Heaven: A Prison Diary (38 page)

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.

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.

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.

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 brickwalled, 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.

The cell door
is unlocked, and my new padmate 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.

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.

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.

During
association I phone my agent, Jonathan Lloyd. He goes over the details of
tomorrow’s announcement of the publication of volume one of these diaries. I
congratulate him on how well the secret has been kept.

Not one
newspaper has picked up that
A

Prison Diary by FF8282
will be published
tomorrow. This is quite an achievement remembering that at least twenty people
must have known at Macmillan and ten or more at the Daily
Mail.

This is my
tenth day of incarceration at Lincoln.

The publication
of
A Prison Diary Volume One – Belmarsh:
Hell,
is the lead item on the news. The facts are fairly
reported. No one seems to think that the Home Office will try to prevent the
publication. However, the director-general is checking to see if I have broken
any prison rules. Mr Narey is particularly exercised by the mention of other
prisoners’ names. I have only referred to prisoners’ surnames when they are
major characters in the diary, and only then when their permission has been
granted.
43

A
representative of the Prison Officers’ Association said on the
Today
programme that as I hid in my room
all day, I wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to say about prisons.

Perhaps it
might have been wiser for him to open his mouth after he’s read the book, when
he would have discovered how well his colleagues come out of my experience.

My cell door is
unlocked so I can be transferred from A to J wing. This is considered a
privilege for that select group who work in the kitchen. The cells are a lot
cleaner, and also have televisions. My new companion is a grown-up non-smoker
called Stephen (age thirty-nine), who is number one in the kitchen.

Stephen is
serving a seven-year sentence for smuggling one and a half tons of cannabis
into Britain. He is an intelligent man, who runs both the wing and the kitchen
with a combination of charm and example.

A group of
fourteen prisoners is escorted to the kitchens. Only two of the five who
reported for drugs testing yesterday evening are still in the group.

I am put to work
in the vegetable room to assist a young twenty-three-year-old called Lee, who
is so good at his job – chopping potatoes, slicing onions, grating cheese and
mashing swedes – that I become his incompetent assistant. My lack of expertise
doesn’t seem to worry him.

The officer in
charge of the kitchen, Mr Tasker, turns out to be one of the most decent and
professional men I have dealt with since being incarcerated. His kitchen is
like Singapore airport: you could eat off the floor.

He goes to
great pains to point out to me that he only has £1.27 per prisoner to deliver
three meals a day. In the circumstances, what he and his staff manage to
achieve is nothing less than a miracle.

On this, my
eleventh day, I have a second visit from Mr Spurr and his colleague Ms Stamp.

They say they
wish to tidy up a few minor points. I’m impressed by Mr Spurr’s grasp of what’s
going on at North Sea Camp, and once again he gives the impression of being
concerned.

He leaves
promising that he will be able to tell me the outcome of his enquiry on Friday.

A particularly
officious, ill-mannered officer unlocks my cell door and thrusts some papers at
me. He tells me with considerable pleasure that I will be on a charge at 4
o’clock this afternoon.

I read the
papers several times. I don’t have a lot more to do. It seems that by
publishing A Prison Diary I have broken prison Rule 51 Para 23, in ‘naming
staff such that they could be identified’, contrary to SO 5

Para 34 (9) (d).

On leaving my
cell to go to work in the kitchen, I am surprised to find Mr Spurr and Ms Stamp
awaiting me. I am escorted into a side room. Mr Spurr tells me that he has
completed his enquiry, and I will be transferred to Hollesley Bay (D-cat) some
time next week. Do you recall Governor Lewis’s words, ‘Whatever you do, don’t
end up in Hollesley Bay...’?

I take a break
from peeling the spuds, not that I can pretend to have done that many. I notice
that Mr Tasker is sitting in his office reading the
Daily Mail.
He beckons me in, and tells me to close the door.

‘I’ve just been
reading about your time at Belmarsh,’ he says, jabbing a finger at the centre
pages, ‘and I see you’re suggesting that seventy per cent of prisoners are on
drugs and as many as thirty per cent could be on heroin.’ He looks up, gives me
a pained expression and then adds, ‘You’re wrong.’

I don’t
comment, expecting him to dismiss my claims, and remind me of the official
statistics always parroted by the Home Office whenever the question of drugs is
raised.

‘Which would
you say is the most popular job in the prison?’ Mr Tasker asks, folding his
newspaper.

‘The kitchen, without question,’ I reply, ‘and for all the obvious
reasons.’

‘You’re right,’
he says. ‘Every day, at least five inmates apply to work in the kitchen.’

He pauses, sips
his coffee and adds, ‘Did you take a drugs test yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ I reply,
‘along with four others.’

‘And how many
of you were invited to work in the kitchen?’

‘Just Phil and
me,’ I reply.

‘Correct, but
what you don’t know is that I’m entitled to have twenty-one prisoners working
in the kitchen, but currently employ only seventeen.’ He takes another sip of
his coffee. ‘I have never managed to fill all the vacancies during the last ten
years, despite the fact that we never have fewer than seven hundred inmates.’
Mr Tasker rises from his seat. ‘Now I’m no mathematician,’ he says, ‘but I
think you’ll find that seventeen out of seven hundred does not come to thirty
per cent.’

The same
officious, ill-mannered lout who unlocked my cell door this morning returns to
pick me up from the kitchen and escort me to segregation. This time I am only
left there for about forty minutes before being hauled up in front of Mr Peacock,
the governing governor. Mr Peacock sits at the top of the table with the deputy
governor on his right and my wing officer on his left. The thug stands behind
me in case I might try to escape. The governor reads out the charge and asks if
I wish to plead guilty or not guilty.

‘I’m not sure,’
I reply. ‘I’m not clear what offence I’ve committed.’

I am then shown
the prison rules in full. I express some surprise, saying that I handed over
every page of
Belmarsh: Hell
to the
prison censor, and he kindly posted them on to my secretary, and at no time did
he suggest I was committing any offence. The governor looks suitably
embarrassed when I ask him to write down every word I have said.

He does so.

Mr Peacock
points out that every inmate has access to a copy of the prison rules in the
library. ‘Yes, but anyone who reads my diary,’ – he has a copy of
Belmarsh
on the table in front of him –
‘would know that I wasn’t allowed to visit the library, or have access to
education while at Belmarsh.’ I direct him to the passage on the relevant page.
At least he has the grace to smile, adding that ignorance of the law is no
excuse.

Mr Peacock then
calls for my wing officer to make his report. ‘Archer
FF8282,
works in the kitchen and is a polite, well-mannered prisoner, with no history
of drugs or violence.’ The governor also writes these words down, before
clearing his throat and pronouncing sentence.