Heaven (A Prison Diary 3)

11.17 am

An officer (Mr Brighten) unlocks my door and tells me that he needs a form filled in so that I can work in the kitchen. To begin with, I assume it’s a joke, and then become painfully aware that he’s serious. Surely the staff can’t have missed that I’ve hardly eaten a thing since the day I arrived, and now they want to put me where the food is prepared? I tell him politely, but firmly, that I have no desire to work in the kitchen.

3.11 pm

I look up at my little window, inches from the ceiling, and think of Oscar Wilde. This must be the nearest I’ve been to living in conditions described so vividly by the great playwright while he was serving a two-year sentence in Reading jail.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky.

5.15 pm

Mr Brighten returns to tell me that I will be placed on report if I refuse to work in the kitchen. I agree to work in the kitchen.

DAY 443

FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER 2002

The end of the second longest week in

my life.

Jason (GBH) has received a movement order to transfer him to HMP Stocken in Rutland (C-cat) later this morning. He’s ‘gutted’ as he hoped to be sent directly to a D-cat. However, a conviction for violence will have prevented this. By the way, he and his wife did agree to get back together, and she will now visit him every Saturday.

10.00 am

An officer unlocks my cell door and bellows, ‘Gym.’ Twenty or thirty of us form a line by the barred gate at the far end of the brick-walled, windowless room. A few minutes later we are escorted down long, bleak, echoing corridors, with much unlocking and locking of several heavy gates as we make our slow progress to the gym situated on the other side of the prison.

We are taken to a changing room, where I put on a singlet and shorts. Clive (money laundering) and I enter the spacious gym. We warm up with a game of paddle tennis, and he sees me off in a few minutes. I move on to do a thousand metres on the rowing machine in five minutes, and end up with a little light weight training. When an officer bellows, ‘Five more minutes,’ I check my weight. Twelve stone twelve pounds. I’ve lost six pounds in six days. I join my fellow inmates in the shower room and have my first press-button shower for a year, bringing back more unpleasant memories of Belmarsh.

As we are all escorted back to A block by Mr Lewis, the senior gym officer, we pass E Wing (paedophiles) and not one of the inmates even looks in the direction of the staring faces. Why? Because we are accompanied by an officer. Prisoners are warned that any abuse (shouting, foul language) will be treated as a disciplinary matter, with the loss of daily gym rights as punishment. When you’re locked up for twenty-two hours a day, that’s incentive enough to remain silent, whatever your thoughts.

5.00 pm

The cell door is unlocked, and my new pad-mate enters carrying the inevitable plastic bag. Jason is replaced by Phil, an amiable, good-looking – despite the scar on his face – twenty-eight-year-old.

He has been put in my cell because he doesn’t smoke, which is very rare in jail. Phil talks a great deal, and tells me that he wants to return to work in the kitchen. He certainly seems to know his way round the prison, which turns out to be because he’s paid several visits to Lincoln during the past ten years.

He is only too happy to tell me the finer details of his record. Twenty-eight other offences were taken into consideration before the judge passed sentence on Phil this morning.

Phil tells me, ‘Never again.’ He now has a happy family life-I don’t ask how he explains his latest conviction – and a good job to go back to. He can earn £500 a week laying concrete and doesn’t need another spell in jail. Phil admits that his problem is a short fuse.

‘Strike a match and I explode,’ he adds, laughing.

5.40 pm

Mr Brighten unlocks the cell door to inform me that I start work in the kitchen tomorrow at eight o’clock. He slams the door closed before I can comment.

6.00 pm

My cell door is unlocked again and Phil and I, along with three others, are escorted to the hospital. I’m told that I have to take a drugs test before I’m allowed to work in the kitchen. Despite the fact that I don’t want to work in the kitchen, Phil tells me that five prisoners apply every day because the work is so popular. Phil and I pass the urine test to show we are drug free, and the duty officer tells us to report to the kitchen by eight. The other three fail.

6.40 pm