An open reply to the Daily Mail

 

To Mark Branagan of the Daily Fail,

 

I’m furious, more than that, I’m tired.

Tired of your publications constant and relentless perpetuation of what you believe the criminal justice system is, what purpose it serves and imposing, supposing, your own vigilante mob mentality by way of manipulation of the public perception and creating an air of fear, disdain, resentment and hostility towards the prison population and I’m here to tell you – it has to stop.

 

In a world of free press, social media and human rights – let me tell why I’m angry.

How dare you film a woman without her consent like some sort of animal in a zoo for your grotesque grandstanding of morality.

How dare you stalk a woman down a country road and having walked that road myself every single day for months, in the pouring rain and the blazing sun, donning my hi visibility bib to ensure I am seen, I am criminal, I am a rogue amongst the masses, let me draw your attention to a few things.

 

-          The bibs are for our safety; they are not to forwarn the innocent and unsuspecting public that the criminals are out on tour and roaming the streets like the hoodlams you say we are. The bibs are for the prison officers to take note of the fact we are coming and going, day in, day out, much like they do, through the gates, twice a day.

-          The bibs are to ensure that whilst walking the two miles each way to the main road, we are safe from oncoming traffic and predatory reporters like you, hiding in bushes, taking unsolicited photos and invading our privacy, on the assumption that removal of liberty, means removal of our rights – you may want to brush up on the law, heaven forbid you yourself step outside of it and land at one of the UK’s cushiest prisons!

 

The photo you have taken on the lady returning to Askham is particularly interesting, as you’ve failed to note the most important part of that process – she has pressed the gate buzzer, much like I did and said, much like I did

“Barker-Mills, returning from work,” – the gate opens and you return to the prison reception, to deposit your already searched on the way out and re-searched on the way in belongings, which are kept in lock boxes and do not enter the prison estate, you then too are searched and you return through the reception door back into the prison estate, bib and all.

Return.

Askham Grange is not the UK’s cushiest prison, but it may well be the UK’s most successful one if we measure rehabilitation, engagement and absconding rates of Category D prisons.

The gate you have photographed and made reference to, OPENS, at will, from the inside. Not to terrify the gently folk and delicate disposition of Daily Mail readers who fear the unknown and prefer to live in ignorance and propaganda lead hand holding opinion formation BUT, the women of Askham grange leave the prison on one premise – they have earned the right, they have earned the trust, they have worked hard to show reliability, decency and as such, having gone through risk assessments, ROTL boards, meetings with governors and offender managers, prospective employers, then and only then, may we leave. And leave we do.

Like workers bees’. Just like you.

The gate opens to let us out and we, the criminals must buzz and ask permissions to be let back in, and we do.

 

When I landed in Askham Grange, I started my prison job immediately, as all prisoners are put to work in the estate to ensure it’s maintenance, functionality and to embed that sense of routine and a days work – appropriate, proportionate and much of what you readership tend to overlook.

We don’t sit around in our cells playing playstation, smoking, taking drugs, committing acts of violence – and let it be said, I refer to Category D and my experience.

We are up at 6:30, we attend role checks several times a day in and around our work schedules, or education attendance.

Having worked hard in the prison bakery, (I know, the irony) – I was offered the opportunity to attend an interview for Max Spielman.

I wore the suit I wore to my sentencing hearing, I polished my leather brogues and I rocked up to the education suite, just as I would in my real life.

I had the same anxiety, the same hesitations, amplified by the fact, I knew, I was a prisoner.

I got the job.

My first time outside of the jail, despite having only been incarcerated a short time, I couldn’t breathe for the fear of it. The road from Askham Village felt never ending and daunting – even more so I imagine now the ladies of Askham know the vultures lurk in the bushes. You should be ashamed.

(And here I give credit to the prison establishment, my offender manager saw and felt my anxiety and to ensure I was supported effectively and my triggers were reduced, she arranged for a prison officer to take me to the max Spielmann store ahead of my first day. I sat in the back of a regular car, with a plain clothes prison officer who proceeded to explain the route, where to go, where was the best place to get a sandwich at lunch - reiterating the rules and agreements as he should. We drove to Leeds and back, ate a sandwich and I returned to the prison feeling more ready for my first day at work. The prison did that. They saw my feeling, my behaviour and they supported it, mitigated it, and empowered me to take that first step)

 

Prison is punishment. That is it’s purpose. There is no escaping it. We can mask it in recovery and rehabilitation but we send women to prison to teach them the consequences of actions and the breaking of law – the women who find themselves in Askham Grange have earned the right to do so. Prisons are built on a system of good behaviour and engagement.

Privileges are what keeps everything in check – you work hard, you attend your therapy sessions, you take your medication, you put the work in. You go to education, you take your exams, you engage. You show willing, you show change, you show potential and that is met with equality, opportunity and it’s placed entirely in your remit.

If you can take a job, in the community, move from A to B on a daily basis – and yes, even eat and ice cream on a hot day like the rest of the world, perform a long days work, return “home” and repeat that routine, you are to all intents and purposes, ready to return to mainstream society – as an equal. Not as a pariah.

 

You, with your grotesque and poorly written piece of fear mongering and hate fuelling drivel, are creating a harsher world for us to come home to.

