After our walk, Clive and I play a few games of backgammon. He’s in a different class to me, so I decide to take advantage of his superiority and turn each session into a tutorial.
6.00 pm
I write for two hours, and then sign in for roll-call with Mr Hughes.
9.00 pm
Doug, Clive and I watch a magnificent period drama set in Guildford and Cornwall in 1946. Mike (lifer) appears twenty minutes into the film, with a chicken curry in plastic containers – part of his cookery rehabilitation course. Doug serves it up on china plates—a real luxury in itself, even though we have to eat the meal with plastic knives and forks.
I eat the meal very slowly, and enjoy every morsel.
DAY 96
MONDAY 22 OCTOBER 2001
8.30 am
I’ve been at NSC for a week, and am beginning to feel that I know my way around.
I report to work at SMU. Matthew shows me how to make out an order form for any supplies that are needed for the office, which will then be sent to the stores, who should see that we have it the same day. We discover an outstanding order from 5 October for files and paper, marked urgent, and another for 15 October, marked very urgent. Inefficiency is endemic in parts of the Prison Service. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is wasted every year. The departments responsible for this differ from prison to prison, but to give you a small example: some years ago there was a prisoner at HMP Gartree who was a vicious killer and needed to be transferred from one cell to another, a distance of less than a hundred yards. Fifteen officers arrived to move him, an operation that took five minutes. All fifteen officers claimed four hours overtime. How do I know this? A senior officer who previously worked at Gartree told me.
12 noon
Matthew and I have lunch in the canteen with the other orderlies, and are joined by Roger (lifer, murdered his wife), who berated me about England losing to Ireland on Saturday.
‘But you sound Welsh?’ I venture.
‘I am,’ he replies, ‘but I don’t care who beats the English. It’s one of the few pleasures I get in here.’
1.00 pm
Mr New arrives in the office, having spent the morning in court on a domestic matter. One has a tendency to forget that prison officers have problems of their own.
Matthew and I discuss how to improve office efficiency. I’d like to clear out every drawer and cupboard and start again. He agrees. We’re about to begin, when the door opens and the governing governor walks in. Mr Lewis greets me with a warm, jovial smile. He asks Matthew to leave us and wastes no time with small talk.
‘The press,’ he tells me, ‘are still camped at both ends of the prison.’ And he adds that a prisoner has been caught with an expensive camera and long lens in his room. Mr Lewis has no idea which paper smuggled it in, or how much money was involved. The inmate concerned is already on his way to a C-cat, and will not be allowed to return to an open prison. Apparently several prisoners have complained about the press invading their privacy, and the governor has given his assurance that if a photograph of them appears in a national newspaper, they have legal recourse — a rule that doesn’t seem to apply to me. We then discuss my move to Spring Hill before the governor calls Matthew back in. Mr Lewis grants him a further two days compassionate leave, which will allow Matthew to spend five days with his father. Mr Lewis appears to have combined compassion and common sense, while remaining inside the Home Office guidelines.
4.00 pm
Mr New arrives back in the office, anxious to know what the governor wanted to see me about. I don’t mention the camera as Mr Lewis specifically asked me not to. I tell him that Mr Lewis intends to speak to the governor of Spring Hill, but he’s leaving all the paperwork to him.
‘It’s been dealt with,’ Mr New replies. ‘I’ve already sent all the documents to my opposite number.’
4.30 pm
I ask Matthew, on a visit to his room in the south block, if he could redo the ‘officers list of needs’ presently listed on the back of the kitchen cabinet, so that it’s as smart as the one Doug displays in the hospital. I glance up at Matthew’s bookshelf: Pliny the Younger and Augustus Caesar. He asks me if I’ve read Herodotes.
‘No,’ I confess, ‘I’m still circa 1774, currently reading about John Adams and the first Congress. I’ll need a little longer sentence if I’m ever to get back to 484 BC.’
5.00 pm
I return to my room. I hate the north block. It’s noisy, dirty and smelly (we’re opposite the pig farm). I lock myself in and write for a couple of hours.
7.00 pm
I stroll across to Doug (tax avoidance) in the hospital. He allows me the use of his bathroom. Once I’ve had a bath and put on clean clothes, I feel almost human.
Clive (fraud) joins us after his day job in the fruit factory. He tells me that his fellow workers believe what they read about me in the Sun and the Mirror. I despair.
8.15 pm
I leave the hospital and return for roll-call before going back to my room to write for a couple hours. The tannoy keeps demanding that Jackson should report for roll-call. He’s probably halfway to Boston by now.
10.00 pm
Final roll-call. Mr Hughes waves from the other end of the corridor to show my name has been ticked off. He’s already worked out that I will be the last person to abscond. I certainly wouldn’t get halfway to Boston before being spotted.
