Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

6.11 am

I wake early and think about home. I have a little pottery model of the Old Vicarage on the table in front of me, along with a photograph of Mary and the boys, and another of a view of Parliament from our apartment in London; quite a contrast to the view from my little room on the north block. The sky is grey and threatening rain. That’s the one thing I share with you.

8.15 am

Breakfast with Malcolm (fraud, chief librarian) and Roger (murder, twelve years so far). Malcolm is able to tell me more about the young man called Arnold who absconded last week. I recall him from his induction at SMU, a shy and nervous little creature. He was sharing a room with two of the most unpleasant men I’ve ever come across. One of them has been moved from prison to prison during the past seven months because of the disruption he causes wherever he goes, and the other is a heroin addict serving out the last months of his sentence. I have never given a moment’s thought to absconding. However, if I had to spend a single night with either of those men, I might have to reconsider my position.

8.30 am

Today I set myself the task of reorganizing the muddled and misleading notice board in the waiting room. Matthew and I spend the first thirty minutes taking down all thirty-seven notices, before deciding which are out of date, redundant or simply on the wrong notice board. Only sixteen survive. We then pin up five new neatly printed headings — drugs, education, leave, tagging and general information, before replacing the sixteen posters neatly in their correct columns. By lunchtime the waiting room is clean, thanks to Mr Clarke, and the notice board easy to understand, thanks to Matthew, although I think I’ve also earned my 25p an hour.

12 noon

I have to repeat that as far as prison food goes, NSC is outstanding. Wendy and Val (her assistant) set standards that I would not have thought possible in any institution that has only £1.27 per prisoner for three meals a day. Today I’m down for the pizza, but Wendy makes me try a spoonful of her lamb stew, because she doesn’t approve of my being a VIP (vegetarian in prison). It’s excellent, and perhaps next week I’ll risk a couple of meat dishes.

2.30 pm

The turnover at NSC is continual. Last week fifteen inmates departed, one way or another: end of sentence — twelve, moved to another prison — two, absconded — one. So after only two weeks, 20 per cent of the prison population has changed. Give me another month, and I’ll be an old lag.

While I’m washing the teacups, Matthew tells me that his father has taken a turn for the worse, and the governor has pushed his compassionate leave forward by a day. He’ll be off to Canterbury first thing in the morning, so he can be at his father’s bedside for the next ten days. He doesn’t complain about having to spend the ten nights in Canterbury Prison (B-cat), which can’t be pleasant when your father is dying, and you don’t have anyone to share your grief with.

4.30 pm

Another pile of letters awaits me when I return from work, among them missives from Chris de Burgh, Patrick Moore and Alan Coren. Alan’s letter makes me laugh so much, rather than share snippets with you, I’ve decided to print it in full. (See overleaf.) All my life I have been graced with remarkable friends, who have tolerated my ups and downs, and this latest episode doesn’t seem to have deterred them one iota.

5.00 pm

Tomorrow I’m going to the gym. I only write this to make sure I do.

6.00 pm

Write for two hours.

Alan Coren

26 October 2001

My dear Jeffrey:

Lots of forgivenesses to be begged. First off, forgive the typing, but not only is my longhand illegible, I should also be writing for some days, because I haven’t picked up a pen for anything but cheques since about 1960. More important, try to forgive the fact that I haven’t written before, but the truth is that I should so much have preferred to chat to you face to face ( albeit chained to a radiator, or whatever the social protocols required ) than to engage in the one-sided conversation of letters, so --- as you probably know—I kept trying to get a visit, and kept being turned down. Most important of all, forgive me for not trying to spring you: I have spent a small fortune on grapnels, ropes, bolt-cutters, fake number-plates, one-way tickets to Sao Paolo, and drinks for large men from the Mile End Road with busted conks and tattooed knuckles, but whenever I managed to put all these elements together, there was always a clear night and a full moon.

Anyway, I gather from your office that it might now be possible to arrange a visit, once I and they have filled in all sorts of bumf, and you have been given enough notice to stick a jeroboam of Krug on ice and slip into a brocade dressing-gown and fez, so I shall set that in train forthwith—if, of couurse, you agree. You are, by the way, bloody lucky not to be in that office now, these are bad days to be living at the top of a tall building next to MI6 and opposite the H of C --- and I speak as one who knows, having, as you’ll spot from the letterhead, recently moved to a house in Regent’s Park; where, from my top-floor study window as I type, I can see the Regent’s Park Mosque 500 metres to my right, and the American Ambassador’s residence 500 metres to my left. I am ground bloody zero right here: every time His Excellency’s helicopter trrobs in, we rush down to the cellar. Could by anybody, or anything. Since even I don’t know where Freiston is, I rather doubt that Osama bin Laden could find it, and you are further fortunate in the fact that, because every envelope to the clink is doubtless slit open, poked about in and generally vetted to the last square millimetre, if anybody’s going to get anthrax, it won’t be you.

Life goes on in London as normal: Anne and I have grown used to wearing our gas-masks in bed. though it’s still a bit of a bugger waking up in the night and unthinkingly reaching for a bedside drink, so there’s more nocturnal tumble-drying going on than there used to be. Giles and Victoria wish to be remembered to you, and want you to know that they’re fine, and settling down well with their foster parents in Timbuktu, where they tell me they have made lots of new friends among the other evacuees, although HP sauce is proving dificult to find. Your beloved Conservative Party has elected a new leader, who may be seen every day at the doors of the Commons handing out his business cards to MPs and officials who would otherwise think we was someone who had turned up to flog them personal pension schemes.

2

Are you writing a book about chokey? FF 8282 would make a terrific title. and since I am only one of countless hacks who envy you the opportunity to scribble away unencumbered by all the distractions that stop the rest of us from knocking out Finnegan’s Remembrance of War & Punishment, I would, if I were you, seriously consider not going ahead with your appeal: giving up the chance of another couple of years at the typewriter could cost you millions.

All right --- if we must --- let’s be serious for a moment: do you need anything, is there anything I can do, anyone I can see for you, all that? I know that you have truckloads of closer --- and far more influential --- friends than I, but because it’s always on the cards that there may just be something

you need that no-one else can come up with, I want you to know that I should do my very best to sort it out.

But if nothing else, do drop me the briefest of notes to let me know whether or not you’d like a visit. If you’d rather be left in peace, I should of course, understand. But it would be nice to meet for the odd laugh --- as if there could be any other kind of laugh, these days.

8.15pm

I sign in for roll-call. From tomorrow, as I will have completed my two weeks’ induction, I need only sign in at 11 am, 4 pm and 8.15 pm. Because I’ll be at work, in future, 8.15 pm will be the one time I have to appear in person. Doug says I will feel the difference immediately.