Where people see monsters, where there are just people. Where many fear the unknown but choose not to learn.

Where it’s not walk a mile in my shoes, it’s you don’t even deserve the s*** on my shoe.

 

When did we become so cruel?

 

As human beings, complex in our individuality, we all deserve equal opportunity, to learn, to grow, to change and to evolve. That is all the women of Askham are doing, just as I do now.

I suppose that fills you with fear and dread, a criminal, wandering the streets unknown to you, working and earning, and living, and it’s true, I even enjoy an ice cream on a hot day on my way home from work.

 

These women work harder than anyone I know, because what you’ve failed to notice is, despite their incarceration which is traumatic and isolating, and debilitating, despite the overcoming demons, and dread and trauma and addiction and all of the things that lead us to live behind bars, we, with all of that, the weight of the world on our shoulders, and yours, get up, and go to work. Just like you.

So tell me, where is the shame in that?

 

No shame, just pride, absolute pride. Well done that woman. Well done that prison. Well done that employer.

More opportunity. More equality and less of your “journalism,”

 

Starvation Mode

 

I don't have a great relationship with my body; or body image I suppose is more accurate.

The above photos are from the week I returned home from prison and I look at them with 2023 eyes and the fat girl inside me can't help but think "wow, look how thin I was,"

But; it's a mirage.

This slim jim effect, was the most unhealthy I have ever been - thin, yes, but there's a reason for that.

10 months in prison 

Just 10 months.

When I was sent to jail, I weighed a whopping and somewhat grotesque 19 stone; and I can wax lyrical about PCOS impeding my weight loss efforts and my mental health and historic eating disorder interfering in a binge, purge, diet, consume cycle or chaos, and even; even; throw in the furlough fatty attitude of sitting indoors for 6 months and living on deliveroo and zero gym attendance.

I, like the rest of the UK, bought the gym equipment in the first week of lockdown thinking "oh no, the gyms are closed," - darlings, if the gym was open morning, noon and night, of which is in Manchester city centre - it is, it wasn't covid keeping me from it. It was me.

I digress.

September 2021 Fran is 15 stone, a size 14, and slim. The smallest I've been in years and wearing a GPS ankle tag two sizes smaller than would be required now upon the cankles of 2023.

Alas, that dream aesthic is hiding many things.

1) my hair was falling out and I was balding in patches 

2) I was severely anaemic and required injections at the doctors to keep me standing upright at the best of times

3) I was thin for 3 reasons; zero nutrition and insufficient calorie intake through "3" prison meals a day, I was walking 5 miles a day to get to work (the wonderful perk of open prison) and when I wasn't walking or working, I was in the gym.

I had become the cliche, the fat girl who goes to jail and then gets hench - not quite, but there was little else to occupy one's mind behind bars during the pandemic; so when the gym reopened, it was a godsend.

The irony; I'll go and work out in the prison gym that costs me nothing, but for the ample membership fee of Bannatynes in the city; you have to drag me there.

An average days feed for me in prison was 

Breakfast; 30g portion of faux weetabix and UHT milk, sparingly as it was a limited commodity at the best of times in the daily allowance of teeny tiny blue and white cartons per prisoner.

Lunch; in closed prison - beige slop. Chips, potatoes of every shape and size, meat that I saw the invoicing costs of when working as the admin assistant in the kitchens and decided from that moment on to eat only vegetarian or vegan; and anything fried, battered, fresh from the freezer. Fresh fruit or vegetables did not exist in HMP Styal. If there were opportunities for greenery, they were usually mouldy by the time they hit your little brown bag of foodie delights.

Lunch in open; better; menu choice - choice; that summarises the difference in estate; but of the choices; was a salad - and it was good. It was green. 

Lunch out working in the real world, hiding behind a Max Spielman counter or eating in the store room like a naughty mouse; because Timpsons pride themselves on hiring offenders and exoffenders, but they expect us to take pride in their "working lunch policy" just as much, which means - you don't take lunch, you eat on the fly in between printing photos and making cushions with photos of peoples dogs on them.

My first foray into the wild, I rang my wife, my first real life lunch outside of the prison gates? A punnet of strawberries. I ate them in under 5 minutes and regretted the purge and indulgence of demolishing the red fruit wonders so quickly but what a joy, to eat something so fresh.

Dinner; dinner in closed was a strange affair. Covid or not; it was a cold meal. Hot beige lunch but dinner was always so malformed, malnourished, plastic bread sandwich with ominous meat or processed cheese, a bag of seabrooks crisps - I'm sorry seabrooks, for every bougie bar I see you on sale in now, I'll never in my life purchase a bag again; and of course, a past it's best before date, Soreen maltloaf.

Maltloaf for some, well, for most, is a nostalgic nod to one's childhood, with grandparents and parents slapping on an inch of butter and pretending it was a healthy option.

For me, maltloaf will be two things - my childhood; Fran you're too fat for a chocolate bar at lunch, eat this cardboard raison sponge; and Fran, you're in jail, eat this old cardboard raison sponge.

The thing about prison is, you exist for the routine. So when the brown bag drops with your evening meal, you devour it in all it's monsterous form because 1) its something to do to pass the time 2) you are hungry like you've never been before in your life and 3) you're so hungry, you have a tendency to eat your dinner AND your breakfast in one sitting leaving you stuck for the next day.

