Heaven

DAY 438 SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2002

11.00 am

The cell door is opened and an officer escorts me to the chapel: anything to get out of my cell. After all, the chapel is the largest room in the prison. The service is Holy Communion with the added pleasure of singing by choristers from Lincoln Cathedral. They number seventeen, the congregation thirteen.

I sit next to a man who has been on A block for the past ten weeks. He’s fifty-three years old, serving a two-year sentence. It’s his first offence, and he has no history of drugs or violence.

The Home Secretary can have no idea of the damage he’s causing to such people by forcing them to mix in vile conditions with murderers, thugs and drug addicts. Such men should be sent to a D-cat the day they are sentenced. [40]

12 noon

I go to the library and select three books, the maximum allowed. I spend the next twenty hours in my cell, reading.

10.00 pm

I end the day with Alfred Hitchcock’s Stories To Be Read With The Doors Locked. Somewhat ironic.,