Heaven

DAY 117 MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2001

8.50 am

As each day passes, I tell myself that the stories will dry up and this diary with it. Well, not today, because Simon has just walked into SMU.

Simon works in the officers’ mess, and although I see him every day I have not yet made his acquaintance. He’s visiting SMU to check on an application he submitted to visit his mother in Doncaster. He has, I fear, been dealing with an officer ironically known as ‘action man’. After six weeks and several ‘apps’, Simon has still heard nothing. After I’ve promised to follow this up, I casually ask him why he’s in prison.

‘I abducted my son,’ he replies.

I perk up. I’ve not come across an abduction before.

Simon pleaded guilty to abducting (‘rescuing’ in his words) his five-year-old son for forty-seven days. He whisked him off to Cyprus, via France, Germany, Yugoslavia and Turkey. He did so, he explains, because after he’d left his wife, he discovered that his son was being physically abused by both his ex-wife and her new partner, a police detective sergeant. The judge didn’t believe his story, and sentenced him to four years, as a warning to other fathers not to take the law into their own hands. Fair enough, and indeed I found myself nodding.

A year later, his wife’s new partner (the detective sergeant) was arrested and charged with ABH (actual bodily harm), and received a three-year sentence for, among other things, breaking the little boy’s arm. Simon immediately appealed and returned to court to face the same judge. He pleaded not only extenuating circumstances, but added ‘I told you so’, to which the judge replied, ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you broke the law, so you will complete your sentence.’

Ah, I hear you say, but he could have reported the man to the police and the social services. You try reporting a detective sergeant to the police. And Simon has files stacked up in his room filled with dozens of complaints to the social services with replies bordering on the ludicrous, ‘We have looked into the matter very carefully and have no reason to believe…’ Simon had to sell his home to pay the £70,000 legal bills, and is now incarcerated in NSC, penniless, and with no knowledge of where his only child is. My heart goes out to this man.

Would you have done the same thing for your child? If the answer is yes, then you’re a criminal.

11.00 am

A call for me over the tannoy to report to reception. Sergeant Major Daff is on duty. He is happy to release my drug-free radio. It’s a Sony three-band, sensible, plain and workmanlike. It will do the job and one only needs to look at the sturdy object to know it’s been sent by Mary.

2.30 pm

A quiet afternoon, so Matthew gives me a lecture on Herodotus. He is rather pleased with himself, because he’s come across a passage in book four of the Histories that could be the first known reference to sniffing cannabis (hemp). I reproduce the translation in full:

And now for the vapour-bath. On a framework made up of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth, taking care to get the jams as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent, they place a dish with red-hot stones on it. They then take some hemp seed, enter the tent and throw the seed onto the hot stones. It immediately begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy the experience so much that they howl with pleasure.

3.40 pm

Mr New and Mr Simpson interview me for my sentence plan. All the boxes are filled in with ‘No History’ (N/H) for drugs, violence, past offences, drink or mental disorder. In the remaining boxes, the words ‘Low Risk’ are entered for abscond, reoffend and bullying. The final box has to be filled in by my personnel officer. Mr New is kind enough to commend my efforts at SMU and my relationship with other prisoners.

The document is then signed by both officers and faxed to Spring Hill at 4.07 pm, and is acknowledged as received at 4.09 pm. Watch this space.