Dinner at Askham, still, a cold dinner and sandwich based; BUT, with a fresh piece of fruit thrown into the mix - banana day was infamous for being a good day. I loved banana day! Much more than apples and oranges.

Like little caged animals at the zoo, we clapped and yapped at feeding time for our treats and when our keepers wanted us to behave, we did, because feeding time, no matter how pathetic the offering, was the highlight of the day.

So, from 19 stone, to 15 stone in 10 months. 4 stone in 10 months is drastic by any means bar a gastric band and a tiktok sensation; but there I was, slim jim and free.

What did I do when I got home?

I ate.

Like the hungry catepillar on crack, I ate my way through a year, now approaching two. Like a petulant child. Because I can. Because I want. Because it's there.

I said to my wife last week

Prison routine.... it's not such a bad thing in the real world.

My prison routine? Bed at 10pm, TV humming in the background, Timpson freebie staff alarm clock stuck to my wall set for 5:30am; no snooze capability.

Up at 5:30am, make my bed, tidy my little space, shower, hairwash, makeup, iron garish pink shirt, eat faux weetabix, head to prison reception, check out my items, walk miles to the bus, head into Leeds city centre, work 8 hour shift, bus back to miles long walk, back into the prison, pick up plastic sandwich and joyful banana, eat said sandwich with my friends, chat, laugh, drink coffee at strange hours.

Sit on my bed, cross legged, read a book, write pages and pages of "the book" "the one day story", wash face, clean teeth, watch Ghost Whisperer, sleep. Repeat. 

Sounds ideal? Sounds like someone who's got their shit together? It's a distraction. It's keeping a mind and body so busy you numb the pain of separation and isolation and the neglect you are dealing with every day. You're abused by a system so you care for yourself in the only rudimentary ways you know how.

Now?

Up at 6:45, jaded because I've not slept well, my head is distracted with life, bills, babies, belly, tv, social media, me.

Breakfast, rarely, I'm out the door and powered by Starbucks.

Work - love. Purpose, yes. Enthused? Absolutely.

I'll go a day without realising I've not eaten and then eat something inappropriate to compensate the hunger.

Home, tired, lazy, no cooking, or some cooking, cleaning out of necessity but still tired. Time with Sarah, joyful. The beauty of my life. Our life.

Gym? No.

Moderation? No.

There's a lot to be said for routine, but where prison takes away life, including the stress of life in it's own way, it replaces it with monotony and creates machines. Compliant. Predictable. Muted. Malnourished.

Whilst real life sounds like a sloths complaint; at least it's choice and occasionally wilful ignorance and 21st century living. Imperfect but freedom.

Prison, restricts your liberty, your identity and it does this through a variety of mediums, chief of which is - food.

A hoard of hungry women are easier to control.

A hoard of hungry women spend more money on canteen sheets.

The prices keep rising and we keep spending.

The lure, the promise of that Monday plastic wrapped wonder. Another mechanism of control. 

Be good or you'll go on basic, if you're on basic - no canteen for you.

Work hard and the prisoners penny pot will be paid into; work your full time job of 40 hours in the kitchens for £6 per week.

£6 per week will buy you much need nourishment OR a phone call or two home.

It's all about cost. It's all about control.

When I came home from prison, I read what the press wrote about it, and being the Barker child that I am; I laser focused on the horrific narratives of course I did, but the worst parts?

How many people in the comments on the articles commented on my weight

"Did she eat all the pies?" "Looks like she ate all the profits!" and on and on.

So I was obsessed when I came home with the 15 stone body. I thought I look shit hot.

My body was fading. 

I was the reflection of all that prison was - wasted away.

The kind of calorie deficit that must have been taking place in my body for it to drop 4 stone in 10 months is hard to comprehend.

When I look at my body shape, size, health now. Healthier by far - my hair has grown, it doesn't fall out, my anaemia is under control, my skin glows and is no longer sallow and grey, my nails grow and don't break.

I pang with frustration at my unhealthy attitude to weight loss and body image; I find myself thinking prison Fran was in much better shape than this chubby endeavour of late; it's a lie, it's a weird ripple of prison PTSD that I have to see myself through a happier lense because if I face the reality of what prison Fran was and what she looked like, what she did, how she felt, I'd break.

All of those visuals, behaviours, choices - they weren't made by me. They were made by the bars that held me.

As a fat girl at heart, I wonder if I opted for prison rituals more I would get a better handle on my eating habits; have treats once a week like it's canteen day. Have 3 biscuits and not a packet.

I find myself eating Jaffa cakes on occasion and thinking, "why can't you just have 2?" "you had 2 in jail, you had better self control in jail," and then I remember - I only ate 2 jaffa cakes in one sitting in jail because I was rationing my pleasures to ensure I had something to eat, something to treasure, enjoy and absorb in private, as a reward, as something that was mine.

One might suggest, we / I should adopt this philosophy in life. That just because I can access as many jaffa cakes as I want now, doesn't mean I should.

It's part of the process - knowing that, easing back into that, and remembering if nots all or nothing. 

I wonder as I write, how many fellow prisoners, especially those with eating disorders in a past life struggled with the restrictive food rations and the dehumanising value they created?

