Heaven

DAY 165 SUNDAY 30 DECEMBER 2001

7.30 am

The security officer on duty today enjoys his job, but never feels fulfilled until he’s put someone on a charge. Mr Vessey rushes into surgery to see sister. During the night he’s found fourteen empty bottles of vodka at the bottom of the skip by the entrance to the prison. A whispered conversation ensues, not that it takes a lot of imagination to realize that he’s asking if any inmates checked into surgery this morning ‘a little worse for wear’. Moments later, he rushes off to the south block.

In fact, very few inmates were on sick parade this morning as most of them are sleeping in, or sleeping it off, and the ones that appeared were genuinely ill. He will be disappointed.

10.00 am

During the morning we have visits from Mr Lewis and Mr Berlyn, the new deputy governor, who join Linda for coffee. Mr Hocking is the next to arrive, with the news that five inmates have failed the breathalyser test. Two of them are CSV workers, who could lose all their privileges. For example, they could be put back to work on the farm for the rest of their sentence. [16] Mr Hocking tells me he doubts if the punishment will be that draconian, but the warning will be clear for the future.

Why would anyone risk losing so much for a couple of vodkas?

12 noon

Linda leaves at midday so I spend four of the next six hours editing Belmarsh, volume one of these diaries.

7.00 pm

During the evening I read Here is New York by E. B. White, which Will gave me for Christmas. One paragraph towards the end of the essay is eerily prophetic.

The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about, but that is in everyone’s mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes, no bigger than a wedge of geese, can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

This was written in 1949, and the author died in 1985.