The Jailhouse Blues Ch. 01

These unfortunates are sent Letters of Notification, issued by their local Job Centres. These Letters of Notification advise their recipients as to the details of their allocated Placements, working as community servants.

Over the years I have heard many terrible, hard-to-believe stories about these so-called Placements. Where, until they find gainful employment, these unemployed males are obliged to work under such degrading, demeaning - more often than not, humiliating - conditions, to earn their weekly Unemployment Benefit payments.

And always, in the direct or indirect service of females.

For instance: The Sock Room.

An extremely popular female-friendly concept, the Sock Room was one of the Authoritarian Female Party's earliest Work Motivation Programme scheme initiatives.

An early brainchild of the Authoritarian Female Party leader and Prime Minister, Caroline Flynt, every town in the UK has a Sock Room - the larger towns and cities, usually more than one Sock Room.

Sock Rooms are where the town's females are encouraged to go (not that many of them actually need, to be encouraged) by the AFP, to change their dirty socks. They put on a fresh, clean pair, laundered by a community servant, and leave their dirty socks behind in one of the colour-coded wheelie-bin style receptacles, for him to hand-wash.

The Sock Room is a male-free environment - except for the community servant.

Sock Rooms are highly popular, and extremely well-frequented. They are here-to-stay establishments. These communal facilities have been given a big thumbs-up, by the towns' and cities' participating females.

(In 2014, the leader of the Scottish Independence Party, Alec Chaddock, had vowed to abolish all of the Sock Rooms in Scotland in the event of his nationalist party succeeding in the referendum. But Scottish females, voting with their feet, flocked to the polling stations in droves to vote No to Scottish independence.)

If they like, sock-changing females can relax for a while on the comfortable chairs provided (well-padded recliners, even), and put their feet up while they take a well-earned break from their shopping expeditions in town.

Some sock-changing females, though, actually look upon their Sock Room as a sort of social club - indeed, it is a hub, to many.

A conveniently situated, and highly agreeable meeting place, the Sock Room is an excellent venue in which to catch up on all the latest gossip. Here, these convivial females happily while away a pleasant half-hour or so (longer, quite often) with friends. Quite often, new acquaintances and friendships are made here.

Some sock-changing females even arrange a rendezvous, congenial get-together in advance. In comfort, they can partake of the light refreshments they've brought along with them; sit back, and enjoy their food and drink as they enjoy watching the community servant hard at work in the town's sock-changing females' behalf.

Some sock-changing females even go one further: make a day of it. As though they've gone to an outing at some theme park.

Certainly, to many sock-changing females, Sock Rooms are a great attraction ...

With many sock-changing females, winding up and looking down on the Sock Room community servant is a highly popular sport. Some of them really enjoy rubbing it in: enjoy rubbing in the highly humiliating fact, that he is going to be hand-washing their dirty, stinky socks.

And, of course, some of the sock-changing females (especially, the 'regulars') go much further than that ... Much, much further.

The Sock Room, it seems, brings out the bitch in them.

Sock Rooms are fitted with industrial-standard laundering apparatus. And a community servant (a male, unemployed for over one month, or a school-leaver, aged eighteen or over and with no employment or training to go to) is assigned to work in a Sock Room.

Under the super critical 'supervision' of two cane-wielding female Community Service Officers (CSO's), the community servant must launder the town's sock-changing females' dirty socks to a high standard: He sorts, turns inside-out, hot-soaks, hand-washes, rinses, mangles, clothesline-dries, and steam-irons them.

Then, upon his latest workload duly passing muster (the close scrutiny inspection of his CSO supervisors), he returns the batch of freshly laundered socks to the Sock Room's ever depleting shelves ... Where they promptly disappear like proverbial hot cakes; grabbed from the shelves, by the town's sock-changing females.

It is a most miserable, soul-destroying business, for the Sock Room community servant.

By AFP think-tank design (developed from Caroline Flynt's early brainchild idea), it is an exercise in sheer, soul-crushing, mind-numbing futility. A purposefully imposed, heinously devised mission-impossible, for the out-of-work / not-in-training male.

