AllFreeNovel
Share Us
11.20 am
A lifer called Bob (twelve years, murder) is due to appear in front of the parole board next week. He’s coming to the end of his tariff, and the Home Office usually recommends that the prisoner serves at least another two years before they will consider release. This decision has recently been taken out of the hands of the Home Office and passed to the parole board. Bob received a letter from the board this morning informing him he will be released next Thursday.
Try to imagine serving twelve years (think what age you were twelve years ago) and now assume that you will have to do another two years, but then you’re told you will be released on Thursday.
The man is walking around in a daze, not least because he fell off a ladder yesterday and now has his ankle in a cast. What a way to start your re-entry back to Earth.
MAY 188
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2002
11.00 am
Andrew Pierce of The Times has got hold of the story that Libby Purves will be interviewing Mary tomorrow. The BBC must have leaked it, but I can’t complain because the piece reads well, even if Mr Pierce is under the illusion that NSC is in Cambridgeshire. I only wish it were.
4.00 pm
Among my afternoon post is a Valentine’s card, which is a bit like getting a Christmas card in November, one proposal of marriage, one offer of a film part (Field Marshall Haig), a request to front a twelve-part television series and an invitation to give an after-dinner speech in Sydney next September. Do they know something I don’t?
8.00 pm
An officer drops in from his night rounds for a coffee. He tells me an alarming story about an event that took place at his last prison.
It’s universally accepted among prisoners that if one particular officer has got it in for you, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can go through the complaints procedure, but even if you’re in the right, officers will always back each other up if a colleague is in trouble. I could fill a book with such instances. I have experienced this myself at such a petty level that I have not considered the incident worth recording. On that occasion, the governor personally apologized, but still advised me not to put in a complaint.
However, back to a prisoner from the north block who did have the temerity to put in a written complaint about a particular officer. On this occasion, I can only agree with the prisoner that the officer concerned is a bully. Nevertheless, after a lengthy enquiry (everything in prison is lengthy) the officer was cleared of any misdemeanour, but that didn’t stop him seeking revenge.
The inmate in question was serving a five-year sentence, and at the time he entered prison was having an affair that his wife didn’t know about, and to add to the complication, the affair was with another man. The prisoner would have a visit from one of them each fortnight, while writing to both of them during the week. The rule in closed prisons is that you leave your letters unsealed in the unit office, so they can be read by the duty officer to check if you’re still involved in any criminal activity, or asking for drugs to be sent in. When the prisoner left his two letters in the unit office, the officer on duty was the same man he had made a complaint about to the governor. The officer read both the love letters, and yes, you’ve guessed it, switched them and sealed the envelopes and with it, the fate of the prisoner.
How do I know this to be true? Because the officer involved has just told me, and is happy to tell anyone he considers a threat.
DAY 189
WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2002
9.00 am
Mary is on Midweek with Libby Purves.
12.15 pm
I call Mary. She’s off to lunch with Ken Howard RA and other artistic luminaries.
2.00 pm
My visitors today are Michael Portillo and Alan Jones (Australia’s John Humphreys). I must first make my position clear on Michael’s leadership bid. I would have wanted him to follow John Major as leader of the party. I would also have voted for him to follow William Hague, though I would have been torn if Malcolm Rifkind had won back his Edinburgh seat.
It is a robust visit, and it serves to remind me how much I miss the cut and thrust of Westminster, stuck as I am in the coldest and most remote corner of Lincolnshire. Michael tells us about one or two changes he would have made had he been elected leader. We need our own ‘Clause 4’ he suggests, which Tony Blair so brilliantly turned into an important issue, despite it being of no real significance. Michael also feels that the party’s parliamentary candidates should be selected from the centre, taking power away from the con
stituencies. It also worries him how few women and member of minority groups end up on the Conservative benches. He points out that at the last election, the party only added one new woman to its ranks, at a time when the Labour party have over fifty.
‘Not much of an advertisement for the new, all-inclusive, modern party,’ he adds.
‘But how would you have handled the European issue?’ ask Alan.
Michael is about to reply when that red-hot socialist (local Labour councillor) Officer Hart tells us that our time is up.
Politics is not so overburdened with talent that the Conservatives can survive without Portillo, Rifkind, Hague, Clarke and Redwood, all playing important roles, especially while we’re in opposition.
