Purgatory (A Prison Diary 2)

First peaceful night in weeks. Yesterday I visited the three prisoners with noisy stereos and the two inmates who go on shouting at each other all through the night. But not before I had been asked to do so by several other prisoners on the spur. I got two surprises: firstly, no one was willing to accompany me - they were all happy to point out which cells they were in, but no more than that. The second surprise was that all of the transgressors, without exception, responded favourably to my courteous request with either, ‘Not me, gov,’ or, ‘Sorry, Jeff, I’ll turn it down,’ and in one case. ‘I’ll turn it off at nine, Jeff.’ Interesting.

8.15 am

Breakfast. A prisoner in the queue for the hotplate asks me if I’m moving cells today.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘What makes you think that?’

The name card outside your cell has disappeared, always the first sign that you’re on the move.’

I laugh, and explain, ‘It’s been removed every day - a sort of’

9.15 am

Gym. The treadmill is not working again, so I start with the rower and manage 1,956 metres in ten minutes. I would have done better if I hadn’t started chatting to the inmate on the next rower. All across his back is tattooed the word MONSTER, though, in truth, he’s softly spoken and, whenever I’ve come across him in the corridor, friendly. I ask what his real name is.

‘Martin,’ he whispers, ‘but only my mother calls me that. Everyone else calls me Monster.’ He’s managed 2,470 metres in ten minutes despite chatting to me.

He tells me that in January, when he arrived at Wayland, he weighed seventeen and a half stone. He is a taxi driver from Essex and admits that it was easy to put on weight in that job. Now he tips the scales at thirteen stone five pounds, and his girlfriend has to visit him every two weeks just to make sure that she’ll still recognize him when he’s released. He was sen-tenced to three years for transporting cannabis from one Ilford club to another.

About a third of the men in this prison have been convicted of some crime connected with cannabis, and most of them will say, I repeat say, that they would never deal in hard drugs. In fact, Darren goes further and, snarling, adds that he would try to dissuade anyone who did. If cannabis were to be legalized - and for most of the well-rehearsed reasons, I remain unconvinced that it should - the price would fall by around 70 per cent, tax revenues would be enormous and prison numbers would drop overnight.

Many young prisoners complain, ‘It’s your lot who are smoking the stuff, Jeff. In ten years’ time it won’t even be considered a crime.’ Jimmy admits that he couldn’t meet the demand from his customers, and that he certainly never needed to do any pushing. Darren adds that although he and Jimmy covered roughly the same territory in Ipswich they hadn’t come across each other until they ended up in jail, which will give you an idea of just how large the market is.

Just in case you’ve forgotte

n, I’m still in the gym. Monster leaves me to join Darren and Jimmy on the bench press, where he manages to pump ten reps of 250 pounds. I also turn to the weights where I achieve ten curls at 50 pounds. This is followed by a spell on the bicycle, where I break the world record by peddling three miles in twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds. Pity it’s the world record for running.

Mr Maiden, the senior gym instructor, reintroduces me to the medicine ball, which I haven’t come in contact with since I left school. I place the large leather object behind my head, raise my shoulders as in an ordinary sit-up, and then pass it up to him. He then drops it back on top of me. Simple, I think, until I reach my fifth attempt, by which time I’m exhausted and Mr Maiden is unable to hide his mirth at my discomfort. He knows only too well that I haven’t done this exercise for over forty years, and what the result would be.

‘We’ll have you doing three sets of fifteen with a minute interval between sets before you’re released,’ he promises.

‘I hope not,’ I tell him, without explanation. I then carry out a fifteen-minute warm down and stretching as my trainer in London (Karen) would have demanded. At the end of the session

I am first at the gate, because I’ll have to be in and out of the shower fairly quickly if I’m to get to the library before the doors are locked.

10.21 am

Jog to my cell, strip, shower, change, jog to the library. Still sweating, but nothing I can do about it. Steve (conspiracy to murder) is on duty behind the desk in his position as chief librarian. Because Steve’s the senior Listener, he’s allowed to wear his own clothes and is often mistaken for a member of staff. I return Famous Trials and take out Twenty-one Short Stories by Graham Greene.

10.50 am

Once I’ve left the library I walk straight across the corridor to the chapel and discover there are thirty worshippers in the congregation this week. From their dress, the majority must come from the local village. The black man sitting next to me, who was among the seven prisoners who attended last week, tells me it’s the biggest turnout he’s ever seen. This week a Methodist minister called Mary conducts the service, accompanied by an Anglican vicar called Val. Mary’s sermon is topical.

She talks about the World Athletics Championships and her feelings for those competitors who did not achieve what they had set out to do, but for many of them there will be another chance. I have now attended four consecutive church services, and the minister always pitches the message at what he or she imagines will be of interest to the inmates. Each time they have failed to treat us as if we might just be normal human beings.

People who have not been to prison tend to fall into two categories. The majority who treat you as if you’re a ‘convict on the run’ while the minority treat you as if you are in their front room.

After the blessing, we gather in an ante-room for coffee and biscuits with the locals. No need to describe them as they don’t differ greatly from the kind of parishioners who attend church services up and down the country every Sunday morning. Average age double that of the prisoners. At twelve we are sent back to our cells. No search. Unaccompanied.

12 noon

Lunch. I haven’t had a chance to speak to Dale or Sergio yet, so I fix appointments with Dale at 2 pm and Sergio at 3 pm. I leave the hotplate with a portion of macaroni liberally covered in cheese.

While we are waiting in the long queue, Darren tells me when it used to be almost all macaroni with little sign of any cheese. Nobody thought to comment about this, until it became clear that the allocation of cheese was becoming smaller and smaller as each week passed. Still no one did anything about it, until one week, when there was virtually no cheese, the officer on duty at last began to show some interest. The first thing he discovered was that the same cook had been on for the previous four Saturdays and Sundays, so the following weekend he kept an eye on that particular inmate. He quickly discovered that on Saturday night the prisoner in question was returning to his cell with a lump of cheese the size of a pillow (5kg). It was when three loaves of bread also went missing the same evening that the officer decided to report the incident to the governor. The following Saturday night a team of officers raided the prisoner’s cell hoping to find out what he was up to. They discovered that he was running a very successful business producing Welsh rarebit, which, when toasted, was passed from cell to cell through the bars of his little window.

‘And damn good they were,’ adds Jimmy, licking his lips.

‘How did he manage to toast them?’ I demanded.