Heaven

DAY 170 FRIDAY 4 JANUARY 2002

I finish editing Belmarsh, and post it back to my publishers.

8.00 am

I leave the hospital to carry out my morning rounds. This has three purposes: first, to let each department head know which inmates are off work, second, in case of a fire, to identify who is where, and third, if someone fails to show up for roll-call, to check if they’ve absconded.

En route to the farm I bump into Blossom, who had one of the pigs named after him. (See photo page 193.) Blossom is a traveller, or a gipsy as we used to describe them before it became politically incorrect. Blossom tells me that he’s just dug a lamb out of the ice. It seems it got its hindquarters stuck in some mud which froze overnight, so the poor animal couldn’t move.

‘You’ve saved the animal’s life,’ I tell Blossom.

‘No,’ he says, ‘he’s going to be slaughtered today, so he’ll soon be on the menu as frozen cutlets.’

12 noon

I pick up my post from the south block. Although most of the messages continue along the same theme, one, sent from a Frank and Lurline in Wynnum, Australia is worthy of a mention, if only because of the envelope. It was addressed thus:

Lord Jeffrey Archer

Jailed for telling a fib

Somewhere in England.

It is dated Christmas Day, and has taken only nine days to reach me in deepest Lincolnshire.

2.30 pm

The main administration block has been sealed off. Gail tells me that she can’t get into the building to carry out any paperwork and she doesn’t know why. This is only interesting because it’s an area that is off-limits to inmates.

Over the past few months, money and valuables have gone missing. Mr Berlyn is determined to catch the culprit. It turns out to be a fruitless exercise, because, despite a thorough search, the £20 that was stolen from someone’s purse doesn’t materialize. Mr Hocking, the security officer in charge of the operation, found the whole exercise distasteful as it involved investigating his colleagues. I have a feeling he knows who the guilty party is, but certainly isn’t going to tell me. My deep throat, a prisoner of long standing, tells me the name of the suspect. For those readers with the mind of a detective, she doesn’t get a mention in this diary.