In a prison system that exists for profiterring, you can't help but feel that lack of respect, care and duty to those incarcerated. Knowing that the bottom line means your rights, your value, your health, your education, your wellbeing, all comes at the bare minimum to ensure maximum profit for prisons and not for prisoners.

Whether to control in physical woe and depleted energy or whether to erode the hope and healing, you've got the give it to them; feeding the pigs at the trough gives the people what they want.

A zoo.

Where the animals live.

What a difference a year makes!

I sit, in a coffee shop, near to my city centre apartment, typing upon my laptop looking out on a rather rainy Manchester day.

I come here fairly frequently, so much so, the barista knows my order and has brought me the darkest of americano's - no milk. Cue polite chit chat as to what I have on the books today and what sort of bits and bobs I have to tackle in my little jaunt out of the house to maintain a healthier remote working lifestyle than that I had adopted last year.

2022 was tumultuous, like a boat thrashing and splashing upon a turbulent ocean, it was all I could do to come up for air this time last year.

If by chance you are a first time reader of my work, a synopsis of recent relevance and circumstance. Grave mistakes and outrageous behaviours, misguided intentions culminating in a variety of fraudulent misdeeds circa 2015, mental breakdown and drastic interventions all round in 2016, not many of you will know this, but at the end of 2016, I took a job in care, working as a mental health support worker - why? Because in the burning of TheBarkerBaker, I wanted to know I could, that I was capable of putting other peoples needs before my own, I wanted to do a job with authenticity, based on hard work and tenacity, integrity and grit. I wanted to give back some of what I took in decency.

So I wiled away working in care, bringing in a menial minimum wage, but it was honest, and it paid the bills, of which there were mountains. Chasms of chaos and debt, and letters that looked like Father Christmas' grotto in the North Pole, only a less positive diatribe, wish lists aplenty from a creditor too many.

Somehow, I scraped my way through the banality of it for a year or so and with therapy, support from friends and family, I pulled myself together, post-apocalypse and evaluated what I wanted and needed my future to be.

Education. All that was good, all that was pure of TheBarkerBaker ideation, was the teaching, was the sharing, was the educating and empowering. It brought me joy to facilitate, engage and inspire, with the rudimentary philosophy of what it was to make a loaf of bread - taking nothing and turning it into something. I was adopting that philosophy whole heartedly within my own regeneration and rehabilitation.

Cue re-education and upskilling, a deep dive into professional development and learning, and lo', with the support of my new found employer, I began my transformation from bread maker and law breaker, into educator, authentic, passionate and grateful that my hard work was beginning to pay off.

A few years into my new role, with the qualifications to justify and quantify what I already knew - I was; am, a damn good teacher, with statistics of successful outcomes for learners to boot - an email.

GMP. Detective from GMP. This wasn't small potatoes PC calling. This was the big dick and he was coming for me.

"An informal chat," how many of us entangled in the justice system have fallen into that trap? Knowing full well the extent of our misguided misdeeds and mistakes, all too often, walking into a good cop, bad cop and falling foul at the first hurdle of any hopeful defence.

It's 2019, I've been married just 4 months. I've been in my job a couple of years. I've got stability that I have never ever known. Critics of mine, victims of mine, will say it's undeserved, that it's at their cost.

Walk in my shoes as I have tried to walk in yours, perhaps then the criticism may be welcome, but as has been the case for the past 7, nearly 8 years now after the fact, I tire of the daily diatribe and character assassination and attempts to destabilise. I did then, in 2020 and even more so now, as I sit, in 2023.

It's 2020, Covid-19 has stolen the year from us all, and I am sentenced to 27 months custodial sentence.

Off I go to HMP in peak pandemic, to wile away my time behind bars in a system that has ground to a halt, no education, no visits, no meaningful activity and conditions that have since been found and documented to have met the threshold for Mandela's definition of "torture," 

And so from closed, then open, then tag, then home.

Home, end of 2021, on tag until the end of January 2022.

Hence, here I write.

Less than a year since having my GPS tag removed from my ankle.

In full time employment. Sustained for 6 months. 

Having launched my pilot project with incredible women behind me, supporting, driving and guiding it's trajectory with me - if I'm honest, to ensure it's integrity and longevity, for fear of how TheBarkerBaker having another crack at social change may come across.

Always aware, always suffocating under the imposter syndrome, the proven so "ideas bigger than her bank account,"

Terrified that the project, whilst so desperately needed and so perfectly suited and guided by me, having lived and breathed the systemic failures of the prison system, would suffer under it's founders name.

But tenacious and gregarious as ever, to the distaste of some, but beautiful reception of others - Coming Home was born.

But why?

This time last year, I was at a crossroads like no other. None more tantamount of the direction my life could go.

Based and bound by ptsd, trauma bonded relationships, unhealthy in their origin and dependence and yet curated and maintained like some sort of addiction and necessity of familiarity and comfort. Misguided.

I was willing to throw it all to the wind and hide in my prison persona, for fear of trying to be the old me, the new me, what did that even mean?

Fran who tries, who thrives, survives, smiles - that Fran had been hired and fired 3 times in the space of 3 months post release; all, despite disclosing my criminal convictions and having those conversations, victim to the press and run of google that had branded my fraudulent acts through a less than truthful or accurate lense; a sensationalised fall from grace story, the hookwinder, fraudster, monster of many who had defrauded friend foe family, whoever the press could shake a stick at.

