Heaven

DAY 98 WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2001

8.30 am

Today is labour board. All inductees, having completed their other interviews, must now be allocated a job, otherwise they will receive no income. The board consists of two members from management (the farm and other activities) and a senior officer. Before any inductee faces the board I brief them on what to expect, as I went through the process only a week ago. I tell them it helps if they know what they want to do, and one of them, a bright young Asian called Ahmed, tells me he’s after my job. Another, Mr Clarke, informs me that he’s sixty-seven and wants a part-time cleaning job, perhaps a couple of hours a day. I immediately go upstairs and ask the board if he could be allocated to this office, which would allow me to concentrate on the weekly inductions and the several prisoners who pop in during the day to talk about their problems. They tell me they’ll think about it.

12.15 pm

I return to the SMU after lunch to find a drugs officer in the kitchen. His black Labrador Jed is sniffing around. I melt into the background, and listen to a conversation he’s having with Mr New. It seems there’s going to be another clampdown on drugs. The drugs officer tells Mr New that last year, thirty-six visitors were found with drugs on them, two of them solicitors and one a barrister. I am so surprised by this that I later ask Mr New if he believes it. He nods. Ironically, the headline in today’s Times is, ‘Cannabis to be legalized?’ I leave the office at 1.30 pm as I have a visit myself today.

2.00 pm

Alison, my PA, David, my driver, and Chris Beetles are sitting at a little square table in the visitors’ room waiting for me. After we’ve picked up Diet Cokes and chocolate, mostly for me, we seem to chat about everything except prison; from Joseph my butler, who is in hospital, seriously injured after being knocked down by a bus on his way to work, and the ‘folly’ at the bottom of the garden in Grantchester being flooded, to how the public are responding to the events of 11 September.

Alison and I then go through my personal letters and the list of people who have asked to visit me at NSC. These weekly visits are a wonderful tonic, but they also serve to remind me just how much I miss my friends, holed up in this God-forsaken place.

4.00 pm

I return to the office, to find Mr New and a security officer, Mr Hayes, waiting to see me. The photographers just won’t go away. One has even offered Mr Hayes £500 for the charity of his choice if I will agree to pose for a picture. I refuse, aware how much more will go into the journalist’s pocket. It’s against the law to take a photograph of a serving prisoner, not that that seems to bother any of the vultures currently hovering around. Both officers promise to do their best to keep them at bay. Mr New then tells me that a second camera has been found in an inmate’s room, and the prisoner involved was transferred back to a closed prison this morning. I try to concentrate on my work.

7.00 pm

I visit the canteen to discover I have £18.50 in my account: £10 of my own money, and £8.50 added as my weekly wage. My Gillette blades alone cost £4.29, and two phonecards £4.00, so there’s not a lot over for extras like toothpaste, soap, bottles of Evian water and perhaps even a bar of chocolate. I mention this only in passing lest any of you should imagine that I am, as the tabloids suggest, living the life of Riley.

7.15 pm

I stroll across to the hospital, and enjoy the fresh country air, even if the surroundings are rather bleak. Doug tells me that my application to Spring Hill is being processed. How does Doug know before Mr New? It turns out that he has a friend (inmate) who works in the administration block at Spring Hill.

I have a long, warm bath. Heaven.