Heaven

5.15 pm

Mr Brighten returns to tell me that I will be placed on report if I refuse to work in the kitchen. I agree to work in the kitchen.

DAY 443 FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER 2002

The end of the second longest week in my life.

Jason (GBH) has received a movement order to transfer him to HMP Stocken in Rutland (C-cat) later this morning. He’s ‘gutted’ as he hoped to be sent directly to a D-cat. However, a conviction for violence will have prevented this. By the way, he and his wife did agree to get back together, and she will now visit him every Saturday.

10.00 am

An officer unlocks my cell door and bellows, ‘Gym.’ Twenty or thirty of us form a line by the barred gate at the far end of the brick-walled, windowless room. A few minutes later we are escorted down long, bleak, echoing corridors, with much unlocking and locking of several heavy gates as we make our slow progress to the gym situated on the other side of the prison.

We are taken to a changing room, where I put on a singlet and shorts. Clive (money laundering) and I enter the spacious gym. We warm up with a game of paddle tennis, and he sees me off in a few minutes. I move on to do a thousand metres on the rowing machine in five minutes, and end up with a little light weight training. When an officer bellows, ‘Five more minutes,’ I check my weight. Twelve stone twelve pounds. I’ve lost six pounds in six days. I join my fellow inmates in the shower room and have my first press-button shower for a year, bringing back more unpleasant memories of Belmarsh.

As we are all escorted back to A block by Mr Lewis, the senior gym officer, we pass E Wing (paedophiles) and not one of the inmates even looks in the direction of the staring faces. Why? Because we are accompanied by an officer. Prisoners are warned that any abuse (shouting, foul language) will be treated as a disciplinary matter, with the loss of daily gym rights as punishment. When you’re locked up for twenty-two hours a day, that’s incentive enough to remain silent, whatever your thoughts.

5.00 pm

The cell door is unlocked, and my new pad-mate enters carrying the inevitable plastic bag. Jason is replaced by Phil, an amiable, good-looking – despite the scar on his face – twenty-eight-year-old.

He has been put in my cell because he doesn’t smoke, which is very rare in jail. Phil talks a great deal, and tells me that he wants to return to work in the kitchen. He certainly seems to know his way round the prison, which turns out to be because he’s paid several visits to Lincoln during the past ten years.

He is only too happy to tell me the finer details of his record. Twenty-eight other offences were taken into consideration before the judge passed sentence on Phil this morning.

Phil tells me, ‘Never again.’ He now has a happy family life-I don’t ask how he explains his latest conviction – and a good job to go back to. He can earn ?500 a week laying concrete and doesn’t need another spell in jail. Phil admits that his problem is a short fuse.

‘Strike a match and I explode,’ he adds, laughing.

5.40 pm

Mr Brighten unlocks the cell door to inform me that I start work in the kitchen tomorrow at eight o’clock. He slams the door closed before I can comment.

6.00 pm

My cell door is unlocked again and Phil and I, along with three others, are escorted to the hospital. I’m told that I have to take a drugs test before I’m allowed to work in the kitchen. Despite the fact that I don’t want to work in the kitchen, Phil tells me that five prisoners apply every day because the work is so popular. Phil and I pass the urine test to show we are drug free, and the duty officer tells us to report to the kitchen by eight. The other three fail.

6.40 pm

During association I phone my agent, Jonathan Lloyd. He goes over the details of tomorrow’s announcement of the publication of volume one of these diaries. I congratulate him on how well the secret has been kept. Not one newspaper has picked up that A Prison Diary by FF8282 will be published tomorrow. This is quite an achievement remembering that at least twenty people must have known at Macmillan and ten or more at the Daily Mail.

DAY 444 SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER 2002

5.52 am

This is my tenth day of incarceration at Lincoln.

6.01 am

The publication of A Prison Diary Volume One – Belmarsh: Hell, is the lead item on the news. The facts are fairly reported. No one seems to think that the Home Office will try to prevent the publication. However, the director-general is checking to see if I have broken any prison rules. Mr Narey is particularly exercised by the mention of other prisoners’ names. I have only referred to prisoners’ surnames when they are major characters in the diary, and only then when their permission has been granted. [43]

A representative of the Prison Officers’ Association said on the Today programme that as I hid in my room all day, I wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to say about prisons. Perhaps it might have been wiser for him to open his mouth after he’s read the book, when he would have discovered how well his colleagues come out of my experience.

7.32 am

My cell door is unlocked so I can be transferred from A to J wing. This is considered a privilege for that select group who work in the kitchen. The cells are a lot cleaner, and also have televisions. My new companion is a grown-up non-smoker called Stephen (age thirty-nine), who is number one in the kitchen.

Stephen is serving a seven-year sentence for smuggling one and a half tons of cannabis into Britain. He is an intelligent man, who runs both the wing and the kitchen with a combination of charm and example.

8.00 am

A group of fourteen prisoners is escorted to the kitchens. Only two of the five who reported for drugs testing yesterday evening are still in the group.

I am put to work in the vegetable room to assist a young twenty-three-year-old called Lee, who is so good at his job – chopping potatoes, slicing onions, grating cheese and mashing swedes – that I become his incompetent assistant. My lack of expertise doesn’t seem to worry him.

The officer in charge of the kitchen, Mr Tasker, turns out to be one of the most decent and professional men I have dealt with since being incarcerated. His kitchen is like Singapore airport: you could eat off the floor. He goes to great pains to point out to me that he only has ?1.27 per prisoner to deliver three meals a day. In the circumstances, what he and his staff manage to achieve is nothing less than a miracle.

DAY 445 SUNDAY 6 OCTOBER 2002

11.14 am