So January 2022, in my blur of "who am I? What next? Why bother?" - a little self wallowing lets be honest and still in some post prison haze.

I broke.

Staring at oncoming traffic over the princess parkway, wondering if it was kinder to jump with no traffic so as to avoid other victims I might create.

Despite having been a ghost. An arse. A shadow of my former self. My friends rallied, as they do, to support, save and protect me. From myself.

Babysitting, watching, holding, and piecing me back together. No questions asked. No apologies needed. Just love.

And so I'm here, today in 2023. Despite my close brush with the end.

Today, a piece I wrote about sex trafficking was published in the phenomenal Inside Time, my third piece non the less. Wonderfully received and accepted, all with my hope and vision to drive forward change and visibility surrounding the issues women in prison face.

Today, I was shortlisted and broadcast across social media as a nominee for "Mentor of The Year," award.

2022 saw the launch of Coming Home. Successfully attended by what is now 15 participants in it's pilot phase.

The first cohort of women all of whom have achieved incredible things following successful mentor pairing, work experience opportunities, job interview line ups, further education offers. More than that, with the support of incredible people behind the scenes, I managed to create a safe space for women like me - who need and want to comfort of other people who have been to prison, but not the sometimes tainted and toxic relationships that can come from those environments.

A place without judgement but always with accountability.

My wonderful wife, who I have found my way back to with passion, dedication and shared hope, optimism and love, continues to drive forward, making miraculous impact in her work at The Christie. 

We embark upon our fertility journey with tenacity and hope. Again!

We build upon the ashes of what was, to regenerate and flourish like a phoenix from fire.

Is it easy?

Never. Every day is hard. For any woman coming out from the shadows of prison, it's about rebuilding your identity, authenticity, purpose.

For most women, it's a struggle to get out from under the past, the guilt, the press, google, the ripple effect; or in my case, the incessant, persistent, constant surveillance and my victims determination to take aim at my life, my employment, my wife, my financial stability, my identity. 

Imagine, to have achieved the things I have in a year and be terrified to share them for fear of them being torn down, belittled, undermined, eroded, compared to the Fran of past lives, and measured against my mistakes, forever.

Well, it's 2023. And I am SO proud of who I am, how far I've come, the work that I do, the life that I live, the friends that I have, the family I have built, the women I know.

I am proud.

I work like I have something to prove, I do, to myself. That I am more than my mistakes and that I can learn from them and use them as positives to shape a stronger, safer, kinder future.

Have you heard it all before? I suppose thats the problem.

I'm taking each day as it comes and starting and finishing it as I mean to go on.

In anyone's recovery, in anyone's journey, that's the fairest outcome

More than that, it's what everyone deserves.

It's not about second, third, fourth chances.

It's about faith.

The devils gate

I didn't realise

I didn't know

That I had let the wrong one come home

That my shadow had cheated me

And set foot in my life

Come home to my wife

But it wasn't me

It was a shimmer

Slimmer

But distorted from the time away from home

Hidden behind the facade

Of prison

Emotionally resilient

And hyper vigilant, hard

Cruel really

Lost in the fear

Like my place wasn't mine to fill

So whoever came home

That wasn't me

Whoever was set free

Came home to liberty,

But lacking identity

Integrity and bravery

Still tied into the prison system slavery

It's too easy to say

"Prison made me,"

It didn't

It shamed me

You saved me

In the solitary of just me, myself and I,

It was easy to be caught in a lie

To survive

To feel something

To feel alive

But I didn't

It's like being dead inside

Because you shut down

So you don't drown

If you're in there,

Who you were before,

Doesn't make any sound

Doesn't want to be found,

And then you find yourself laughing,

You find yourself crying,

You find your people,

And they close ranks 

And you forge your barriers together

Locked in, 

Locked hands,

Locked lives,

To survive

Drive 

To the finish line

To hold eachother together

Your family on the inside

The one you take out with you

And hope that when you wake up from the nightmare

There's still that love

And if you're lucky, as I am,

They're them, and you're Fran

And you emerge from the cocoon of incareration

Of reintegration

And you laugh again,

And you find your friends,

And you build you lives,

And you share the reality

Without the hostility

The danger

The suffocation

And you love life fire

With loyalty that will last forever,

Because if you can ride into hell

With the people on the outside and the in,

Loving you,

Holding you together,

Then the devils gate becomes a breeze

And you zoom on by into the vortex

That is real life

And you don't just survive

You thrive

Because these people have kept you alive

And it will always be ride or die

Chapter One - senseless

One earring out, two now, in the palm of a strangers hand. My hands are sweaty and pale, shaking. 

"Rings," she growls.

"No," I reply, my first push back against the prison system has begun, and I've only just left the dock. She grips my poorly packed "might go to prison bag" in her bullish fist and slams it on the table in the small room in which we stand.

"Rings," with a tap on my left hand.

"You'll have to take that wedding ring off my cold dead body," I say with defiance that will be eroded with every step I take beneath the surface of this building. 