Slaving away, in hot and humid and horrible conditions. And trying in vain - struggling futilely - to hand-wash the never-ending and ever-increasing workload of females' dirty socks, to meet their never-ending and ever-increasing demand for clean ones.

Fortunately, since leaving school I had been employed in a reasonably secure Garden Centre job. And so, unlike many I did not live in the constant dread of being assigned to a so-called Placement, and becoming a so-called community servant ... and, possibly being assigned to work in a so-called Sock Room.

But that's not to say that I could afford to be complacent. Because that awful fate could actually befall any adult male, at any time ... and we all knew it.

All it would need, was for a disappointed or disgruntled (or maybe just malicious or vengeful) female to have one word in the right ear, and ...

For one reason or another (whether real, or imagined) many men were constantly on tenterhooks. Constantly on edge, nervously awaiting the dreaded manila-enveloped Letter of Notification to pop through their letterbox and land on their doormat like some 'Please open at once!' letter-bomb ... Or, heaven forbid, even a rattling knock on the door, from a pair of cane-wielding, concave bob hair-styled CSO's.

After all ... men just never knew, when a disappointed or disgruntled (or maybe just malicious or vengeful) female might just decide to have a word in the right ear ... about them.

After ten years of Authoritarian Female Party rule, the UK's male population were getting more than fed up with their ever increasingly oppressed lot.

Increasingly, disaffected males - most of whom had originally voted AFP, on the promise of work being found for them - were making ever louder noises of dissatisfaction. Ever more vociferous expression, of their burgeoning embitterment.

There were public protests; even a few organised street marches ... they'd had enough: the AFP's mission creep, had crept far enough.

But Prime Minister Caroline Flynt (still in power after ten years - and set to far exceed even the long tenure of former 1980's female Conservative Party Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher) had decided that she'd, had enough.

The Authoritarian Female Party government's first duty was to protect its female citizens.

The country's males needed a timely reminder of their place. A timely reminder, of their station: Their station, in an AFP-governed UK.

Especially so, the cabal of ringleaders.

These were the small number of provocative men, who were stirring up such unrest, and who were responsible for organising the public protests and coordinating the street marches that were starting to gather such worrying anti-AFP momentum.

They, in particular - the dozen or so troublesome agitators - needed to be taught a lesson. And the sooner the better, before things started to get out of hand.

And the Authoritarian Female Party were just the women to teach them: Caroline Flynt and her AFP government would swiftly ensure that these disruptive, blue-touch-paper-lighting troublemakers - these intolerable insurgents - would have a very public, and extremely humiliating comeuppance.

In a very public exercising of their power, the AFP had an all-out purge. In a middle-of-the-night roundup all of these ringleaders and their number two's were arrested by the AFP's CSO's.

Using their powers of Citizen Declassification, the AFP stripped these predominantly highly respected, high-powered executive businessmen of their exalted status.

Whereupon, Prime Minister Caroline Flynt, and her Cabinet Ministers - Harriet Harmman: Minister for Women; Theresa Maynard: Home Secretary; Anna Savoury: Minister for Defence; Anita McVale: Minister for Works and Pensions; Nadine Dorrens: Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation, just to name five of the more powerful and prominent - promptly 'seconded' these uppity men into their own, personal service (a twenty-eight-year-old man, a former Sock Room worker named David Smith, was assigned to Prime Minister Caroline Flynt, at her own choosing).

These formerly high-ranking, highly influential big-cheese figures in the big-business and high-finance world, were promptly reduced to figures of high ridicule.

These former Captains of Industry's euphemistic official title: Cabinet Minister's factotum. Their new salaries: equivalent to the Unemployment Benefit payments of a Sock Room community servant.

And, when they weren't busy with cleaning their Cabinet Minister's shoes, or otherwise occupied with serving her tea and coffee, or with errand-running, the factotums would be performing their most humiliating service of all: serving as her under-the-desk footrest.

The former ringleaders' number two's were similarly fated: allocated to certain selected, rising-star AFP junior ministers: A reward, for recent good work.

I have actually seen this myself, on the AFP's Government Today TV channel ... How the mighty have fallen!

As a matter of urgency, to prevent the dangerous possibility of the purge's resultant vacuum being filled by new ringleaders and their number two's, an example also needed to be made to the rest of the male population.

