Heaven

Hill offer me a transfer.

10.00 pm

Life may be awful, but after watching the ten o’clock news and seeing the conditions in the Greek jail where they’ve locked up eleven British plane spotters, I count my blessings.

DAY 141 THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER 2001

4.45 pm

After a day of no murders, no escapes, no one shipped out, I meet up with Doug for supper. We sit at a corner table and he brings me up to date on his interview for a job. Having applied to the advertisement in the Boston Target, Doug was interviewed in the presence of Ms Tempest. He was offered the job and begins work on Monday as a lorry driver. He will ferry a load of steel coils from Boston to Birmingham, to March, before returning to Boston. He must then report back to the prison by seven o’clock. The job will be for six days a week, and he’ll be paid ?5 an hour.

Just to recap, Doug is doing a four-and-a-half-year sentence for avoiding paying VAT on imported goods to the value of several millions. He’s entitled, after serving a quarter of his sentence – if he’s been a model prisoner, and he has – to seek outside employment. This is all part of the resettlement programme enjoyed only by prisoners who have reached D-cat status.

It works out well for everyone: NSC is getting prisoners out to work and in Doug they have someone who won’t be a problem or break any rules. Although he has a PSV licence, he hasn’t driven a lorry for several years, and says it will be like starting all over again. Still, it’s better than being cooped up inside a prison all day.

DAY 142 FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER 2001

9.00 am

I’m asked to report to sister in the hospital for an interview. As I walk across from SMU, I have a moment’s anxiety as I wonder if Linda is considering someone else for hospital orderly. These fears are assuaged by her opening comment when she says how delighted she is that I will be joining her. Linda’s only worry is that I am keeping a diary. She stresses the confidentiality of prisoners’ medical records. I agree to abide by this without reservation.

10.00 am

Mr New confirms that Mr Clarke (theft) has been reinstated as SMU cleaner. What a difference that will make. Carl can now concentrate on the real job of assisting the officers and prisoners and not have to worry whether the dustbins have been emptied.

2.00 pm

Do you recall the two prisoners who were caught returning from Boston laden with alcohol? One attacked an officer with a torch so his friends could escape. The escapee, who managed to slip back to his room and thanks to a change of clothes supplied by a friend, got away with it because it wasn’t possible to prove he’d ever been absent. Today, the same prisoner was found to have a roll-on deodorant in his room not sold at the canteen. He was shipped out to a B-cat in Liverpool this afternoon.

6.00 pm

I spend an hour signing 200 ‘Toad’ Christmas cards.

8.15 pm

Doug is having second thoughts about giving up his job. The thought of driving eight hours a day for six days a week isn’t looking quite so attractive.

10.00 pm

I return to my room and finish The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by the late Jean Dominique Bauby. It is, as my son suggested, quite brilliant. The author had a massive stroke and was left paralysed and speechless, only able to move one eyelid. And with that eyelid he mastered a letter code and dictated the book. Makes my problems seem pretty insignificant.

DAY 143 SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER 2001

8.00 am

Normally the weekends are a bore, but after a couple of hours editing Sons of Fortune I start moving my few worldly goods across to the hospital. Although I’m not moving in officially until tomorrow, Doug allows me to store some possessions under one of the hospital beds.

1.00 pm

Among today’s letters are ones from Rosemary Leach and Stephanie Cole in reply to my fan mail following their performances in Back Home. Miss Leach, in a hand-written letter, fears she may have overacted, as the new ‘in thing’ is blandness and understatement. Miss Cole thought her own performance was a little too sentimental. I admire them for being so critical of themselves.

I receive seventy-two Christmas cards today, which lifts my spirits greatly. The officers have begun a book on how many cards I’ll receive from the public: Mr Hart is down for 1,378, Mr New 1,290 and Mr Downs 2,007. I select three to be put on the ledge by my bed – a landscape by that magnificent Scottish artist Joseph Farqueson, a Giles cartoon of Grandma and a Bellini painting of the Virgin Mother.

2.00 pm

Highlight of my day is a visit from Mary, James and Alison, who between them bring me up to date on all matters personal, office and legal. William returns from America next week, and, along with Mary and James, will come to see me on Christmas Eve. Mary will then fly off to Kenya and attend my nephew’s wedding. Mary and I have always wanted to go on safari and see the big cats. Not this year.

DAY 144 SUNDAY 9 DECEMBER 2001

9.00 am

Doug has an ‘away day’ with his family in March, so I spend the morning covering for him at the hospital.

2.00 pm

A visit from two Conservative front bench spokesmen, Patrick McLoughlin MP, the party’s deputy chief whip in the Commons, and Simon Burns MP, the number two under Liam Fox, who covers the health portfolio. They’ve been loyal friends over many years. I canvassed for both of them before they entered the House, Patrick in a famous by- election after Matthew Parris left the Commons, which he won by 100 votes, and Simon who took over Norman St John Stevas’s seat in Chelmsford West where the Liberals had lowered Norman’s majority from 5,471 in 1979 to 378 in 1983.

‘If you felt the Conservatives might not be returned to power for fifteen years, would you look for another job?’ I ask.

‘No,’ they both reply in unison. ‘In any case,’ Simon adds, ‘I’m not qualified to do anything else.’ Patrick nods his agreement. I’m not sure if he’s agreeing that Simon couldn’t do anything else, or that he falls into the same category.

We have a frank discussion about IDS. Both are pleased that he has managed to downgrade the debate on Europe within the party and concentrate on the health service, education and the social services. They accept that Blair is having a good war (Afghanistan), and although the disagreements with Brown are real, the British people