She rolls her eyes in exasperation, yanks open the packed bag and proceeds to list my dismal items packed so naively and in retrospect, arrogantly, on the words of my solicitor - who, plot twist, and a story for another day - turns out to a disbarred solicitor and as inept as his flailing representation behind an equally dubious barrister. The irony of my fraud conviction, is that I'm likely represented by two men abusing the legal aid system to line their pockets and have me empty mine - here in this room.

An assortment of boxers and knickers, I couldn't decide on what was prison appropriate underwear, my gender fluidity sprawled across the desk before me. French knickers assigned for the eyes of my wife and not the masses of HMP Styal and boxers that scream "lesbian," and I am now increasingly aware, that regardless of what cloth clads my derriere going forward, it will be seen by one and all in a women's prison in a variety of humiliating environments, this I know. This was indeed what came to pass.

From leather holdall, to perspex plastic, my worldly good are zip locked and labelled and banged in the van that waits at the bottom of the cold, stone staircase. They're not ready for me, so I'm taken to a holding cell.

How Victorian. Often one walks past Minshull Street Crown Court and marvels at the architecture and the history, the misery, the knowledge of who and what goes on behind the high stone walls and foreboding iron bars, and here I sit. I wonder, who has sat in this cell before me? Murderers? Monsters? Paeodofiles? And me, the barker baker, the barker faker. Considering my fate. Twisting my wedding ring on my finger.

It will be ok. We are going to appeal it. The solicitor promised me that much through the glass as they took me down. It's Thursday, which means by close of business tomorrow, we can have movement before the weekend. I'm sure I'm his priority. He promised. Suspended. "Get a bottle of wine in for dinner Fran," he said.

Silver light flickers in my eyes as the heavy metal door creaks open

"Barker-Mills," he drawls, like this is mundane work for him, and I'm just another body on the conveybelt now. It's true. I am.

I stand, legs buckle, and follow him, onto the prison van. No handcuffs, no chains, and I'm put in a box, like a horse on the motorway, shut behind a metal door with a bottle of water rolled underneath it. It's small, claustrophobic, I've never been caged like this, but the monster is penned, ready for the zoo, and the engine fires up with a jolt and the city lights blaze through the porthole of horror.

I see Manchester fade, my life disappear, in moments of street lamps, Christmas lights and it's gone. For a year at least, it's gone.

And no-one knows I'm here. Everyone is checking their phones, to see how it went, to cheer the grace of time, that 2015 was a different life, a different world, a different Fran and that 2020 is a married teacher lady, with friends and family and work, and hope, and babies and trust and integrity and and and and.....

I cry, an uncontrollable cry, so intense, I can hardly breathe, I'm caged in here, I can't escape. What the fuck is happening?

I'm sick, on my beautiful leather brogues. They didn't take my laces? Are they not supposed to take your laces when they take everything else?

Proper shoes for court, and a crisp black suit, I'm clad in my winter coat. Sarah calls it my teacher coat, because it swishes like The Matrix when I walk down Oxford Road to the office in the Manchester weather, with my laptop thrown over my shoulder, ready for a days teaching.

My students, my god. Tomorrow is Christmas jumper day at work and I promised a prize to the most ridiculous jumper. They will turn up, for 9, they will sit and wait and I won't be there.

They will ask, my boss won't understand what happened, this was going to be ok, work supported me, gave me references, they have my back, they will have to explain.

Oh god, the papers. The only way people will hear of my demise is the shitrag MEN, the world's most clickbait, fuckwit, crossed arms, Greggs sold me half a pasty drama filled faux journalism.

Will they believe that trash that was said in court? Is that how this will all play out? Does it even matter now? I'm on my way to HMP Styal. The irony.

Engine rumbles, radiator hisses, lock clanks, and I'm back outside in the cold December air.

Into reception to be processed.

"Could you stop crying and look at the camera so we can take your photograph please?"

I can't so I look up like a puffy ferret with red eyes and makeup stained beauty fading.

Flash - it's printed, A303*** prisoner number assigned.

Prisoner number. 

Prisoner number.

I sit down, trying to steady my weight. The retrospective hilarity of understanding that the place I choose to sit is in fact the body scanning chair, that most people entering prison try to avoid, and here I sit, freely crying my heart out, with not a sheet of spice or bag of heroin stuffed up my hu-ha!

Some girls inside would say it's a missed opportunity. It's as beautiful and untainted as it went into prison thank you very much!

I get a phone call, I need to call Sarah and tell her what's happened, tell her where I am.

I call "this number cannot take your call right now," - she's turned her phone off, she doesn't want to know me, it's over, she hates me, she will never forgive me, she doesn't even want to know what happened.

I cry hysterically.

"It's off, can I call again please?" They let me as they can see my clear desperation. The same automated response. 

"Can I call my sister please? It's the second number down?"

I am clasping a crib card, I had written a few numbers down that very morning just in case - a crib card I have a stack off in my desk at home with digital marketing geek facts and quiz questions on for sessions, my Christmas jumper quiz... 

Again, they let me, my hysterical shaking and crying is persuasive and concerning in equal measure.

She answers "Donna, I'm in prison," - she laughs, she thinks I'm joking and asks how I really got on.

They have given me 1 minute for the call, I tell her I don't have time to explain what a shitshow it was but that I needed her to tell Sarah I was in HMP Styal, I got 27 months, and was going to be spending a year at least in jail.

