Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

It’s just been officially announced that Mr Lewis will retire as governing governor on 1 January. I go over to the unit office and pick up a labour board change of job application form. If I’m not going to be hospital orderly I’ve decided to apply for his job. (See opposite).

12 noon

Doug tells me that he’s going to try another ploy to get outside work. He has a friend in March who runs a small haulage company (three lorries), who will offer him a job as a driver. The only problem is that he doesn’t work out of Boston, which is one of the current specifications for anyone who wishes to take up outside employment. However, Doug’s wife Wendy will meet the potential employer today and get him to send a fax offering Doug a job of driving loads from Boston back to March. We will have to wait and see if Mr Berlyn will sanction this. I refuse to get excited.

2.00 pm

I walk down to the football field and watch NSC play Witherton. We lose 5-0 so there’s not a lot more to report, other than it was very cold standing on the touch line; the wind was blowing in off the next landmass to the east, which happens to be Russia.

7.00 pm

I sit in my room reading This Week, an excellent journal if you want an overall view of the week’s events. It gives me a chance to bring myself up to date with the situation in Afghanistan, America and even NSC.

Under the heading, ‘A Bad Week’, it seems that a Jeffrey Archer look-alike is complaining about being regularly stopped by the police to make sure I haven’t escaped. ‘It’s most unfair,’ he protests, ‘it’s ruined my life.’ The paper felt his protests would have been more convincing if he hadn’t travelled down to NSC accompanied by a tabloid to have his photograph taken outside the prison.

9.00 pm

I visit Leon in his room on the north block. His fiancée has told her father that he is in Norway on business, and won’t be returning to England until 21 December, the day he’s released from prison.

DAY 137

SUNDAY 2 DECEMBER 2001

10.30 am

Leon’s fiancée is visiting him today, and they’ll use the ninety minutes to plan their wedding.

11.30 am

I join Doug at the hospital to read the morning papers. The People devote half a page to telling their readers that I am distraught because a prisoner has stolen my diary and I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t be distraught. After 137 days and over 300,000 words, I’d be suicidal.

3.00 pm

Doug has just come off the phone with his wife and tells me that his friend is going to place an advertisement in the Boston Target this Wednesday, stating that he needs a driver to transport goods from Boston to March. Doug will apply for the job, and a fax will then be sent to Mr Berlyn the same day offering Doug an interview. If Mr Berlyn agrees, Doug will be offered the position the following day.

DAY 138

MONDAY 3 DECEMBER 2001

9.40 am

Mr New comes in cursing. It seems the prison is overcrowded and there are applicants from Nottingham, Lincoln, Wayland, Birmingham and Leicester who will have to be turned away because every bed is occupied. Apparently it’s all my fault.

This would not be a problem for Spring Hill, because they always have a long waiting list, and can be very selective. At NSC it now means that if any inmate even bends the rules, he’ll be sent back to the prison he came from, as three inmates discovered to their cost last week. This was not the case when there were dozens of empty beds.

10.50 am

I see Leon walking back from the gatehouse to the stores where he works, and leave the office to have a word with him. Yesterday’s visit went well. ‘But I have a feeling,’ he adds, ‘there’s something she isn’t telling me.’

I press him as to what this might be, but he says he doesn’t know, or has he become wary about how much of his story will appear in this diary? He then asks me to change all the names. I agree and have done so.

2.15 pm

Doug gives me some good news. Mrs Tempest (principal officer in charge of resettlement) has assured him that if he gets an interview with another haulage company, she will accompany him, assuming they fulfil all the usual police and prison criteria. If they then offer him a job, she will recommend he starts immediately, and by that she means next Monday.

It’s becoming clear to me that there are several officers (not all) who are determined that NSC will be given resettlement status, and not just remain a D-cat open prison. Should the Home Office agree to this, then several of the inmates will be allowed out during the day on CSV work and eventually progress to full-time jobs. It’s clear that Doug is a test case, because he’s an obvious candidate for outside work, and if they can get him started, the floodgates might well open and this prison’s future would no longer be in doubt. So suddenly my fortunes could be reversed. Once again I envy the reader who can simply turn the pages to discover what happens next in my life.

4.00 pm