak District Part V

Pastel yellow ragwort bounced up the verge in the breeze. On the map, there was a pin in the middle of a field near the road to Ashbourne and the Peaks. ‘The Secret Diner’. It promised hot food for a reasonable price.

The lane there was lined by huge concrete blocks topped with lego-like bumps. A plastic school chair propped up a sign saying No Parking’. Further up it said HMP Sudbury.

‘Under the Prison Act 1952 it is a criminal offence for any person: To assist a prisoner to escape or attempt to escape. The maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment.’

A drab collection of bungalows spread out through the compound. The nearest had a large collection of potted flowers lined on trestle tables, like a mini garden centre or village plant sale. A pot was 50p.

The philosopher Foucault once asked if it was surprising that prisons resembled schools, hospitals and barracks. He was making a different point, but this prison used to be a US Air Force hospital and more importantly, looked a lot like my primary school.

The bungalow had a large wooden floor and a few open boxes of vegetables. Two bendy marrows looked like zeppelins running out of gas. A man with big arms, wrapped tight by his T-shirt, was leaning on the counter picking his nails. He said they didn’t serve coffee, the diner was shut. ‘Just is on Saturdays,’ he shrugged. He told me everything was grown by the prisoners.

‘Oh nice,’ I said, trying to think of something friendly to ask. It was suddenly awkward. ‘Is it err…a nice place to be?’ I winced. A supremely stupid question. Worse - rude and insensitive. He looked at me blankly, clearly thinking the same.

‘It’s all right,’ he said eventually, wearily, ‘Closest place to being home.’

Sudbury Prison is a cat D, an open prison. The actor and socialist Ricky Tomlinson, the dad in the TV show the Royle Family, did two years here for picketing in Shrewsbury. Conspiracy to intimidate. It’s thought prisoners here can be reasonably trustworthy but hundreds have escaped. Burglars Lee Hyde and Larry Connors walked out just the other day. The Lincolnshire police were warning not to approach the man with the dragon tattoo.

The road to Ashbourne wasn’t ideal for hitchhiking. No cars were coming up behind when someone finally stopped. That made getting in less stressful. For me at least. ‘She’s absolutely shitting herself.’ Dan said as Kirsty kept still. Hitchhiking outside a prison probably doesn’t help I apologised. Kirsty looked even more afraid.

I wondered if Lee Hyde or Larry Connors chose a similar method of escape. Quite possibly. Hitchhiking’s always been a useful tool for outcasts. Prisoners on the run have been a useful tool for antis too. To stop hitchhikers in Oklahoma, they put up yellow signs saying Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates, and to stop student activists getting to Civil Rights marches in the 60s, the FBI spread posters:

To the American motorist: Don’t pick up trouble. Is he a vacationer or an escaping criminal? A pleasant companion or a sex maniac? A friendly traveller or a vicious murderer. Don’t take the risk!

Signed, J. Edgar Hoover. Always a reliable fearmonger.

A few years ago a prisoner in Kentucky slipped the guards while being moved between prisons. The old ‘my handcuffs hurt’ trick. He made it to a nearby highway and flagged down a lift. The driver turned out to be a policeman. ‘He thought he was getting a ride,’ the policeman told the press, ‘And he did.’

Dan asked if I hitchhiked a lot and I said so. Suddenly Kirsty, whose fear had thawed, turned around and fixed me intensely, ‘Have you ever been picked up by someone really nasty?!’ I guess Hoover’s campaign was successful.

I said I hadn’t but recounted how once on the outskirts of Oxford two deeply unsettling men wound down their window. I’ve never seen a look so chilling. Where are you heading? - They asked. - Cambridge, I replied, Where are you guys going? - Prison… - They stared at me. - Shame, it’s a different direction…

I guess that would have been a first, hitchhiking to prison.

Dan used to try and hitchhike regularly. He never had any luck though. He worked in a slaughterhouse for a time, a money spinner as a teenager. He did several jobs in there.

In the belly room, they’d slit open the carcass and lift a bucket up for Dan. He’d cut out the bladder, uterus and small and large intestines. You had to be careful removing the anus and rectum, no contamination would do, and then you tied off the oesophagus to ensure the same. They’d all be tossed down a special chute. No use for them, destined for burial. In the spraying room, they’d send in the carcass sawn in two. He’d spray it down as it rattled on its hook towards the truck, running alongside to cut the final tendons.

It was a grim job. He’d start at six and be done by four. Then, worn out, he had to walk eight miles home. He held his thumb out but never once got picked up. Once his aunt drove past but seeing him bedraggled and smelly, splattered with blood, not even she stopped. Little wonder really, we agreed.

I told them about the slaughterman who picked me up on Alston Moor. A frightening man, gruff and grim. During the foot and mouth pandemic, he claimed he killed a million animals by hand.

‘Yeah they’re an odd bunch, the slaughterers,’ Dan agreed, ‘Definitiely had a look in their eyes.’

I said it’s a good job really, working in a slaughterhouse. Maybe we all should do a stint, the meat eaters among us at least, a kind of national service to animals. It would give us some proper respect for the food, probably reduce our consumption too. Dan sort of agreed. Despite the year he spent there, he still ate meat. They had a butcher's attached to the abattoir and they’d served good food there. It was the best part of the job.

I recalled the grizzly image of the foot and mouth slaughterman cutting chunks of steak off the carcasses before they tossed them on the pyres. That was what they lived off for two years. So he said at least.

Dan and Kirsty took me as far as Ashbourne. We said our goodbyes and I went off to find some lunch, settling at last, on a burger.

Fish, I decided.