Doctor knows best

You may recall that your Blogger has been trying to see the prison doctor. Three years ago they discovered I had diabetes, but they only got around to telling me the other day. Well, they are very busy and one has to remember one's humble station (thanks to a deliberately misled jury).

So at last Prisoner Gordon has been invited to meet the good man. There he was seated at his smart table, a mountain of files at his right hand, glasses on nose, and occasionally quizzing me at the level of the well-bred bridge. Me, like a private before the commander, standing loosely in front of the desk.

'Ah, yes,' he says. 'Gordon, I presume. Look, Gordon, you're new to prison...'

'Not exactly, doctor.'

'Ah, been in before?'

'Never been in trouble before,' I say. 'But the jury was mistaken, not exactly accidentally. '

'When did you come in then?'

'October 2003. Almost six years ago.'

After a little silence, our man says, 'Why have you asked to see me?'

I mention the diabetes. Discovered three years ago. Told about it last month.

'You should have been put on cholesterol control pills,' he said. 'Not because your cholesterol is high...'

'No, it isn't.'

'... but because it is routine when diagnosed with diabetes.'

'So I should have been on the medication for the past three years?'

A prisoner mustn't complain. The poor old taxpayer is picking up all our bills - and presumably the undertaker's when this mob gets things wrong. Someone said it costs 50,000 a year for every prisoner. Makes us feel like bankers.

And thank you, Taxpayer, for another bonus. I now have a machine to monitor my blood sugar levels. I'm very grateful. I am grateful that it is for something I am actually suffering from.

The other day I was called to Healthcare and given new medication. This seemed an extra bonus and a surprise. But when I looked closely at the label, there was someone else's name, in bold 14 point Arial. Tyrone Gordon of this parish. The ingredients looked interesting. Anyway, despite the years in this crime college, I remain basically honest and let the chance to sell the medication pass me by.

'Not me, Guv',' I say in the lingo and hand it back. For a moment, it looks as if I might be put on a charge for insolence. Then, after a few days, I am summoned back for the self-same medication.

'Yours!' the geeza says or commands, and offers it with a defiant look that says hand this back and you're dead.

'Thanks, Guv',' I say again. 'But this is for one Tyrone Gordon. I'm Roger Gordon.'

He's not amused. 'Look, it's for Gordon. There, in black and white. Aren't you Mister Gordon?'

'I'm Roger. This is forTyrone. ' I say and stand back a bit when he looks almost outraged that this mysterious other Gordon and I have first names.

'Well, how do you spell it?'

I tried to think of a variant of 'Gordon.' But I couldn't.

The population of a city behind bars

Doctors know best, of course. I am a mere number among the numbers cramming full the dungeons of England and Wales. (We used to be a nation of shopkeepers. How interesting that we seem to have become a nation of 'criminals'?)

There's me and 82,486 others. The population of a city. Considering that diabetes is a serious condition, it'd be interesting if 82,487 of us suddenly died because of the, well, rather lacking medical organisation.

It just might become a bigger political issue than bankers' bonuses, the economic crisis, the developing situation in Afghanistan, those poor wretches trying to survive in the Iraq we destroyed, and even than the burgeoning new marijuana factories of England.

Roger Gordon
call-this-justice.com