Heaven: A Prison Diary (17 page)

Just to recap,
Doug is doing a four-and-ahalf-year sentence for avoiding paying VAT on
imported goods to the value of several millions. He’s entitled, after serving a
quarter of his sentence – if he’s been a model prisoner, and he has – to seek
outside employment. This is all part of the resettlement programme enjoyed only
by prisoners who have reached D-cat status.

It works out
well for everyone: NSC is getting prisoners out to work and in Doug they have
someone who won’t be a problem or break any rules. Although he has a PSV
licence, he hasn’t driven a lorry for several years, and says it will be like
starting all over again. Still, it’s better than being cooped up inside a
prison all day.

I’m asked to
report to sister in the hospital for an interview. As I walk across from SMU,

I have a
moment’s anxiety as I wonder if Linda is considering someone else for hospital
orderly. These fears are assuaged by her opening comment when she says how
delighted she is that I will be joining her.

Linda’s only
worry is that I am keeping a diary. She stresses the confidentiality of
prisoners’ medical records. I agree to abide by this without reservation.

Mr New confirms
that Mr Clarke (theft) has been reinstated as SMU cleaner. What a difference
that will make. Carl can now concentrate on the real job of assisting the
officers and prisoners and not have to worry whether the dustbins have been
emptied.

Do you recall
the two prisoners who were caught returning from Boston laden with alcohol? One
attacked an officer with a torch so his friends could escape. The escapee, who
managed to slip back to his room and thanks to a change of clothes supplied by
a friend, got away with it because it wasn’t possible to prove he’d ever been
absent. Today, the same prisoner was found to have a roll-on deodorant in his
room not sold at the canteen. He was shipped out to a B-cat in Liverpool this
afternoon.

I spend an hour
signing 200 ‘Toad’ Christmas cards.

Doug is having
second thoughts about giving up his job. The thought of driving eight hours a
day for six days a week isn’t looking quite so attractive.

I return to my
room and finish
The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly
by the late Jean Domi-nique Bauby. It is, as my son suggested,
quite brilliant. The author had a massive stroke and was left paralysed and
speechless, only able to move one eyelid. And with that eyelid he mastered a
letter code and dictated the book. Makes my problems seem pretty insignificant.

Normally the
weekends are a bore, but after a couple of hours editing
Sons of Fortune
I start moving my few worldly goods across to the
hospital. Although I’m not moving in officially until tomorrow, Doug allows me
to store some possessions under one of the hospital beds.

Among today’s
letters are ones from Rosemary Leach and Stephanie Cole in reply to my fan mail
following their performances in
Back Home
.
Miss Leach, in a hand-written letter, fears she may have overacted, as the new
‘in thing’ is blandness and understatement. Miss Cole thought her own
performance was a little too sentimental. I admire them for being so critical
of
themselves
.

I receive
seventy-two Christmas cards today, which lifts my spirits greatly. The officers
have begun a book on how many cards I’ll receive from the public: Mr Hart is
down for 1,378, Mr New 1,290 and Mr Downs 2,007. I select three to be put on
the ledge by my bed – a landscape by that magnificent Scottish artist Joseph
Farqueson, a Giles cartoon of Grandma and a Bellini painting of the Virgin
Mother.

Highlight of my
day is a visit from Mary, James and Alison, who between them bring me up to
date on all matters personal, office and legal. William returns from America
next week, and, along with Mary and James, will come to see me on Christmas
Eve. Mary will then
fly
off to Kenya and attend my
nephew’s wedding. Mary and I have always wanted to go on safari and see the big
cats.

Not this year.

Doug has an
‘away day’ with his family in March, so I spend the morning covering for him at
the hospital.

A visit from
two Conservative front bench spokesmen, Patrick McLoughlin MP, the party’s
deputy chief whip in the Commons, and Simon Burns MP, the number two under Liam
Fox, who covers the health portfolio.

