Purgatory: A Prison Diary Volume 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

the
principal officer (Mr Tinkler) about having his status changed from C-cat to
D-cat. He asks if I will go through it with him. I don’t tell him that I’m
facing the same problem.
    Jules is a model prisoner and deserves his enhanced status.
He gained this while he was at Bedford where he became a listener. He’s also
quiet and considerate about my writing regime. He so obviously regrets his
involvement with drugs, and is one of the few prisoners I’ve come across who I
am convinced will never see the inside of a jail again. I do a small editorial
job on his letter and suggest that we should go over the final draft tomorrow.
I then spend the next couple of hours reading through today’s mail, which is
just as supportive as the letters I received in Belmarsh. There is, however,
one missive of a different nature that I feel I ought to share with you.
    University College Hospital London
    1/8/01 4.30 pm
    My dear Lord Archer
    Many poets and writers have written much of their best work
in prison, OWfor one. However, I cannot conceive of you having to spend four
miserable years in a maximum security prison. I spent 60 days in such a
facility in Canada on a trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace. I escaped by
a most devious means.
    I can arrange for your immediate release from bondage,
however, only if you are willing to donate £15m to my charity foundation.
    I can be contacted anytime at 020 7— If you would like some
company, choose three non-criminal or white-collar offenders to join with you ,foran appropriate amount.
    Yours as an artist,
    I am quite unable to read the signature. In the second post
there is another letter in the same bold red hand:
    1/8/01 5.05 pm
    Dear Geofrey [sic]
    After having sealed my letter to you I realized that I wrote
£15m instead of £1.5m So just to reassure you, I’m not an idiot, I repeat my
offer to spring you and a few other trustworthy buddies!
    Yours in every greater art,
    Again, I cannot read the signature.

DAY 25 – SUNDAY 12 AUGUST 2001
5.56 am
    Woken by voices in the corridor, two
officers, one of them on a walkie-talkie. They open a cell door and take
a prisoner away. I will find out the details when my door is unlocked in a
couple of hours’ time.
6.05 am
    Write for two hours.
8.15 am
    Breakfast. Sugar Puffs (prison
issue), long-life milk (mine, because it’s Sunday). Beans on burnt toast ( prison’s ).
10.00 am
    I go to the library for the first time and sign up. You are
allowed to take out two books, a third if your official work is education. The
library is about the same size as the weight-lifting room and, to be fair, just
as well stocked. They have everything from Graham Greene to Stephen King, I,
Claudius to Harry Potter.
    However, although Forsyth, Grisham, Follett and Jilly Cooper
are much in evidence, I can find none of my books on the shelves. I hope that’s
because they are all out on loan. Lifers often tell me they’ve read them all –
slowly – and in some cases several times.
    I take out a copy of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse,
which I haven’t read in years, and Famous Trials selected by John Mortimer.
Naturally I have to fill in another form, and then my choices are stamped by
the library orderly – a prisoner – to be returned by 26 August. I’m rather
hoping to have moved on by then.
    Kevin, the prisoner who stamps my library card, tells me
that all my books were removed from the shelves the day they found out I was
being transferred to Wayland.
    ‘Why?’ I ask.
    ‘Direct order from the number one governor. It seems that
Belmarsh informed her that the prisoners were stealing your books, and if they
could then get you to Sign them, the black-market price is a thousand pounds.’
    I believe everything except the thousand pounds, which
sounds like a tabloid figure.
10.30 am
    I check my watch, leave the library and quickly make my way
across to the chapel on the other side of the corridor. There is no officer
standing by the entrance. It