are some very strange-looking
bikes, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
A gym orderly (a prisoner who has obviously been trained by
Mr Maiden) takes us round the room and describes how to use each piece of
equipment. He carries out the task most professionally, and should have no
trouble finding a job once he leaves prison. I’m listening intently about bench
pressing when I find Mr Maiden standing by my side.
‘Are you still refereeing rugby?’ he asks.
‘No. I gave up about ten years ago,’ I tell him. ‘Once the
laws started to change every season I just couldn’t keep up. In any case I
found that even if I only refereed veteran teams I couldn’t keep up, quite
literally.’
‘ Don’t let knowledge of the laws
worry you,’ said Mr Maiden, ‘we’ll still be able to use you.’
The session ends with a look at the changing room, the
shower facilities and, more importantly, clean lavatories. I’m issued with a
plastic gym card and look forward to returning to my old training regime.
5.00 pm
Back in the cell, I find Jules sitting on the top bunk
reading. I settle down to another session of writing before we’re called for
supper.
6.00 pm
I select the vegetarian pie and chips and am handed the
obligatory yellow lollipop, which is identical to those we were given at
Belmarsh. If it’s the same company who makes and supplies them to every one of
Her Majesty’s prisons, that must be a contract worth having. Although it’s only
my third meal since I arrived, I think I’ve already spotted the power behind
the hotplate. He’s a man of about thirty-five, six foot three and must weigh
around twenty-seven stone. As I pass him I ask if we could meet later. He nods
in the manner of a man who knows that in the kingdom of the blind… I can only
hope that I’ve located Wayland’s ‘Del Boy’.
After supper we are allowed to be out of our cells for a
couple of hours (Association) until we’re banged up at eight.
What a contrast to Belmarsh. I use the time to roam around
the corridors and familiarize myself with the layout. The main office is on the
first landing and is the hub of the whole wing. From there everything is an
offshoot. I also check where all the phones are situated, and when a prisoner
comes off one he warns me, ‘Never use the phone on the induction landing, Jeff,
because the conversations are taped. Use this one. It’s a screw-free line.’
I thank him and call Mary in Cambridge. She’s relieved that
I’ve rung as she has no way of contacting me, and can’t come to see me until
she’s been sent a visiting order. I promise to put one in tomorrow’s post, and
then she may even be able to drive across next Tuesday or Wednesday. I remind
her to bring some form of identification and that she mustn’t try to pass
anything over to me, not even a letter.
Mary then tells me that she’s accepted an invitation to go
on the Today programme with John Humphrys. She intends to ask Baroness
Nicholson to withdraw her accusation that I stole money from the Kurds, so that
I can be reinstated as a D-cat prisoner and quickly transferred to an open prison.
I tell Mary that I consider this an unlikely scenario.
‘She’s not decent enough to consider such a Christian act,’
I warn my wife.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Mary replies, ‘but I will be able
to refer to Lynda Chafer’s parliamentary reply on the subject and ask why Ms
Nicholson wasn’t in the House that day if she cares so much about the Kurds, or
why had she not at least read the report in Hansard the following morning.’
Mary adds that the BBC have told her that they accept
I have no case to answer.
‘When are you going on?’
‘Next Wednesday or Thursday, so it’s important I see you
before then.’
I quickly agree as my units are running out. I then ask Mary
to warn James that I’ll phone him at the office at eleven tomorrow morning, and
will call her again on Sunday evening. My units are now down to ten so I say
Ann Voss Peterson, J.A. Konrath