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6.00 pm
Write for two hours, but am unable to concentrate because I know Mary is on a flight back from New York. I won’t be able to speak to her until tomorrow morning as I’m already banged up.
8.00 pm
Mr Nutbourne comes to my cell to tell me that he’s off on holiday to Cuba. He assumes I’ll have been transferred by the time he returns and says that he’s sorry to have met me in these circumstances, and wishes me well for the future.
DAY 83 - TUESDAY 9 OCTOBER 2001
DAY 84 - WEDNESDAY 10 OCTOBER 2001
8.45 am
Mr King tells me as I collect my breakfast that I will not be going to Latchmere House, so they are now trying Spring Hill. As Mr Carlton-Boyce has not briefed me himself but left it to the duty officer, I fear this does not bode well.
11.00 am
Exercise. Darren and I are joined by a prisoner from Singapore, who wishes to remain anonymous. He tells us that he’s inside for selling ‘duff heroin
to a young girl, who later died in hospital. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years. He just thought I ought to know.
5.00 pm
Jimmy has just come back from work and tells me that he saw a lifer being released this morning who had served over twenty years. He was accompanied by nine plastic bags and a double bed that he’d made in the workshop. But he has a problem. No one turned up to collect him, so they had to put him back in his cell overnight. Heaven knows what they did with the double bed.
9.00 am
Pottery. Say farewell to Anne, as I’m fairly sure I won’t be at Wayland this time next week. She promises to put my pot in the kiln, and then deliver it to Chris Beetles so that I can give it to Mary for Christmas.
2.00 pm
Rugby. I referee a match against an army team from Bassingbourne, which turns ugly in the last few minutes of the game. Shane (GBH and gym orderly) runs halfway down the pitch and thumps one of the visiting players. I realize I have no choice but to send him off. I blow my whistle and chase after him, but two officers run onto the field and drag him away before I can reach him. He’s immediately banned from participating in any sport for two weeks. The army team beat us by 25-10, which wasn’t too bad remembering that we played the second half with only fourteen players on the field. But then I was the referee.
6.00 pm
I start reading Twelfth Night. I would happily exchange my present abode for a willow cabin.
DAY 85 - THURSDAY 11 OCTOBER 2001
8.45 am
Governor Carlton-Boyce tells me that there is no room for me at Spring Hill, so they are now considering North Sea Camp near Boston, in Lincolnshire. I point out that it would be a round trip from London of 240 miles, and I’d never be able to see my family. Carlton-Boyce doesn’t seem that interested and simply says, ‘I’m just doing my job, and that’s what I’m paid for.’
9.15 am
Mrs Wendy Sergeant (head of education) has heard that I’ll be leaving imminently and asks to interview me for her PhD thesis on ‘prison reform through education’. As I’ve only been in residence nine weeks, and she’s served the Prison Service for eleven years, I’m not sure I have a great deal to offer her, other than to confirm her worst fears.
I tell her that I believe every prisoner should leave being able to read and write, and that the weekly pay for education ought to be at the same level as any job in the prison. In fact, I would go further and suggest that it would benefit society more if prisoners received a higher income for agreeing to participate in education, rather than cleaning their spur, or serving chips.
Wendy tells me that she considers many people are unsuitable for prison and should not be mixing with hardened criminals. She will be suggesting in her thesis the use of halfway houses, especially as the prisons are equipped to handle only 62,500 inmates, with over 67,000 presently convicted.
2.00 pm
I call Mary to warn her that I’m probably being transferred to a prison over a hundred miles away from London. She tells me that Ramona, my solicitor, has tried to phone Wayland, but the governor is refusing to take her calls, which seems in line with her apparent policy of remaining anonymous.
DAY 86 - FRIDAY 12 OCTOBER 2001
9.00 am
