Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

DAY 177

FRIDAY 11 JANUARY 2002

6.03 am

I’d like to bring you up to date on a couple of matters you may wish to have resolved.

Six prisoners have absconded in the past ten days, and I have already accounted for five of them. But not McGeekin. McGeekin had a town visit, which allowed him to leave the prison at eight in the morning, as long as he reported back to the gate by seven the same night. He did not return, so the matter was placed in police hands. ‘He’s already back in custody,’ the gate officer was informed by the local desk sergeant. He’d reported to his nearest police station and told them he wanted to be sent back to HMP Wayland in Norfolk, rather than return to North Sea Camp.

It’s not uncommon for an inmate to want to return to the more regulated life of a closed prison. Some will even tell you they feel safer with a wall around them. Lifers in particular often find the regime of an open prison impossible to come to terms with. After fifteen years of being banged up, often for twenty-two hours a day, they just can’t handle so much freedom. Within hours of arriving,

they will apply to be sent back, but are told to give it a month, and if they then still feel the same way, to put in a transfer application.

Frankly they’d have to drag me back to Wayland and I’d abscond rather than return to Belmarsh.

DAY 178

SATURDAY 12 JANUARY 2002

10.00 am

The hospital bath plug has been stolen which is a bit of a mystery, because it’s the only bath in the prison available to inmates, so the plug can’t be of much use to anyone else. However, I have a reserve one, which makes me king, because I am now ‘controller of the bath plug’. I will still have to make an application for a new one, which will mean filling in three forms and probably waiting three months.

2.00 pm

The camp is playing football against the local league leaders. When our team runs out onto the pitch, I hardly recognize any of them. Mr Masters, gym officer and coach, points out that the rapid turnover of inmates has meant he’s put fifty-four players on the pitch since the opening match of the season. That’s something even Man United couldn’t handle. Added to this is the fact that our star goalkeeper, Bell, has been suspended for one match after using foul and abusive language when the referee awarded a penalty to the opposition. He was a little unlucky that an FA official was assessing the referee that afternoon, and therefore the ref couldn’t pretend not to have heard Bell. Indeed they could have heard, ‘Get some glasses, you fuckin’ muppet,’ in the centre of Boston.

Our reserve goalkeeper is Carl (fraud), the SMU orderly who took over from me and comes over most evenings to watch TV in the hospital. He gamely agreed to stand in for the one fixture, while Bell watches from the sidelines.

I felt it nothing less than my duty to turn up and support the team in such dire circumstances. I left at half time, when we were trailing 7-1, just after our prison reporter, Major Willis (stabbed his wife with a kitchen knife – two years), told me that the Boston Standard had given him so little space to report the match that he would only be able to list the names of the scorers. I was also amused by his chivvying from the touchline: ‘Well played, Harry,’ ‘Good tackle, David,’ and ‘Super shot, Reg,’ as if he were a house master addressing the 3rd XI of a minor public school.

5.00 pm

I join Carl for supper, but he doesn’t look too happy.

‘What was the final score?’ I ask.

‘We had a better second half,’ he offers.

‘So what was the final score?’ I repeat.

‘15-3.’

The only man who has a big smile on his face is the suspended Bell, whose position as ‘first choice goalkeeper’ remains secure.

DAY 179

SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2002

11.00 am

Once Linda has closed the surgery for the morning, I settle down to read The Sunday Times. The lead story is about Prince Harry, and the revelation in the News of the World that he’s tried marijuana and has also been involved in heavy drinking, despite the fact that he’s still under age. Some of us are old enough to remember the shocking revelation that Prince Charles was caught drinking cherry brandy when he was still at Gordonstoun.

2.00 pm

My visitors this week are Stephan Shakespeare, my former chief of staff for the London mayoral campaign, Robert Halfon, senior adviser to Oliver Letwin MP, the Shadow Home Secretary, and my son Will.

The general view is that IDS is doing better than expected. I warn them that if the inmates and the prison staff are anything to go by most people simply don’t know who he is.