today : on liberty

The thing that I wondered was: why my shoes? They took away not only the laces, but, along with my belt and everything else that wasn't basic clothing, they took both gleaming white trainers and placed them in their own sealed polythene bags. There was an issue here - that with my deformed and arthritic feet, I kinda need my shoes to walk in. I stand in them and they help keep me upright, as well protecting my crooked, calloused soles from touching the floor directly. But what the hell - they already took my walking stick away and plonked it, rubber end first into another sealed bag. It reminded me of the time I witnessed someone getting a bird table as a gift and it was wrapped gallantly and vainly to disguise what it was.

This, because I was falsely accused of a minor crime and had to face an investigation. They expressed surprise that I had never ever been in trouble. In fact I 've never even been looked in the eye by police officer before. 40 years of hardly even driving over the speed limit. I didn't even piss up the wrong wall as a teenage drunk. I was out of place - so out of place amongst these drunk drivers, spouse beaters, drug addicts and other recidivists; many on first name terms with the custody and arresting officers, nodding a hello to passing solicitors and tea-ladies.

Here is what I thought: I have never been denied my liberty. I imagine that plenty of us go through our whole life without even thinking about it. Even when we are alone, we have options. We can call someone, or find something to read or watch. There is always the choice to occupy time with a distraction. Alone, locked in a cold cell, I soon used up the graffiti as reading material, whilst wondering what was used to inscribe it on the ceiling. Like almost all graffiti, it was not the witty aphorisms or political slogans that can be read for amusement or compiled into books. It is the simple act of trying to exist and be recognised as alive. Writing your name on a wall, hoping someone will notice that you were here. "Lonny 05", "Dave", "I woz 'ere". A few days previously I visited my local GP. In the freshly painted public toilets I saw the same thing, only then written in magic marker rather than scraped into the paintwork with the edge of a button or zip, or daubed in what looked like, and probably was, shit or blood.

The cell was painted throughout. Floorpaint reiterated over decades with the same consistency and thickness as the inside of an abandoned can, frugally stored on the garage shelf but three quarters hardened. The window, such as it was, consisted of small, two-inch squares of glass, apparently deeper that they were wide, and set in thick concrete and steel. The glaring, crisp sunlight of outside tried hard to pierce through them but only came out on the inside as gloom. Looking through them made me feel like a diver who could see the surface but knew there was no oxygen left to propel me there, and either way the bends would get me if I tried.

The sounds and smells are real, just like you'd imagine. Year old vomit and disinfectant, solid metallic clunking, like that which accompanies the voiceover at the start of Porridge ('Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have been found guilty...'). But this is not fiction. However hard you try, this is not comedy.

I knew I would be out soon: I was waiting for a lawyer to arrive. Yet for this brief hour I began to understand just a little, I think. It's no accident that, after life itself, liberty comes second.

Alone, trapped, there is nowhere to turn but your own thoughts. There is nobody to punish but yourself. I caught a glimpse of a life not worth living, where everything you take for granted is denied, every one of your desires is unenactable. Where civilisation, socailisation and everything you know is made pointless. They know this: it's part of the deal. The incremental erosion of dignity is, of course, part of the process. That's something I learned when the police offered me an under-the-table and illegal deal that would get me out in an hour, if I admitted guilt in exchange for a tap on the wrist. It was an appeal to trade my innocence against my desperation to get out. But they also know that there is nothing more dangerous than a man turning in on himself. Left alone and without distraction or escape, thoughts will soon turn into the unthinkable. That is why they protect you from yourself, why your belt and shoes are safely encased in plastic and placed out of reach.