They’ve been
loyal friends over many years. I canvassed for both of them before they entered
the House, Patrick in a famous byelection after Matthew Parris left the
Commons, which he won by 100 votes, and Simon who took over Norman St John
Stevas’s seat in Chelmsford West where the Liberals had lowered Norman’s
majority from 5,471 in 1979 to 378 in 1983.

‘If you felt
the Conservatives might not be returned to power for fifteen years, would you
look for another job?’ I ask.

‘No,’ they both
reply in unison. ‘In any case,’ Simon adds, ‘I’m not qualified to do anything
else.’ Patrick nods his agreement.

I’m not sure if
he’s agreeing that Simon couldn’t do anything else, or that he falls into the
same category.

We have a frank
discussion about IDS.

Both are
pleased that he has managed to downgrade the debate on Europe within the party
and concentrate on the health service, education and the social services. They
accept that Blair is having a good war (Afghanistan), and although the
disagreements with Brown are real, the British people don’t seem to be that
interested. Patrick feels that we could be back in power the election after
next; Simon is not so optimistic.

‘But,’ he adds,
‘if Brown takes over from Blair, we could win the next election.’

‘What if
someone takes over from IDS?’ I ask.

Neither
replies.

When they
leave, I realize how much I miss the House and all things political.

This is my last
night on the south block. Despite a football match blaring from next door, I
sleep soundly.

I wake early,
so write for a couple of hours.

Pack up my
final bits and pieces and go across to the hospital to join Doug, who’s
carrying out the same exercise in reverse.

I will describe
my new daily routine before I tell you anything about my work at the hospital.

6.00 am
Rise, write until 7 am.

7.00 am
Bath and shave.

7.30 am
Sister arrives to take sick
parade, which lasts until 8 am.

8.00 am
Deliver ‘off work’ slips to the
north and south blocks, farm, works, education and the front gate.

8.20 am
Breakfast.

9-10.30 am
Doctor arrives to minister to
patients until around ten-thirty, depending on number.

11.30 am
Sick parade until noon
(collecting pills, etc.).

12.00
Lunch.

12.30 pm
Phone Alison at the office.

1-2.00 pm
Write.

3.00 pm
Prisoners arrive from
Birmingham, Leicester, Wayland, Lincoln or Bedford, all C-cats, to join us at
NSC. They first go to reception to register; after that their next port of call
is the hospital, where sister signs them in and checks their medical records.
You rarely get transferred to another prison if you’re ill.

I check their
blood pressure, their urine sample for diabetes, not drugs; that is carried out
in a separate building later – their height and weight, and pass this
information onto sister so that it can be checked against their medical
records.

4.30-5.00 pm
Sick parade.
Linda, who began work at 7.30 am, leaves at 5 pm.

5.00 pm
Supper. If anyone falls ill at
night, the duty officer can open up the surgery and dispense medication,
although most are told they can wait until sick parade the following day. If
it’s serious, they’re taken off to Pilgrim Hospital in Boston by taxi, which is
fifteen minutes away.

5.30 pm
Write for a couple of hours.

7.45 pm
Call Mary and/or James and Will.

8.00 pm
Read or watch television;
tonight,
Catherine the Great
I’m
joined by Doug and Clive (I’m allowed to have two other inmates in the hospital
between 7 and 10.00 pm).

10.20 pm
After watching the news, I settle
down in a bed five inches wider than the one in my room on the south block and
fall into a deep sleep. It is, as is suggested by the title of this book –
compared with Belmarsh and Wayland – heaven.

I am just about
getting the hang of my daily routine. It’s far more demanding than the work I
carried out at SMU. I hope that Linda will be willing to teach me first aid,
and more importantly give me a greater insight into the drugs problem in
prisons.

I’m standing by
the door waiting for Linda to arrive. I prepare her a coffee; one sweetener and
a teaspoonful of milk in her pig mug.

The five
doctors all have their own mugs.