(Turns out I had written Sarah's number down in my haste and she hadn't turned her phone off, I was calling a wrong number)

However, in my vunerable and disoriented state, I was convinced it was all over. End of days.

I clasped my bag of items once they had been sorted through by the prison - they took most of it, I still don't know why - the internet and my knowledge and lived experience now tells me, I was allowed them but to hell with my whitening toothpaste, proper toothbrush, and stamps. Instead, prison issue toothbrush and toothpaste, and a plastic bowl with mini soap and shampoo sachet and oddly enough, a washing powder tablet.

Confused, I carry them through the darkness, walking through the prison compound, following the prison officer who is taking me to the cell block.

She takes me to my cell, and it's everything I imagined and worse, Dickensian, metal, old school prison cellblock wing, like Bad Girls, but filled with real bad girls. A mixture of the lost, the loony and the fuck ups (I'm in good company)

"It's not as bad as it seems, and you're a first timer, you seem like a nice girl, you will probably get out on tag in 12 months," - this prison officer has kind eyes, she's young, clearly in this job for the right reasons and after a year in jail, I came to learn, prisoner officers like this are few and far between. The majority fall into two categories - disenchanted and frustrated and therefore disdainful, or, the worst, powermad, egotistical, small men and women who enjoy the hierarchy of prison to feel superior and revel in the misery of those "beneath them," - those kind of officers also fall into two categories, downright narcissists, or sexual predators.

And to think, the majority of women I meet here have been victims of men, abuse, violence, sexual exploitation and are now being herded, controlled and subdued by men of a similar temperament - remind me why prison DOESN'T work?

She shuts my cellblock door, heavy metal, loud. I knock on it from my side, she opens the little door flap.

"What's the bowl for?"

She opens my door and shows me an itinerary with my name on it. Covid isolation 14 days.

Shower day 8.

I read it again

Shower day 8.

The bowl is for washing. Washing oneself. Ones clothes, knickers in particular and even more dignified following those two things, ones plate, cup and cutlery.

So this is life now.

Like an animal in a zoo. Shower day 8. Exercise outside, day 5.

The strip lights flicker on the ceiling, I ask how to turn them off. 

She smiles and tells me, because I'm high risk and on an ACCT, the lights will stay on for the first few nights as the officers will need to observe me every hour.

I laugh.

A suicide risk, yeah I can see that. I have literally been surveiling my cell for options and opportunities since she opened the door, and they are LIMITED.

I have nothing to live for. No wife, no life, no job, no home, no family, no friends, no dignity, no integrity, no honesty, no hope.

So of course, I wonder, why waste a year? To maybe get tag? I can't do this. It has to end tonight.

Bedsheets. That's what they do in the films. But where can I tie it?

I deliberate as she leaves.

I make my bed, this isn't the Hilton, and bless my soul since coming home, the making of a prison bed has benefited my real life as I am now a superstar at bed changing at home.

It's bedsheets or nothing. The bars on the windows are clad with glass, the window doesn't shut and the cold winter air rattles it open and closed, clanging and banging. Combined with the lights on full, sleep is out of the question.

Besides, the woman in the cell next to me is screaming, and the rest of the cellblock are screaming back and telling her to shut the fuck up.

I concur but wouldn't dare join in the chorus.

I think the pipes are the best bet. Perhaps the telephone wire.

This is what prison does.

It sends women who have broken the law, who can and should be rehabilitated and supported in the community to maintain their employment, relationships, homes, and commitments to recover and do better, it sends them away, in the dead of night on a thursday in december, for a year, to deliberate how to kill themselves, because none of it makes sense.

Sending women to prison like this for short periods of time in the name of justice and punitive punishment is cruel, senseless and a waste of tax payers money.

Next story : How many days did HMP Styal let me stay banged up in my cell without my citalopram? 10? 20? 54?

What a difference a year makes

 Last night, I sat, outside, on a warm Manchester evening, the sun had set, and as I held my wifes hand, I looked up and saw the imposing skyline silouette of Manchester Minshull Crown Court looking back at me. The juxtaposition istion of that building sitting like a spectre of a past life, overshadowed by rainbows a-plenty and the competitive music barrage from every bar dotted down canal street.

That building will haunt the paths I walk through the city forever, and I often change my route if I find myself in close proximity to it. Just looking at it makes me lose my breath. The Victorian and draconian high walls, with the closing gates where the prison vans lurk. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.

So you can imagine the confusion within me looking over at the building that saw me lose my freedom and disappear into the winters night, whilst sitting and laughing with the people who love me most.

And it occurred to me, I left my life, like a soul leaves a body. I left it. 

And it's only recently I came back to it, and fortunately for me, it was still here waiting for me, but it was only ever waiting for me. Not the shadow or spectre of who I was that came home from prison.

I caught a glimpse of myself a few days ago, on a microsoft teams call, the way we all do, we see our little faces in little boxes, and it was like the Fran I lost, and had been waiting for, came home.

I was chatting away in teacher mode, waxing lyrical about coding, exhilerating a new cohort of students, and I felt altogether myself, no missing pieces.

Bit by bit, prison eroded the person I had become, the strength, pride, resilience I had made my whole, the woman I had become to overcome the person who I was before. 

