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unlikely to commit
another crime, especially after twenty years in jail, and those who are evil
and should be locked away in an A-cat for the rest of their lives.
    Almost all the
lifers at NSC fall into the former category; otherwise they would never have
made it to an open prison. Bob, Chris, Mike and Roger are all now middle aged
and harmless. This might seem strange to those reading this diary, but I feel
none of the fear when I’m with them that I do with some of the young tearaways
who only have a few weeks left to serve.
8.30 am
    Matthew starts
cleaning out the cupboard and drawers, while I concentrate on the new inductees.
There are fifteen of them, and it’s lunchtime before the last one has all his
questions answered.
12 noon
    Lunch is
memorable only because Wendy says my menu sheet is missing. She suspects it’s
been stolen and will appear in one of the tabloids tomorrow. She supplies me
with a new one, but asks me not to put my name on the top or sign it, just hand
the sheet over to her.
2.00 pm
    While clearing
out the drawers, Matthew comes across a box of biros marked 1987, and a ledger
with the initials GR and a crown above it. Two hours later, every shelf has
been washed and scrubbed.
    All the
documents we need for inductees are in neat piles, and we have three bin bags
full of outof-date material.
4.45 pm
    I join Doug and
Matthew for supper: vegetarian sausage and mash.
5.00 pm
    Back in my room
I write for two hours. Tomorrow I must–I repeat, must – go to the gym.

DAY 98 - WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2001
8.30 am
    Today is labour
board. All inductees, having completed their other interviews, must now be
allocated a job, otherwise they will receive no
income. The board consists of two members from management (the farm and other
activities) and a senior officer. Before any inductee faces the board I brief
them on what to expect, as I went through the process only a week ago. I tell them
it helps if they know what they want to do, and one of them, a bright young
Asian called Ahmed, tells me he’s after my job. Another, Mr Clarke, informs me
that he’s sixty-seven and wants a part-time cleaning job, perhaps a couple of
hours a day. I immediately go upstairs and ask the board if he could be
allocated to this office, which would allow me to concentrate on the weekly
inductions and the several prisoners who pop in during the day to talk about
their problems. They tell me they’ll think about it.
12.15 pm
    I return to the
SMU after lunch to find a drugs officer in the kitchen. His black Labrador Jed
is sniffing around. I melt into the background, and listen to a conversation
he’s having with Mr New. It seems there’s going to be another clampdown on
drugs. The drugs officer tells Mr New that last year, thirty-six visitors were found with drugs on them, two of them solicitors and
one a barrister. I am so surprised by this that I later ask Mr New if he
believes it. He nods. Ironically, the headline in today’s Times is, ‘Cannabis to be legalized?’ I leave the office at 1.30 pm
as I have a visit myself today.
2.00 pm
    Alison, my PA,
David, my driver, and Chris Beetles are sitting at a little square table in the
visitors’ room waiting for me. After we’ve picked up Diet Cokes and chocolate,
mostly for me, we seem to chat about everything except prison; from Joseph my
butler, who is in hospital, seriously injured after being knocked down by a bus
on his way to work, and the ‘folly’ at the bottom of the garden in Grantchester
being flooded, to how the public are responding to the events of 11
    September.
    Alison and I
then go through my personal letters and the list of people who have asked to
visit me at NSC. These weekly visits are a wonderful tonic, but they also serve
to remind me just how much I miss my friends, holed up in this God-forsaken
place.
4.00 pm
    I return to the
office, to find Mr New and a security officer, Mr Hayes, waiting to see me.
    The
photographers just won’t go away. One has even