more for the staff than the prisoners.
7.30 am
Dave (murder) is among the walking wounded, and comes to surgery doubled up with stomach cramps. Sister gives him painkillers that contain certain opiates. She then has to make out a separate form, which I take across to security because if Dave were to have an MDT he would show up positive. Sister is especially vigilant in these cases, looking out for those prisoners who fake the pain in order to get the drugs, especially when they know they’re about to be tested for heroin. In Dave’s case, there is no doubt that he’s in real pain, and any case, he’s been a model prisoner since the day he arrived at NSC. He’s desperate to impress the parole board and be released as soon as possible. He’s already served twenty-one years, and his wife says she can’t wait much longer.
9.00 am
Despite its being Christmas Eve, one inmate will not be able to avoid a nicking because he has pushed his luck a little too far. During an MDT, he attempted to exchange a tube of someone else’s urine for his while he was in the loo. It turns out that he got this drug-free sample from another prisoner in exchange for a Mars Bar.
11.00 am
Sue from accounts drops into the hospital to tell me that my private money has run out, and that’s why my canteen account only showed ?1.20 in credit. Had she let me know a week ago, I could have asked Mary to top it up. However, Sue explains that she is not allowed to let a prisoner know that his money is running low, and can only inform him if he asks directly for his account balance. The reason is that most inmates are penniless, and don’t need to be continually reminded of that fact. Fair enough.
8.00 pm
Doug returns from the canteen laden with goodies, and tells me that an inmate has just been nicked for ordering a taxi to take him on a round trip to Boston. The cab company phoned the prison, so two officers were waiting when the inmate returned. He was caught in possession of forty-eight cans of lager and one bottle each of whisky, vodka and brandy. He also had six packets of fish and chips, a melon, a carton of strawberries, a pot of cream and a box of jellied eels.
The prisoner begged to be placed in the segregation cell overnight in case the inmates who had lost their ‘Christmas cheer’ thought he’d sold the goodies to someone else. The duty officer duly obliged, but he’ll still be up in front of the governor on Boxing Day.
DAY 160 CHRISTMAS DAY
Christmas Day for those who are incarcerated can be summed up in one word: dreadful. I have learned during the last 159 days as a prisoner how perverse reality is.
I go to work today, as every other day, and am grateful for something to do. At the seven-thirty surgery, only six prisoners report for sick parade; you have to be really ill to get up at 7.30 am on Christmas morning and troop across to the hospital when the temperature on the east coast is minus two degrees.
At eight-fifteen I go to breakfast, and even though it’s eggs, bacon and sausage served by the officers (Mr Hocking, Mr Camplin, Mr Baker and Mr Gough), only around forty of the two hundred inmates bother to turn up.
On returning to the hospital, Linda and I unload bags of food from her car so I can hold a tea party for my friends this afternoon. She also gives me a present, which is wrapped in Christmas paper. I open it very slowly, trying to anticipate what it might be. Inside a neat little box is a china mug, with a black cat grinning at me. Now I have my own mug, and will no longer have to decide between a Campbell’s Soup giveaway and a plain white object with a chip when I have my morning Bovril.
10.00 am
Linda leaves me in charge of the hospital while she attends the governor’s Christmas party. Frankly, if over half the prisoners weren’t still in bed asleep, I could arrange for them all to abscond. When the tabloids claim I have privileges that the other prisoners do not have, in one respect they are right; I am lucky to be able to carry on with the job I do on the outside. While everyone else tries to kill time, I settle down to write for a couple of hours.
12 noon
Lunch is excellent, and once again served by the officers, and shared with a half dozen old-age pensioners from the local village; tomato soup, followed by turkey, chipolatas, roast potatoes and stuffing, with as much gravy as will go on the plate. I don’t allow myself the Christmas pudding – several officers have kindly commented on the fact that I’m putting on weight (nine pounds in nine weeks).
After lunch I walk over to the south block and phone Mary and the boys. All things considered they sound pretty cheerful, but I can’t hide the fact that I miss them. My wife is fifty-seven, my boys twenty-nine and twenty-seven, and today I’m surrounded by men sitting in their rooms staring at photographs of young children anywhere from six months to fifteen years old. Yes, they deserve to be incarcerated if they committed a crime, but we should remember it is Christmas Day, and it’s not their families who are guilty.
As I walk back through the block, I notice that those not in the TV room or on the phone are just lying on their beds willing the day to pass. I have so much food in my fridge that I invite a dozen inmates over to join me in the hospital.
They all turn up, without exception. We watch
They laugh, they chat, they watch the film, and when they leave, David (fraud, schoolmaster) pays me a compliment I have never received at any of my champagne and shepherd’s pie parties. ‘Thank you for getting rid of the afternoon so pleasantly.’
DAY 161 BOXING DAY
7.30 am
For those prisoners who do not return to work, Boxing Day is almost worse than Christmas Day. Very few inmates attend surgery this morning, and certainly none of them have any illness worth reporting.
8.13 am
Over breakfast, I learn another terrible consequence of the drug culture in prisons. Jim (antiques only), the gym orderly, tells me that some inmates who are addicted to heroin often die within a few months of leaving prison. The reason? The heroin they take in jail is always weaker because the dealers add other substances such as caster sugar, talc or flour. So when they are released, they are immediately exposed to a purer substance, which the body can no longer tolerate. Result? They end up dying of an overdose.
11.00 am
The governor drops in to see Linda, and gives me a Christmas present and a birthday present for Mary, neither of which he’s allowed to do, as it could compromise him should I ever come up in front of him on report. However, as it’s only a few days before he retires, I suppose he feels this is unlikely.
It turns out that the governor is a collector of farthings, and he gives Mary a farthing dated 1944 and I receive one dated 1940 – our respective years of birth. I am touched. He also brings in three volumes of
The three volumes are fascinating at several levels, not least because of the one hundred pictures, almost all of them would be in an equivalent compilation circa 2002. The paintings include da Vinci’s