It was a short period of time, relative to the time I have no been home, but day by day, it took something. Not just freedom. Pieces of me. That pride, that strength, that resilience, evaporated, for every day I was outside of my life and I hadn't realised how little of me was left until I compared the person I was before and after.

When I came home from prison, I was selfish, I was souless, I was focused on all of the wrong things, building my new house on sand, with no foundations. With no depth. No purpose.

The echoes of who I was, lingered. And those around me tried to pull me back, wake me up, remind me I was home and home was all I ever needed - but in a very Fran obstinate way, I knew better.

Prison is a strange place, where you can be your purest self but daren't be, because it's a place where vunerablity is a dangerous thing. You open yourself up and don't realise the danger you've put yourself in and you create and forge bonds of foreverness in some misguided notion of solidarity and connectivity. It's nothing more than a survival mechanism. Prison creates an unhealthy codependence and erodes reality. It creates a selfish souless bubble where the person you were once, exists in a warped version and you feel like you have it all figured out, you know who you are now, who you need to be on the other side, because you go to prison feeling like you have to change, you have to be more, be better, because otherwise, what was it all for?

I spent days and nights lamenting my conscience, my choices, myself. My punishment has always been of my own making, but prison exacerbates our ability to destroy our sense of self. It dehumanises you and the relationships you build, the relationships you have.

And somehow, we are supposed to leave rehabilitated, reformatted, reinvigorated for life after?

The woman prison made me, and the woman I allowed myself to become, for the sake of punishment and penance, set me back a year.

I lost a year of my life to jail, I lost nearly as much trying to regain my sense of self, my purpose, my soul, my relationships.

But I spent a weekend with the people I love the most and who love me unconditionally, the people who wrote to me, called me, let me know I was in their thoughts and hearts every single day I was away, and I held their hands, danced like the sun wouldn't come up, drank more beer than any 35 year old woman should.

We celebrated pride, we celebrated love. We celebrated me being home. And I felt it.

I lost time, I lost myself, but thank god for patience, persistence and the wonder of friendship and real life.

Prison is a bad dream, and I woke up.

And I've never felt more free.

Roe vs Wade

What a sad day it is for women.

The ultimate silencing of a woman's voice, a woman's choice. 

When the discussion surrounding Roe v Wade being overturned came into the public forum, I found myself quite triggered, and I had a little downslide in terms of mental health. I couldn't quite explain, although I tried when my wife asked me what was weighing on my mind.

Abortion comes with the biggest "what if" you will ever face in your life.

For me, in 2007, it wasn't even a question in my mind, it was a must. When I found out I was pregnant, entirely by chance, having been admitting to hospital for other reasons, my only question for the nurse was "can you do an abortion here?"

And I remember the look on her face, like I was some silly student who had dropped her knickers and not thought through my life choices. It's that flippancy, it's that assumption that makes abortion such a taboo. Let's set aside the pro life, the religion, the bastardised religious zealousness that comes with the territory (forgive the pun) - if's not god's judgement that brings about the friction, it's other people's opinions on someone elses body, mind, circumstance, that has no place in society.

If I had not had the right to make my own choice, and take ownership of my own body, after somebody had taken ownership of it for me, and taken my choice from me, if I had had my voice silenced and my freedom of choice taken from me, I would have given birth in 2008 to a child I never asked for, a child I never wanted, a child I believed because of the horror of circumstance, I couldn't love. Those were my feelings and my rights to feel that way.

It would mean that the man who took my body, took my choice, also took my right to live my life on my own terms, in the way I wanted, in the way I planned.

As a second year politics student, I had no intention of having a child at 19, nor did I want one.

As a gay woman, I had no intention of having a child with a random man, not a rapist, not a one night stand, not a cock in sight.

As a woman, I had no intention of having a child at 19 because I had worked for my education and wanted to build my life in the way I had hoped and planned, to go to university, to get a good job, to build a life, find a wife, settle down and live happily ever after.

It is only these days whilst infertility runs rampant through our lives and has taken over our marriage and hopes of procreation that my mind occasionally allows the "what if" question to enter my head.

For every "what if" I have had since 2007, I never thought I would see the day, I would feel grateful for having those moments, for having the choice to have them. That 19 year old me had the freedom to make that informed choice. Backed by doctors, therapy and an operation.

I don't regret it. It was what was right for me at the time. It was right for my body, my mind, my hopes and it shaped who I am.

I don't have qualms over religion despite being brought a good catholic girl. I live my life firm of mind that my choices have concequences of my ownership. Thats true of all my decisions, good and bad.

But to lose the ability to have that choice? To be forced to live with such a penance?

I can hand on heart in 2022 say with all honesty and integrity. If in 2007 I could not have had an abortion to rid myself of the foetus imposed upon me by a rapist, a monster, to live with a constant reminder of the violence and horror of that night.

I would have killed myself. It would have been my life lost with whatever cells I was carrying with me.

Women NEED, DESERVE and MUST have the right to make decisions about their bodies.

Today's decision will lead to deaths, through unsolicited, underhand, opportunistic, dangerous abortions and loss of life of the women who can't live with the choice they've been left with, none.

What next America?

The LGBT+ community best prepare for the overturning of gay marriages, Trumps legacy of hate and ignorance lives on and Joe Biden is still trying to find his balls in Hilarys handbag.

God help us.