Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

n charge of a gun that discharged) says his town visit form has not been authorized and asks how much longer he will have to wait to find out if he will be allowed out. Mr Hayes deals with it. Merry (embezzlement) arrives with still no word as to when Group 4 will be transporting him to Sudbury so that he can be nearer his family. Mr Hayes deals with it.

Mr Hayes is an unusual officer. He’s not frightened of making decisions and standing by them. He also makes his own tea. When I asked him why, he simply replied, ‘You’re not here to serve me, but to complete your sentence. I don’t need to be waited on.’

10.00 am

Mr Hocking and I agree it would be better for the press to take a photograph and then go away, leaving his little band of security officers to get on with their job.

I walk out of the SMU building and deliberately stop to chat to Peter (lifer, arson), who is sweeping leaves from the path. He keeps his back to the cameras. Three minutes later I return to the building and, true to form, the photographers all disappear.

12 noon

Major Willis comes to SMU to hand back his red induction folder. He tells me that he’s sixty-four, first offence, GBH, sentence one year, and that he’ll be released in March. He was a major in the army, and after retiring, fell in love with a young Nigerian girl (a prostitute), whom he later married. She soon began to bully him, and to spend what little money he had. One day he could take no more, blew his top and stuck a kitchen knife in her. She reported him to the police. He will end up doing ten months (if he gets his tag), six of them at NSC.

He’s puzzled as to why I got four years.

2.30 pm

A quiet afternoon. A fleeting visit from Mr Berlyn to check that I’m wearing a prison shirt as the press keep reporting that mine isn’t regulation issue. He checks the blue and white HMP label, and leaves, satisfied.

9.00 pm

Fall asleep in front of the TV. Doug says I snore. I’m writing five hours a day, on top of a thirty-four-hour week, and I’m not even going to the gym.

DAY 108

SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2001

I’ve written several times about the boredom of weekends, but something takes place today that turns the normal torpor into frantic activity.

8.50 am

The photographers have returned. They either missed getting a good shot yesterday, or work for the Sundays who want a ‘today pic’. I agree with the deputy governor, Mr Berlyn, to do another walk on, walk off, in order to get rid of them once and for all. He seems grateful.

2.00 pm

I’m expecting a visit from my son James. When I enter the visitors’ room I can’t see him, but then spot someone waving at me. It turns out to be my son. He’s grown a beard. I hate it, and tell him so, which is a bit rough, as he’s just travelled 120 miles to see me.

James tells me that my legal team are concentrating their efforts on my appeal. Mr and Mrs Barker have confirmed that they heard the judge discussing me at a dinner party over a year before I was arrested. This could change my appeal.

5.00 pm

Doug and I are having tea in the hospital when Clive strolls in to announce that he’s moving to another room..

‘Why?’ I ask, when he has the largest space in the prison.

‘Because they’re fitting electrics into all the other rooms.’ I can’t believe he’d give up his large abode in exchange for a TV. ‘If you want to move in, Jeffrey, you’d better come over to the south block now.’ We all go off in search of the duty officer, who approves the move. I spend the next two hours, assisted by Alan (selling stolen goods), transferring all my possessions from the north block to the south, while Clive moves into a little single room at the other end of the corridor.

I am now lodged in a room twenty-one by sixteen feet. Most prisoners assume I’ve paid Clive some vast sum of money to move out and make way for me, whereas the truth is that Clive wanted out. There is only one disadvantage. There always has to be a disadvantage. My new abode is next to the TV room, but as that’s turned off at eleven each night, and I rarely leave Doug in the hospital before 10.30 pm, I don’t think it will be a real problem.

I now have an interesting job, a better room, edible food and £8.50 a week. What more could a man ask for?

DAY 109

SUNDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2001

6.19 am

Write for two hours before I join Doug at the hospital. We watch David Frost, whose guests include Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable of the Police Service Sir Ronnie Flanagan. While discussing the morning papers, Sir Ronnie says that it’s an infringement of my privacy that the tabloid press are taking pictures of me while I’m in jail. The pictures are fine, but the articles border on the farcical.