Linda has
worked in the Prison Service for over ten years. She has three grown-up children,
two sons and a daughter. She was married to a ‘nurse tutor’, Terry, who
tragically died of skin cancer a couple of years ago at the age of fifty-three.
She works long hours and the prisoners look on her much as I viewed my
prep-school matron – a combination of mother, nurse and confidante. She has no
time for shirkers, but couldn’t be more sympathetic if you are genuinely ill.

After sick
parade, I carry out my rounds to the different parts of the prison to let staff
know who will be off work today, before going to breakfast. I ask John (lifer)
what meat is in the sausage.

‘It’s always
beef,’ he replies, ‘because there are so many Muslims in prisons nowadays, they
never serve pork sausages.’

The hospital
has a visit from a man called Alan, who’s come to conduct a course on drug and
alcohol abuse. He moves from prison to prison, advising and helping anyone who
seeks his counsel. There are 150 such officers posted around the country, paid
for by the taxpayer out of the NHS and the Home Office budgets.

Alan is
saddened by how few prisoners take advantage of the service he offers. In
Bradford alone, he estimates that 40 per cent of inmates below the age of
thirty are on drugs, and another 30 per cent are addicted to alcohol. He shows
me the reams of Home Office forms to be filled in every time he sees a
prisoner. By the end of the morning, only two inmates out of 211 have bothered
to turn up and see him.

I have a
special visit from Sir Brian Mawhinney MP, an old friend whose constituency is
about twenty miles south of NSC. As a former cabinet minister and Shadow Home
Secretary, he has many questions about prisons, and as I have not entered the
Palace of Westminster for the past six months, there are questions I’m equally
keen for him to answer.

Brian stays for
an hour, and after we stop going over past triumphs, we discuss present
disasters. He fears that the Simon Burns scenario is realistic, a long time in
the wilderness for the Conservatives, but ‘Events, dear boy events, are still our
biggest hope.’ Brian runs over time, and I miss lunch – no complaints.

Mr Hart passes
on a message from my solicitors that my appeal papers have not been lodged at
court.
Panic.
I passed them over to the security
officer six weeks ago. Mr Hart calls Mr Hocking, who confirms that they were
sent out on 29 October. Who’s to blame?

Canteen.
Now that I’m enhanced, I have an extra £15 of my
own money added to my account each week. With my hospital orderly pay of
£11.70, it adds up to £26.70 a week.

So I can now
enjoy Cussons soap, SR toothpaste, Head and Shoulders shampoo, and even the
occasional packet of McVitie’s chocolate biscuits.

I attend a rock
concert tonight, performed by the ‘Cons and Pros.’
The
standard is high, particularly Gordon (GBH) on the guitar, who sadly for the
band will be released tomorrow.

Doug returns
from his second day at work.

He has driven
to Birmingham and Northampton in one day. He is exhausted, and fed up with his
room-mate, who leaves the radio on all night. I’m in bed asleep by ten-thirty.
You will discover the relevance of this tomorrow.

The night
security officer opens my door and shines his torch in my eyes. I don’t get back
to sleep for over an hour.

He does it
again, so I get up and start writing.

On my journey
around the prison this morning handing out ‘off-work’ slips, I have to drop
into the farm. It’s freezing and a lot of the inmates are claiming to have
colds. I bump into the farm manager, Mr Donnelly, a charming man who I came to
know from my days at the SMU when he sat on the labour board. He introduces me
to Blossom, a beautiful creature.

Blossom weighs
in at twenty-six stone, and has a broken nose and four stubby, fat hairy legs.
She is lucky to be alive. Blossom is the prisoners’ favourite pig, so when her
turn came for slaughter, the inmates hid her in a haystack. When Mr Donnelly
was unable to find Blossom that morning she was granted a week’s reprieve.
Blossom reappeared the next day, but mysteriously disappeared again when the
lorry turned up the following week.