Heaven

DAY 178 SATURDAY 12 JANUARY 2002

10.00 am

The hospital bath plug has been stolen which is a bit of a mystery, because it’s the only bath in the prison available to inmates, so the plug can’t be of much use to anyone else. However, I have a reserve one, which makes me king, because I am now ‘controller of the bath plug’. I will still have to make an application for a new one, which will mean filling in three forms and probably waiting three months.

2.00 pm

The camp is playing football against the local league leaders. When our team runs out onto the pitch, I hardly recognize any of them. Mr Masters, gym officer and coach, points out that the rapid turnover of inmates has meant he’s put fifty-four players on the pitch since the opening match of the season. That’s something even Man United couldn’t handle. Added to this is the fact that our star goalkeeper, Bell, has been suspended for one match after using foul and abusive language when the referee awarded a penalty to the opposition. He was a little unlucky that an FA official was assessing the referee that afternoon, and therefore the ref couldn’t pretend not to have heard Bell. Indeed they could have heard, ‘Get some glasses, you fuckin’ muppet,’ in the centre of Boston.

Our reserve goalkeeper is Carl (fraud), the SMU orderly who took over from me and comes over most evenings to watch TV in the hospital. He gamely agreed to stand in for the one fixture, while Bell watches from the sidelines.

I felt it nothing less than my duty to turn up and support the team in such dire circumstances. I left at half time, when we were trailing 7-1, just after our prison reporter, Major Willis (stabbed his wife with a kitchen knife – two years), told me that the Boston Standard had given him so little space to report the match that he would only be able to list the names of the scorers. I was also amused by his chivvying from the touchline: ‘Well played, Harry,’ ‘Good tackle, David,’ and ‘Super shot, Reg,’ as if he were a house master addressing the 3rd XI of a minor public school.

5.00 pm

I join Carl for supper, but he doesn’t look too happy.

‘What was the final score?’ I ask.

‘We had a better second half,’ he offers.

‘So what was the final score?’ I repeat.

‘15-3.’

The only man who has a big smile on his face is the suspended Bell, whose position as ‘first choice goalkeeper’ remains secure.