DAY 97
TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2001
6.03 am
All the lifers at NSC are coming to the end of their sentence and are being prepared to re-enter the outside world. The very fact that they have progressed from an A-cat, through B, C to D over a period of twenty years, is proof that they want a second chance.
One of the fascinating things about murderers — and we have a dozen or more at NSC — is that you cannot generalize about them. However, I have found that they roughly fall into two categories: those who are first offenders and unlikely to commit another crime, especially after twenty years in jail, and those who are evil and should be locked away in an A-cat for the rest of their lives.
Almost all the lifers at NSC fall into the former category; otherwise they would never have made it to an open prison. Bob, Chris, Mike and Roger are all now middle aged and harmless. This might seem strange to those reading this diary, but I feel none of the fear when I’m with them that I do with some of the young tearaways who only have a few weeks left to serve.
8.30 am
Matthew starts cleaning out the cupboard and drawers, while I concentrate on the new inductees. There are fifteen of them, and it’s lunchtime before the last one has all his questions answered.
12 noon
Lunch is memorable only because Wendy says my menu sheet is missing. She suspects it’s been stolen and will appear in one of the tabloids tomorrow. She supplies me with a new one, but asks me not to put my name on the top or sign it, just hand the sheet over to her.
2.00 pm
While clearing out the drawers, Matthew comes across a box of biros marked 1987, and a ledger with the initials GR and a crown above it. Two hours later, every shelf has been washed and scrubbed. All the documents we need for inductees are in neat piles, and we have three bin bags full of out-of-date material.
4.45 pm
I join Doug and Matthew for supper: vegetarian sausage and mash.
5.00 pm
Back in my room I write for two hours. Tomorrow I must—I repeat, must — go to the gym.
DAY 98
WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2001
8.30 am
Today is labour board. All inductees, having completed their other interviews, must now be allocated a job, otherwise they will receive no income. The board consists of two members from management (the farm and other activities) and a senior officer. Before any inductee faces the board I brief them on what to expect, as I went through the process only a week ago. I tell them it helps if they know what they want to do, and one of them, a bright young Asian
called Ahmed, tells me he’s after my job. Another, Mr Clarke, informs me that he’s sixty-seven and wants a part-time cleaning job, perhaps a couple of hours a day. I immediately go upstairs and ask the board if he could be allocated to this office, which would allow me to concentrate on the weekly inductions and the several prisoners who pop in during the day to talk about their problems. They tell me they’ll think about it.
12.15 pm
I return to the SMU after lunch to find a drugs officer in the kitchen. His black Labrador Jed is sniffing around. I melt into the background, and listen to a conversation he’s having with Mr New. It seems there’s going to be another clampdown on drugs. The drugs officer tells Mr New that last year, thirty-six visitors were found with drugs on them, two of them solicitors and one a barrister. I am so surprised by this that I later ask Mr New if he believes it. He nods. Ironically, the headline in today’s Times is, ‘Cannabis to be legalized?’ I leave the office at 1.30 pm as I have a visit myself today.
2.00 pm
Alison, my PA, David, my driver, and Chris Beetles are sitting at a little square table in the visitors’ room waiting for me. After we’ve picked up Diet Cokes and chocolate, mostly for me, we seem to chat about everything except prison; from Joseph my butler, who is in hospital, seriously injured after being knocked down by a bus on his way to work, and the ‘folly’ at the bottom of the garden in Grantchester being flooded, to how the public are responding to the events of 11 September.
Alison and I then go through my personal letters and the list of people who have asked to visit me at NSC. These weekly visits are a wonderful tonic, but they also serve to remind me just how much I miss my friends, holed up in this God-forsaken place.
4.00 pm
I return to the office, to find Mr New and a security officer, Mr Hayes, waiting to see me. The photographers just won’t go away. One has even offered Mr Hayes £500 for the charity of his choice if I will agree to pose for a picture. I refuse, aware how much more will go into the journalist’s pocket. It’s against the law to take a photograph of a serving prisoner, not that that seems to bother any of the vultures currently hovering around. Both officers promise to do their best to keep them at bay. Mr New then tells me that a second camera has been found in an inmate’s room, and the prisoner involved was transferred back to a closed prison this morning. I try to concentrate on my work.
7.00 pm
I visit the canteen to discover I have £18.50 in my account: £10 of my own money, and £8.50 added as my weekly wage. My Gillette blades alone cost £4.29, and two phonecards £4.00, so there’s not a lot over for extras like toothpaste, soap, bottles of Evian water and perhaps even a bar of chocolate. I mention this only in passing lest any of you should imagine that I am, as the tabloids suggest, living the life of Riley.
7.15 pm
I stroll across to the hospital, and enjoy the fresh country air, even if the surroundings are rather bleak. Doug tells me that my application to Spring Hill is being processed. How does Doug know before Mr New? It turns out that he has a friend (inmate) who works in the administration block at Spring Hill.