A new, ultra-effective deterrent was called for.

Prime Minister Caroline Flynt announced her latest brainchild: the Crimes Against Females Act.

Caroline Flynt declared her immovable stance, and the rigid position of her AFP government.

In a week-long, Monday-to-Sunday series of party political broadcast appearances on TV, Caroline Flynt made the government's intentions clear, duly advising the UK's male citizenship of the AFP's intended clampdown.

The Crimes Against Females legislation would be effective from 00:01 a.m. on the Monday following the end of that week's warning broadcasts.

There was to be a tough and uncompromising crackdown, the beautiful, highly charismatic and visionary AFP leader warned the UK's male adult population.

Severe sanctions would be summarily awarded by the courts, warned Caroline Flynt, against any adult male who was caught and convicted of behaving with "impropriety" towards a female.

Unfortunately ...

By the damnedest, cruelest of luck - and I still curse my luck, to this day - I had booked that very same week to go on my annual holiday.

It was my getting-away-from-it-all, much-looked-forward-to hiking and camping holiday in the Austrian Alps.

But, in my so wanting to 'get away from it all' - no TV, no radio, no newspapers, and with nothing else to intrude upon my enjoyment of the serene peace and quiet, other than the odd Tyrolean yodeller - in my self-imposed seclusion I had so happened to miss, and so was totally unaware, of the AFP's party political broadcasts that week ... and, of their dastardly message.

And, to what cost! What terrible cost!

When I returned to England, my flight landing at 07:30 on that fateful Monday, I never even made it out of Heathrow Airport, before being arrested - but not by the police.

I was arrested by one of the much feared, cane wielding, AFP-deployed Community Service Officer two-woman patrols, who had surreptitiously captured on video camera my Crimes Against Females transgressions. "Gotcha!" one of them had exclaimed gleefully, indicating the pinhole-sized lens of her sneakily-disguised camera to me.

Of course, I hadn't the slightest idea what the triumphant, grinning-from-ear-to-ear CSO was going on about. But it made no difference. She had caught me bang to rights: recorded on camera, my offences were indisputable.

The two CSO's then formally arrested me.

After handcuffing my wrists behind my back, they escorted me outside and bundled me into the back of an AFP van that was parked at the kerb. I went quietly. I didn't resist, or even protest, because I knew that to do so would only result in them caning me on the spot - right there and then, in front of whomsoever witnesses.

The two CSO's slammed the van's rear doors closed on me. Then slapping their hands against the van's side panel in an Off-you-go! gesture, they signalled the driver to take me away.

After that, everything happened so incredibly fast it was dizzying: In the space of just one day, everything changed ...

The exclusively female Community Service Officers are a sort of multipurpose security force. Authorised with powers of arrest by the Authoritarian Female Party, the CSO's were recruited and introduced by the AFP immediately upon the all-female party being voted into power.

That was in May - 2010 (twenty ten). And so, as I was born in April - 2000, life under the rule (under the heel, many say) of the Authoritarian Female Party is pretty much all I've ever known.

The Community Service Officers are also detailed to supervise the Placement work duties of community servants - and, to 'chastise' them as they see fit, with their AFP-issue canes. To the CSO's, these supervisory assignments are the proverbial cushy number: easy, money-for-old-rope duties, usually with plenty of very well paid overtime available.

It is common knowledge too that, in the matter of correctional punishment, as a perk of their job the power-going-straight-to-their-heads CSO's are pretty much given free reign by the AFP: To not only 'chastise' community servants, but also to bully them, intimidate them, dominate them - subjugate them - in whatever manner they like ... The stories, I've heard.

In their very distinctive uniform, the CSO's are hard to miss: Blue blazer, green blouse, red skirt, and yellow ankle-socks. On their feet, they wear their AFP-issue black, thick-rubber soled backless shoes - rather like clogs. Around their waists, they wear their black nylon utility belts.

Equally distinctive, is the CSO's concave bob hairstyle: Straight fringed, and with the hair cut to follow the jawline, teased under, and cut short at the nape of the neck.

Normally an attractive enough hairstyle - very sexy, even - on the girls and women it suits. But, on the CSO's, their own adaptation of the hairstyle looks ... menacing. Looks more like some sort of militarist helmet.

