Purgatory

DAY 81 – SUNDAY 7 OCTOBER 2001

8.00 am

After writing for two hours I turn on the news to discover that the bombing of Afghanistan has begun in earnest. Forty strike aircraft and fifty cruise missiles (PS750,000 each) have been deployed. David Frost interviews everyone from Kissinger to Clinton, but by 9.30 am we’re none the wiser as to how the campaign is going.

11.00 am

Exercise. As Darren, Jimmy and I stroll round the yard we pass an officer I’ve never seen before because he’s attached to another block. His name is Zac Carr, known as ‘Z cars’. Jimmy tells me that he was temporarily suspended for allowing a prisoner to tattoo him. It’s an offence for one prisoner to tattoo another, let alone an officer. Jimmy then describes how the prisoner (the best tattoo artist at Wayland) goes about his craft. I later ask Mr Nutbourne if the story is true. He nods and says, ‘I could tell you many more stories about Z cars,’ he pauses, smiles, and adds, ‘but I won’t.’

11.45 am

Nigel (GBH, race relations rep) walks into my cell to complain that black people aren’t represented enough on TV. I sympathize with him and ask what he feels should be done about it.

They ought to show Crimewatch seven nights a week,’ he adds with a grin, ‘because that would just about even it up.’ Having got a rise out of me, he leaves. I continue writing.

8.00 pm

Patricia Routledge gives a moving performance in Everyone’s Nightmare, the true story of a woman who was wrongly convicted of murdering her mother and spent four years in jail before her sentence was quashed. Once you’ve been convicted, it can take forever to prove your innocence.