I have a long, warm bath. Heaven.
DAY 99
THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER 2001
8.30 am
Mr Simpson (probation) and Mr Gough (induction officer) are the first to arrive in the office. They supply me with today’s list of appointments. This has two advantages. I can process those inmates who have booked in, while dealing with the ones that just drop by on the off chance. Mr Clarke (crime not yet identified), our sixty-seven-year-old cleaner, also turns up on time. Matthew runs through his duties with him, while I make tea for the officers.
10.10 am
Mr Hocking (security officer) appears in the kitchen to let me know that a Daily Mail photographer (whose hair is longer than that of any of the inmates), has entrenched himself on a local farmer’s land. He’ll be able to take a picture whenever I return to the north block. Mr Hocking is going to seek the farmer’s permission to eject him.
10.30 am
Mr Clarke has done a superb job; not only is the office spotless, but tomorrow he plans to get a grip on the waiting room — which presently resembles a 1947 GWR tea room.
12 noon
I have lunch with Malcolm (fraud and librarian orderly). He’s quiet, well spoken and intelligent, and even in prison garb has the air of a professional man. What could he have done to end up here?
1.00 pm
Mr New appears, then disappears upstairs to join Mr Simpson, the probation officer. This afternoon they’ll conduct interviews with three prisoners to discuss their sentence plans. That usually means that the inmate concerned only has a few months left to serve, so judgments have to be made on whether he is ready to take up work outside the prison, and if he is suitable for tagging.
The main factors in any decision are:
a. Is the prisoner likely to reoffend based on his past record?
b. Has he any record of violence?
c. Is he, or has he been, on drugs?
d. Has he completed all his town visits, and his week’s leave, without incident?
Ticks in all those boxes means he can hope for early release, i.e. a two-year sentence becomes one year with an extra two months off for tagging. All three of today’s applicants leave SMU with smiles on their faces.
2.20 pm
Mr Hocking returns, accompanied by a police officer. He tells me another camera has been found in an inmate’s room. Once again, the prisoner concerned has been shipped off to a C-cat prison. The third in less than a week. No doubt whichever newspaper was responsible will try again. A few weeks of this, and I’ll be the only prisoner still in residence.
4.30 pm
Mr Lewis the governing governor calls in to discuss the problem of lurking photographers. He asks me if I wish to return to Wayland.
‘You must be joking,’ are my exact words.
Mr New later explains that he only asked to protect the Prison Service, so that when a picture eventually appears in the press, I won’t be able to suggest that I wasn’t given the opportunity to return to closed conditions.
5.00 pm
Supper with Malcolm (fraud), Roger (murdered his wife), Martin (possession of a firearm which went off) and Matthew (breach of trust). All the talk is about an absconder who missed his girlfriend so much that he decided to leave us. He only had another nine weeks to go before his release date.
DAY 100
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2001
A century of days in prison.
8.07 am
Breakfast. As it’s Friday, we’re offered weekend provisions: a plastic bag containing half a dozen tea bags, four sachets of sugar, some salt and pepper and a couple of pats of butter. Those of you who have read the previous two volumes of these diaries will recall my days in Belmarsh when I was on a chain gang, along with five other prisoners, putting tea bags into a plastic bag. Well, they’ve finally turned up at North Sea Camp. Prisoners do make useful contributions that can then be taken advantage of in other prisons, thus saving the taxpayer money, and giving inmates an occupation as well as a small weekly wage. For example, the tea towels in the kitchen were made in Dartmoor, the green bath towels in Liverpool, the brown sheets and pillowcases at Holloway and my blankets at Durham.
Now don’t forget the tea bags, because Doug has just told me over his eggs and bacon that a lifer has been shipped out to Lincoln Prison for being caught in possession of drugs. And where were they discovered? In his tea bags. Security staff raided his room this morning and found sixty tea bags containing cannabis, along with £40 in cash, which they consider proof that he was a dealer. But now for the ridiculous, sad, stupid, lunatic (choose your own word) aspect of this story — the prisoner in question was due for parole in eleven weeks’ time. He will now spend the next eighteen months in a B-cat, before going on to a C-cat, probably for a couple of years, before being allowed to return to a D-cat in around four years’ time. Doug adds that the security
staff didn’t know what he was up to, until another prisoner grassed on him.
‘Why would anyone do that?’ I ask.
‘Probably to save their own skin,’ Doug replies. ‘Perhaps he was about to be shipped out for a lesser offence, so he offered them a bigger fish in exchange for a reprieve. It happens all the time.’
8.30 am
When I arrive at SMU, Mr Clarke is already standing by the door. He immediately sets about emptying the bins and mopping the kitchen floor. While we’re working, I discover that it’s his first offence, and he’s serving a fifteen-month sentence for misappropriation of funds and is due to be released in March.