And if all of that's not enough to see them coming, in addition to their highly eye-catching uniform ensemble and their 'striking' concave bob hairstyle, there's also the CSO's flexible and wicked-looking AFP-issue canes ... and the CSO's are always on the lookout for the slightest reason to use them.

They are a certain breed of female, the CSO's ...

And so the ink had barely dried on the pages of the Statute Book, when I had unwittingly fallen foul of the new Crimes Against Females legislation.

In fact, within just thirty minutes of retrieving my backpack from the luggage carousel at Heathrow Airport - Terminal 5, I had actually managed to contravene three of the new laws.

An ignorance of the law is no defence ... And so, after having watched and listened to the recordings of the two arresting Community Service Officers' video evidence against me, the twelve-woman professional jury duly found me guilty, of the three cited counts of Ungentlemanly Conduct.

1) Failing, in the Arrivals refreshments bar while enjoying a post-flight cup of coffee, to come to the aid of a lady, and offer my assistance in putting on her coat.

(The video evidence recording showed me smiling to myself in amusement, as I watched the increasingly-frustrated looking woman make three failed attempts to insert her right arm into the aperture of her overcoat).

2) Failing, in the Arrivals hall whilst on my way to the exit doors, to stop and offer the gentlemanly services of a relieving foot massage to an obviously footsore British Airways air hostess.

(The video recording showed me clearly seeing the haltingly walking blonde BA stewardess suddenly stop, in obvious distress. Her acute discomfort amply evidenced by the pained expression contorting her face, she gratefully eased her right foot from her apparently rather tight-fitting dark-blue leather uniform pump, and wiggled and scrunched her pantyhose-covered toes in momentary relief ... But, because there was nothing immediately to hand for the footsore air hostess to hold on to, and left unaided, by the nearest-to-hand male attendant - me - left thus unassisted and precariously balanced, she'd thereby been unduly discommoded, by said inattentive attendant, to the point of criminal neglect).

3) Failing, when asked by a lady standing outside the Arrivals hall waiting for her lift, to provide her with a light for her cigarette.

(The video recording showed me apologetically explaining to the lady, that I am a non-smoker, and so therefore don't normally carry matches or a lighter on me).

The lady judge, Her Worship Delia Downing, therefore had not the slightest hesitation in awarding me a custodial sentence: Three months in jail.

I was flabbergasted.

"Leonard Lightwood," intoned Her Worship, in her summing-up. "After viewing the damning video evidence against you, I am left quite shocked, by your flagrantly careless and casual conduct. Try as I might, I can find no mitigating circumstances for your appalling behaviour. Your manners towards females leave a lot to be desired - and that, is putting it lightly. You appear to have no sense of decorum. No notion of deference. Absolutely no sense of propriety, where females are concerned. No concept, of what it is to be a gentleman.

"I must congratulate the jury. Quite rightly, they deemed inadmissible your implied contention that, as a non-smoker, you are thereby exonerated from your obligation to carry cigarette lighting-up paraphernalia on your person. And I must commend the jury. Quite clearly, the members of the jury have duly reached the correct and proper decision: On all three charges, a unanimous verdict, of Guilty.

"An example has to be made ... and so I am sending you to Greystone Prison. There, you will be taught how to behave properly, towards females," Her Worship told me.

Gawping at Her Worship in astounded, open-mouthed disbelief, I had stood there, utterly incredulous.

"Run entirely by females, Greystone Prison is a purpose-built correctional establishment. A doctrinal centre, where you will receive specialised, training-intense treatment to address the errors of your ways. The errors of your ways will be systematically and thoroughly drummed out of you. And teachings, as to how to behave with propriety towards females, will be systematically and thoroughly drummed in to you."

This couldn't be happening!

Feeling my legs buckling under me from the mind-numbing shock, I held onto the dock's balustrade-supported rail, white-knuckled.

"There will be no remission of your sentence for good behaviour - that will be expected of you, Mister Lightwood," the lady Judge continued. "But, if so recommended by the Greystone Prison officers, under whose regime you are being interned, extra time can, and will, be added on to your sentence accordingly, if you do not conduct yourself as expected by the female prison officers."